By COURTNEY BONNELL (AP Business Writer)
LONDON (AP) — The systems at McDonald’s are not working properly all over the world today, causing some restaurants to close for a few hours. Customers have been complaining on social media. The fast food chain called it a “technology outage” and said they are working on fixing it.
McDonald’s Corp., based in Chicago, said the issues were not caused by a cyber attack but did not give further details on the cause.
The burger giant said, “We know that there is a technology outage affecting our restaurants, but we are fixing the problem. We appreciate our customers' patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
Earlier, McDonald’s in Japan posted on X, previously known as Twitter, that “operations are temporarily out at many of our stores nationwide,” calling it “a system failure.” In Hong Kong, the chain said on Facebook that a “computer system failure” caused online and self-serve kiosks to stop working.
Downdetector, a tracker for outages, also reported an increase in issues with the McDonald’s app in the last few hours.
Some McDonald’s restaurants are back to normal operation after the systems failure, and people are able to order and get their food at locations in Bangkok, Milan, and London.
An employee at a restaurant in Bangkok said the system was down for about an hour, so they couldn't take online or credit card payments, but they could still accept cash for orders.
At another location in Thailand’s capital, customers were able to order again and pay digitally, even as there was a sign saying, “Technicians are updating the system,” with plywood over a door.
An employee at a restaurant in Milan said the system was offline for a couple of hours, but a technician helped them get it working again.
A spokesperson for McDonald’s in Denmark said the “technology failure” has been resolved there and their restaurants are open.
Media outlets reported that customers from Australia to the U.K. had complained about issues with ordering. A customer in Australia even posted a photo to X showing that a kiosk was unavailable.
Patrik Hjelte, who owns several McDonald’s restaurants in central Sweden, near the Norwegian border, told local newspaper Nya Wermlands Tidning, “All McDonald’s restaurants are connected to a global network, and that is what’s messed up.”
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AP journalists Jintamas Saksornchai and David Cohen in Bangkok, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark; Kelvin Chan in London; Colleen Barry in Milan; and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed.
