McDonald’s Suffers Global Tech Outage, Leaving Some Branches Unable to Take Orders, Serve Food

By Moon Harper

Mar 15, 2024 11:54 PM EDT

McDonald's Corp. faced a system outage on Friday that seems to have originated in the Asia-Pacific region. It subsequently affected other markets worldwide, resulting in customers being unable to place orders at its stores and through electronic platforms.

McDonald's Global Outage Stemming From a Computer System

The tech outage originated from a computer system issue that spread from Japan to Australia, New Zealand, and European countries. It left some restaurants unable to process online orders and serve food.

McDonald's said in an emailed statement that they continue to address the outage, thanking customers for their patience. They apologized for the inconvenience and further clarified that the incident was not related to a cybersecurity event.

The Australian branch of the American fast-food chain reported the outage first and stated they were working to fix it quickly. By around 6:45 a.m. Eastern Time, McDonald's Australia announced that most of its restaurants had reopened.

Social media users in the UK experienced difficulties placing orders online on Friday morning. However, the company stated in a separate statement that the issues in both the UK and Ireland have been resolved.

A spokesperson mentioned that problems were also occurring in Germany and other European markets during the morning, and the company is still trying to gather more details about these issues.

Affected McDonald's Restaurants in Asia

The issues, which initially arose in Asia, led to restaurants in Taiwan stopping phone and online ordering for system maintenance and McDonald's Japan halting operations across the country.

According to Downdetector, a website that monitors technical problems with apps and websites, a surge in reports of issues with the McDonald's app in Australia was detected around 2 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday. Similar issues with the McDonald's app were reported in the UK around the same time, and more reports came in around 5 a.m. Eastern Time. Downdetector also displayed outage reports in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Seattle.

Returning to Business as Usual

The New Zealand Herald reported that stores could not take orders, Australian broadcaster 7News mentioned that restaurants were affected by the outage across the country, and Singapore's Strait Times noted that ordering services on the McDonald's app was unavailable in the city-state.

Still, some locations were returning to business as usual, with McDonald's Hong Kong system slowly returning to normal and customers now able to use its app and self-ordering kiosks, as mentioned in a post on its official Facebook page around 5 p.m. local time. Online ordering has also resumed in mainland China, as stated in a Weibo post.

McDonald's operates roughly 40,000 restaurants worldwide, with over 1,000 restaurants in Australia, more than 1,450 in the UK, and nearly 3,000 restaurants in Japan, making it one of McDonald's largest markets.