Ask for a portion of fries McDonald’s it’s now a little easier if you live near Fort Worth, Texas. As easy as talking to a machine.
The American fast food giant has introduced a digital self-service that takes up less space and does not accommodate more diners. Designed by branding agency UXUS, the restaurant is 26% smaller than the average McDonald’s and combines several ways to order under one roof: You can park at a normal window and order like you normally do, or you can park and order on the counter inside.
But the brand’s latest innovation is what it calls “Order Ahead Lane.” It allows you to place an order in advance, through the McDonald’s mobile application, bypass the normal self-service lane, which may or may not be occupied by a line of cars, and head straight for the other lane, where your order will be served, or rather brought to you on a conveyor belt.
In the second quarter of this year, digital sales (kiosk, app and delivery) accounted for $6 billion, or one-third of McDonald’s sales, in the brand’s top six markets. In the United States alone, 25 million customers today use the app and the brand’s loyalty program. “Digital is a primary driver for improving the customer experience, reducing complexity and driving profitability,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said during the company’s third quarter 2022 earnings call.
With the test store, McDonald’s hopes to capitalize on this digital trend, even if the brand is considerably late to the game compared to its competitors. George Gottl, Creative Director and Co-Founder of UXUS, has been with McDonald’s for more than 10 years. He says that the pandemic changed the way people order food, and that safety and comfort became even higher priorities for customers. “McDonald’s already anticipated that the younger generation was much more digital,” she says. “For them, ordering through their mobile device is very natural, so this was a test store to see how it went.”
When Wendy’s launched its first drive-through restaurant in the 1970s, the concept was so foreign that customers apparently needed instructions on how to order over the loudspeaker. The new McDonald’s experience looks a lot like the old one, albeit with an extra lane and tight integration with the restaurant’s digital ordering option. This last aspect, the creation of an effortless ordering and collection process, is perhaps the most attractive feature of the new store.
To create a seamless experience, UXUS choreographed the various journeys a customer might take in the space.. If you order as usual, you would go under a portal, place your order with a member of staff, and pick it up at another window around the corner. If you order ahead, you’d swerve into the other lane, walk up to a kiosk, confirm your order number over a loudspeaker, and wait for the conveyor belt to drop your bag. These various touch points required navigation to be crystal clear to customers. “The whole design is regarding intuitive navigation through space,” Gottl says.
others before
McDonald’s isn’t the first to experiment with digital-oriented restaurants, self-service or even smaller-format stores. Starbucks saw the potential of mobile pre-ordering and digital self-service a decade ago. Chipotle opened its first digital restaurant in 2021, in Highland, New York. And even Panera, a staple in rural America, ventured into New York City this year, with two new store formats organized around pickup and delivery, with limited or no counter seating. seats at all.
Self-services are especially ripe for reinventing themselves. According to a recent Drive-Thru report surveying 1,000 consumers at ten restaurant chains (including McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, Dunkin’ and Taco Bell), drive-thru wait times increased by 45 seconds in 2022 compared to 2019. Some fast food chains have tried to improve wait times by increasing the number of lanes, adding food pickup booths (in the case of Burger King and KFC), or delivering orders through of vertical “food tubes” (in the case of Taco Bell).
McDonald’s approach is more moderate. With its Fort Worth location, McDonald’s is testing the ground in a place where it already has a strong market. (At the moment, McDonald’s has no intention of replicating this model elsewhere.) It may not be a cry for innovation and it may not come with a newfangled gadget (unless you think a conveyor belt fits the bill), but it’s telling that one of the biggest fast food chains in the world is move in this direction.
With its commitment to digital, McDonald’s too is testing new technology that allows restaurant staff to track your arrival time through the app and only start preparing your order when you are near the restaurant. “It’s because of the obsession with freshness,” Gottl says. Yes, it seems a bit stalkerish, but the upside? At least the fries won’t get soggy if you get stuck in a jam.