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McDonald's gives its restaurants an AI makeover
- _mitterpach 2y agoEdge computing will enable applications like predicting when kitchen equipment—such as fryers and its notorious McFlurry ice cream machines—is likely to break down, Rice said. It is not hard to know if a machine is broken. There is an entire map dedicated to this, which shows state-wide broken rate as high as 40% for some states. https://mcbroken.com/ https://mcbroken.com/ If you know these machines are broken and they are not being fixed, what use will be to know what machines will break in the future? This is not a technology problem, this is a business and people problem. Another case of companies using AI to garner positive marketing, instead of improving their service and customer's experience.
- Ukv 2y agoTo be fair, up until recently copyright/DMCA prevented them from repairing the ice cream machines - I'd give it some time to see if things start to improve. Other kitchen equipment does seem to generally be fixed/replaced promptly enough to not typically cause major impact. Sensors on the equipment seems reasonable to me. Predicting failure in advance can avoid downtime or more costly damage. Machines with degrading performance and some underlying issue can also be a food safety issue, if it isn't addressed until they entirely fail.
- pessimizer 2y ago> To be fair, up until recently copyright/DMCA prevented them from repairing the ice cream machines Was that the story, or was the story that McDonald's was using copyright/DMCA in order to prevent their franchisees from repairing the ice cream machines?
- crooked-v 2y ago> up until recently copyright/DMCA prevented them from repairing the ice cream machines That's a red herring. The actual thing preventing them is the franchise contracts that require all ice cream machine maintenance be performed by a specific company, because McD's corporate knows that otherwise franchisees will cut corners and leave the brand associated with listeria outbreaks.
- ccnjfkggkkcj 2y agoIsn't that Apple's argument for not allowing you to get your battery replaced by a 3rd party, because customers might buy a cheap off brand battery and it could cause their phone to catch fire?
- crooked-v 2y agoYes. The difference is that, unlike possible phone fires, we know franchises will cause listeria outbreaks if left to their own devices because they have done so. It was a whole thing in the 90s and the obvious reason why McD's implemented the current policy in the first place.
- nedrylandJP 2y agoI've just picked up a fault in the AE-35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure within 72 hours.
- janalsncm 2y agoYou don’t even need that. An employee can report it as broken. I am guessing the systems will be used for something like this: https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/25/y-combinator-deletes-posts-after-a-startups-demo-goes-viral/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/25/y-combinator-deletes-posts... Surveilling employees is a potential use case for AI. It’s not one I’m particularly fond of, and I wouldn’t want to build it, but I know how it could be done at a technical level.
- TylerE 2y agoA machine about to break down is not a machine that HAS broken down. Predictive (but preventative!) is an active area of research in industrial circles.
- TZubiri 2y agoYou misunderstand, it's not to detect when a machine is broken, but to predict when it will break before it does. You really think you had some novel map mcdonalds didn't have access to lol
- mystified5016 2y agoAnyone who has ever worked any restaurant will tell you that "likely to break soon" is NOT "broken" and no action will be taken until the latter condition is met. Maybe.
- exabrial 2y agoProbably what will actually happen is the stick cameras in the drivethrough and sell the footage for model training. Wait...
- QuadrupleA 2y agoAh, the elimination of payroll, that annoying business expense.
- gedy 2y agoThe price has gotten too high for low quality food, no improvements in "experience" will help that.
- simonjgreen 2y agoChick-fil-A famously attempted similar many years back, there is an interesting and less well circulated after action report on that here: https://medium.com/chick-fil-atech/what-we-learned-from-launching-edge-compute-from-enterprise-architecture-1dc34e49482f https://medium.com/chick-fil-atech/what-we-learned-from-laun... I imagine those EAs will be watching this with interest.
- lelandfe 2y ago> McDonald’s consumers remain pressured, particularly low-income diners and families. The restaurant is hoping that a better tech-enabled experience will help it deliver on its goal of growing its loyalty patrons from 175 million to 250 million by 2027 > [..] > AI will be able to help McDonald’s tailor its promotions and offers by using customer data such as prior purchasing history, and even linking it with weather data, Rice said. “A customer who we know loves our sweet treats could get an offer through the app for a McFlurry on a hot summer day,” he said. So the pitch is that McDonald's franchises will use AI-driven deals to entice families who can no longer afford the 40% higher prices.
