McDonald’s has issued a statement addressing a widespread technical glitch that led to the temporary closure of several of its outlets globally.
The issue began in the early hours of Friday, notably affecting McDonald’s stores in Australia, and quickly spread to other countries, including China, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, and Germany. This technical malfunction prevented customers from completing their purchases, causing operational disruptions.
The fast-food giant had to close some of its outlets temporarily until the problem was rectified. In a communication to Newsweek, a McDonald’s representative clarified that the outage was not triggered by a cybersecurity breach.
Post-Outage Repercussions
By Friday, the issue was largely resolved, and McDonald’s updated its stakeholders through a statement on its website. The company pinpointed the start of the outage at midnight CDT on Friday, attributing it to a malfunction in their global technology system, which was promptly identified and fixed. The statement highlighted that the problem was not due to a cybersecurity incident but was instead caused by a third-party service provider during a system update.
McDonald’s emphasized its commitment to the reliability and stability of its technology infrastructure, acknowledging the inconvenience caused by the outage. The statement expressed an understanding of the impact on employees, franchise partners, and customers, emphasizing the company’s efforts to prevent future occurrences.
Following up on Saturday, McDonald’s informed Newsweek that it could not divulge detailed information about the technical issue at that moment.
Reports from Australia indicated that while some McDonald’s outlets had to shut down, others remained open but could only accept cash payments.
McDonald’s Japan acknowledged the “system failure” in a message on its official X account (previously known as Twitter), apologizing for the inconvenience and requesting patience until the service was fully restored.
Globally, McDonald’s operates over 40,000 restaurants, with significant presences in Australia, Japan, Canada, South Korea, and Taiwan.
