McDonald’s suffers global tech outage forcing some restaurants to halt operations

LONDON — McDonald’s suffered a system failure Friday that left customers in some parts of the world unable to order food.

“We are aware of a technology outage, which impacted our restaurants; the issue is now being resolved,” a McDonald’s spokesperson said. “We thank customers for their patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

The spokesperson added that the incident “is not related to a cybersecurity event.” 

The outage was first flagged by the the Australian unit of the U.S.-based fast-food chain which said it was working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. At around 6.45 a.m. ET, McDonald’s Australia said on X that most of its restaurants had reopened.

McDonald’s Japan took to social media to say that operations at stores nationwide were temporarily suspended. “We apologize for any inconvenience caused to our customers,” it said.

On Downdetector, a website which tracks when apps and websites are having technical difficulties, there was a spike in reports of issues with the McDonald’s app in Australia around 2 a.m. ET on Friday.

There was also a spike in reports of issues with the McDonald’s app in the U.K. around the same time, with further reports of issues at around 5 a.m. ET, according to Downdetector. A map on the website also showed outages reported in U.S. cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Seattle.

McDonald’s has around 40,000 restaurants globally. Just over 1,000 are in Australia and there are more than 1,450 in the U.K. Japan has nearly 3,000 restaurants, making it one of the largest markets for McDonald’s.