Mcdonalds new ordering system
Discussion
AmitG said:
The one in Lewisham (SE London) has gone really downhill. Full of delivery drivers pushing to the front, waving phones around and shouting/arguing. The order takes ages and is frequently wrong. Staff look over-worked and generally stressed out. It's just an unpleasant experience. I don't bother going any more.
In some areas I think McDonalds should have dark kitchens for delivery. Personally I couldn’t think of anything worse than waiting 30 mins for a cold Big Mac and soggy sweaty fries to be delivered. craigjm said:
In some areas I think McDonalds should have dark kitchens for delivery. Personally I couldn’t think of anything worse than waiting 30 mins for a cold Big Mac and soggy sweaty fries to be delivered.
Absolutely. All delivery stuff can go to dark kitchen, there are no customers there anyway so no need for customer experience stuff, you would surely not need much floor area. It would make it much more pleasant for in-person customers.I think that the way forward is dark kitchens for delivery and ramp up the customer experience in the restaurants even if it means putting up the prices a bit.
AmitG said:
craigjm said:
In some areas I think McDonalds should have dark kitchens for delivery. Personally I couldn’t think of anything worse than waiting 30 mins for a cold Big Mac and soggy sweaty fries to be delivered.
Absolutely. All delivery stuff can go to dark kitchen, there are no customers there anyway so no need for customer experience stuff, you would surely not need much floor area. It would make it much more pleasant for in-person customers.I think that the way forward is dark kitchens for delivery and ramp up the customer experience in the restaurants even if it means putting up the prices a bit.
However, i suspect the franchisees would kick off big time if that happened. And if the exiting franchisee did the dark kitchen, they would incur 2 sets of overheads,
Dont kow what the answer is, but they really need t do something about the low-life with their aggresive rude behaviour and untaxed uninsured cars strwen about the place causing chaos and cluttering up the restaurants.
I still remain amazed that they have let this happen. Macdonalds has always been a masterclass in how to run a chain and they just seem to have thrown it all away with this and some, frankly, disgutingly dirty branches.
craigjm said:
In some areas I think McDonalds should have dark kitchens for delivery. Personally I couldn’t think of anything worse than waiting 30 mins for a cold Big Mac and soggy sweaty fries to be delivered.
Our local Maccas is awful. It's always rammed. Food takes forever to come regardless if you're in person, drive thru or via app. They regularly have queues of cars going out the car park into the street as the food isn't coming out fast enough to service the cars at the windows and with limited parking spaces it's just chaos. I'll go there when I know it will be relatively quiet but otherwise don't bother. I don't bother with the app delivery at all after one especially bad experience. Ordered a breakfast meal to be delivered (I live 4 minutes drive MAX from the branch), it never turned up, so I then ordered lunch which itself took 45 minutes to arrive, 15 minutes later (2.5 hours after ordering) the breakfast order turned up. Uber wouldn't refund the breakfast even though it arrived totally inedible.
Where we used to live had a Wagamama's dark kitchen. FANTASTIC. Used to order from it all the time and the one time I got 2 vegan Katsu curry instead of 2 chicken they replaced both for free, no questions asked. That was with Deliveroo.
AmitG said:
craigjm said:
In some areas I think McDonalds should have dark kitchens for delivery. Personally I couldn’t think of anything worse than waiting 30 mins for a cold Big Mac and soggy sweaty fries to be delivered.
Absolutely. All delivery stuff can go to dark kitchen, there are no customers there anyway so no need for customer experience stuff, you would surely not need much floor area. It would make it much more pleasant for in-person customers.I think that the way forward is dark kitchens for delivery and ramp up the customer experience in the restaurants even if it means putting up the prices a bit.
It seems to take ages for food to arrive, and for some reason 50% of the time my coffee is luke warm and I have to take it back. I now test it at the counter because it's so bad.
The problem is McD's are franchised so each branch would need a dark kitchen, which is a lot of extra money to set up and run.
President Merkin said:
Dark kitchens are an investment. McDonalds are only ever doing that if they see their retail business suffer by adding delivery to branches. I don't see any sign of that. And even then, there's room for doubt. McDonalds is a property company with a sideline in burgers.
thisdelivery has really ruined mcdonalds in a lot of ways
probably why they aren't even bothered in the UK about making the menu interesting anymore as they are so burden as it is in stores
craigjm said:
ChocolateFrog said:
craigjm said:
I always walk into the restaurant sit down and order from the app. In the branches I go to I have never had a missed or lost order and I have never had to wait ages or get given cold food. Maybe I’m just lucky
I've never had it with food orders, always when I'm at work and just want a coffee. I have once just picked my coffee off the trolley that the maker puts them on when the server person has disappeared.
gareth_r said:
Anyone having problems with the app? Thought I'd use my points to redeem delicious rewards this morning, for the first time in a few weeks, and the My Rewards section is blank - no items available for selection or even just to be viewed.
