4 ms·
> Presumably you can get 90% of the value for 5% of the price. McDonald's isn't Amazon. "McDonald's isn't Amazon" seems like a good enough reason. Amazon can
by throwawayjava 8y ago
> Presumably you can get 90% of the value for 5% of the price. McDonald's isn't Amazon.
"McDonald's isn't Amazon" seems like a good enough reason.
Amazon can "just hire a few PhDs/seasoned engineers", plug them into the right places in the company, and expect good things to happen.
McDonald's would need to hire a new team from the leadership down and would be working up-wind in a hot seller's labor market at every level.
> They have 100 (?) menu items, not 1,000,000 products.
McDonald's is a huge company with lots of opportunities to apply ML. Store operation, hiring, supply chain optimization, menu/product design, lots of resource scheduling problems, marketing, etc.
I can easily see McDonald's making back hundreds of millions very quickly just by decreasing the friction and amount of time required to make improvements in these and other areas.
> Is McDonald's the right owner for a high-tech customer intelligence product? It just feels like such a bizarre cultural and core-competency fit.
Automated ordering is becoming a core part of McDonald's customer experience. Automated and augmented decision making is becoming a core part of McDonald's franchise management. Outsourcing those things would mean putting the fate of the company's future in someone else's hands.
Plus, there's huge upside to owning that IP. McDonald's is taking leadership on automating away the sales clerk and decreasing reliance on skilled/knowledgeable franchise owners and managers.