McDonald’s issued an apology on Friday for a global technology malfunction that caused the temporary closure of several of their restaurants.

The company reported that the service disruption was due to a third-party technology provider and not related to cybersecurity. The incident occurred around 12 a.m. CDT while making a configuration change and was almost resolved 12 hours later, as stated by the Chicago-based company.

“Our top priority is ensuring the reliability and stability of our technology. We recognize the inconvenience of potential outages and the impact it has on you, your restaurant teams, and our customers,” stated Brian Rice, the global chief information officer of the company.

The recent occurrence has been out of the ordinary and we are taking immediate action to fix it. We appreciate your understanding and we deeply apologize for any trouble this may have caused.

The outage was determined to be unrelated to the company’s transition to Google Cloud as a technology provider. In December, McDonald’s revealed a long-term collaboration with Google which will shift restaurant calculations from servers to the cloud. The purpose of this partnership is to improve the efficiency of tasks such as ordering at kiosks and assist managers in optimizing staffing.

On X, previously known as Twitter, McDonald’s announced that many of their stores in Japan are currently unable to operate due to a system malfunction. They described it as a “system failure.” Similarly, in Hong Kong, the company stated on Facebook that a “computer system failure” has disrupted online orders and self-service kiosks.

According to Downdetector, a website that tracks outages, there was a significant increase in reports of issues with the McDonald’s mobile application for several consecutive hours.

A number of McDonald’s locations in Bangkok, Milan, and London resumed normal operation after the outage, serving customers and fulfilling orders on Friday.

According to a restaurant employee in Bangkok, their system experienced downtime for approximately one hour. This prevented them from accepting online or credit card payments, but they were still able to take cash payments for orders.

In a different area of Thailand’s city center, a door was covered in plywood and displayed a sign announcing, “Technicians are currently modernizing the system.” Despite this, customers were still able to place orders and make electronic payments.

An employee of a restaurant in Milan observed that the system was not functioning for a few hours. A technician assisted them in getting it running again.

According to a representative from McDonald’s in Denmark, the issue with the technology has been resolved and all restaurants are currently open.

According to media sources, individuals from Australia to the U.K. expressed dissatisfaction with the ordering process, with one Australian customer even sharing a picture on X of an unavailable kiosk.

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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.

Source: wral.com