Just in case anyone else has this problem...Workaround seems to be to add an item to the bag, then go to Rewards & Offers.
Agreed McD’s need a throughput limiting system. Their kitchens in busy branches like my local weren’t designed for it. You can see they struggle with Drive thru, foot traffic and delivery orders at peak times.
The ordering system looks fully digitised, the app / McDonald’s back end should stop online orders once the branch reaches capacity. Pop up a, ‘this branch is working at capacity’ message in the app. Its very unpleasant in there, unless its at 7am or something. Peak times, you have to wait 30 mins or more, by which time the food is way past its peak, bags of food are just piled up, numbers repeatedly called out while ppl fight through the scrum to get to the desk. Behind the desk, staff are on top of each other, constantly dodging each other as they move around. Can’t be easy on them either.
I deleted the app and stopped going. Not worth that sort of stress for a burger.
The ordering system looks fully digitised, the app / McDonald’s back end should stop online orders once the branch reaches capacity. Pop up a, ‘this branch is working at capacity’ message in the app. Its very unpleasant in there, unless its at 7am or something. Peak times, you have to wait 30 mins or more, by which time the food is way past its peak, bags of food are just piled up, numbers repeatedly called out while ppl fight through the scrum to get to the desk. Behind the desk, staff are on top of each other, constantly dodging each other as they move around. Can’t be easy on them either.
I deleted the app and stopped going. Not worth that sort of stress for a burger.
Edited by wyson on Wednesday 15th March 15:25
President Merkin said:
Dark kitchens are an investment. McDonalds are only ever doing that if they see their retail business suffer by adding delivery to branches. I don't see any sign of that. And even then, there's room for doubt. McDonalds is a property company with a sideline in burgers.
McD's are already doing them in major courier dense areas. Issues are that with a dark kitchen in the centre of a town, then sales in the surrounding stores will drop. Some stores are seeing 30-40% delievry business which would almost disappear if a DK opened. Not an issue if the surrounding stores are owned by the same franchisee but if multiple people are there then its a problem for the Company.It is true McDonald's own property but there are still a huge amount of sites that are leased and then sublet to the franchisee. So technically they dont own the sites but do take rental from them which is sales based rather than going rental rate.
KevF said:
McD's are already doing them in major courier dense areas. Issues are that with a dark kitchen in the centre of a town, then sales in the surrounding stores will drop. Some stores are seeing 30-40% delievry business which would almost disappear if a DK opened. Not an issue if the surrounding stores are owned by the same franchisee but if multiple people are there then its a problem for the Company.
It is true McDonald's own property but there are still a huge amount of sites that are leased and then sublet to the franchisee. So technically they dont own the sites but do take rental from them which is sales based rather than going rental rate.
Yes, I think you are right. Imagine being a franchisee doing well (even if swamped with Deliveroo types) and then a dark kitchen opens and takes that trade away. The customer might like that better, but the franchisee might not.It is true McDonald's own property but there are still a huge amount of sites that are leased and then sublet to the franchisee. So technically they dont own the sites but do take rental from them which is sales based rather than going rental rate.
There are one or two shift managers at the McDonalds by me who push all the orders off the display screen, it causes chaos because then everyone is working off the printed receipts attached to the bags which means there is no structure to how orders are delivered, and things just sit around.
Drives me nuts. It's a location with a big kitchen and well staffed, works far better when the system is allowed to operate as intended.
Drives me nuts. It's a location with a big kitchen and well staffed, works far better when the system is allowed to operate as intended.
KevF said:
McD's are already doing them in major courier dense areas. Issues are that with a dark kitchen in the centre of a town, then sales in the surrounding stores will drop. Some stores are seeing 30-40% delievry business which would almost disappear if a DK opened. Not an issue if the surrounding stores are owned by the same franchisee but if multiple people are there then its a problem for the Company.
It is true McDonald's own property but there are still a huge amount of sites that are leased and then sublet to the franchisee. So technically they dont own the sites but do take rental from them which is sales based rather than going rental rate.
That's the balancing act I alluded to. I get DK's can cannibalise store sales, it boils sown to whether they assess the walk in experience is denigrated by the delivery operation running from store. I know from my own contacts MCD's has always been highly focused on the customer experience, so I doubt this stuff isn't a debate internally.It is true McDonald's own property but there are still a huge amount of sites that are leased and then sublet to the franchisee. So technically they dont own the sites but do take rental from them which is sales based rather than going rental rate.
More or less on topic, a pal of mine had a few Subway franchises but got out in no small part because he watched new store openings on his patch, Subway being only too willing to undermine existing operators if someone was willing to stump up for a franchise, irrespective of local saturation.
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