- acdha 2y agoI’m also trying to figure out how AI is revolutionizing the business by selling cold treats on a hot day when people did that in the analog era. That seems like it would be a lot more compelling if it found some non-obvious connections.
- hiddencost 2y agoI mean we've been doing large scale business data analytics and micro targeting for a very long time. But this is just ... Boring.
- acdha 2y agoExactly - the exact same pitch would have been used with “big data” in the 2010s, and probably something about OLAP a decade before that. It was weird seeing that example without even attempting to explain what makes it AI other than, presumably, giving Gartner a lot more money.
- eesmith 2y ago"Diapers and beer" was the go-to story for data mining of purchasing data in the 1990s. https://tdwi.org/articles/2016/11/15/beer-and-diapers-impossible-correlation.aspx https://tdwi.org/articles/2016/11/15/beer-and-diapers-imposs... That link shows both how widespread the idea was, and how shaky the evidence was.
- kelseydh 2y agoI thought the recent news that McDonald's is no longer the largest fast food chain on the planet by number of locations was more interesting. Dethroned by a China's Mixue bubble tea franchise.
- eeemmmooo 2y agoThey haven’t been for a long time. Subway has a lot more locations than McDonald’s does.
- shric 2y agoBut Subways, at least here in Australia, are usually empty or almost empty. McDonald's are almost always packed.
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoAaaah, Subway. Used to be great, but an 8 inch sandwich(four pieces of cucumber wide) on an 11 inch piece of bread that has doubled in price, with the quality constantly dropping...I used to eat there every day. Not been for three years, now.
- madcaptenor 2y agoSubway is the closest place to buy food to my office, so I only eat there on days when I forgot to bring lunch and I'm pressed for time. That's always a bad day.
- olalonde 2y agoMost Mixue locations are tiny takeaway kiosks though.
- madcaptenor 2y agoWikipedia has a list of fast food chains with number of locations and revenue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_fast_food_restaurant_chains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_fast_food_... By number of locations, the top 5 are: Mixue, McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, KFC. By revenue (note sorting in that table seems to be sorting strings), the top 5 are: Starbucks, KFC, Burger King, McDonalds, Chick-Fil-A. I'm surprised to see Burger King ahead of McDonalds.
- crooked-v 2y ago> "Technology solutions will alleviate the stress." No, they'll just let franchisees fire staff and keep the remainder at the same stress level.
- deadbabe 2y agoIsn't that an improvement? Normally firing staff would raise stress levels of the survivors, but in this case, the surviving staff remains at the same stress despite the decrease in headcount. Inevitably, it could just be two people at a location.
- qnleigh 2y agoWell the fired staff presumably have a higher stress level now that they're unemployed...
- euroderf 2y agoOne person and one dog. When the person ducks out to use the restroom, the dog will guard the area behind the counter.
- astrange 2y agoIt won't happen. Automation /increases/ employment because it makes the employees more productive, which attracts more business.
- UberFly 2y agoAi will detect the shake machine breaking a full 20 minutes before it comes to pass. Civilization saved.
- anon373839 2y agoI don't understand how McDonalds is still relevant outside of food deserts. The food quality is trash, and the prices are so high that you can and should just go elsewhere and buy real food.
- yk 2y agoKnown quantity, especially when I'm travelling I go there because I know that I get kinda consistent quality without having to think.
- tstrimple 2y agoI wish this was still the case, but in my experience the differences between individual fast food joints is enormous. We've got one Taco Bell in town for example which is known to take 10+ minutes per car and they constantly screw up orders. This usually shows up as a 1 star fast food restaurant rather than the more common 2-3 stars on review sites. For me the tell is their soda. My guilty McDonald's pleasure is their Coke mix. Something about it tastes much better than other restaurants or bottles. Except at some McDonald's where they seem to have the CO2 cranked up too much. I can't even get a consistent soft drink from McDonald's anymore. When I get unsalted fries though... those are basically inedible.
- antifa 2y agoMcDonald's seems to recently have really bad soda at increasingly close to all restaurants in my general area, and if you try to Google information on this (prepare your tin foil hat) you can only find people claiming Joe Rogan told them McDonald's has a secret exclusive best coke formula.
- djaychela 2y agoNot my experience in the UK. I hate macdonalds and have eaten there three times in 30 years. But it's a cheap place to take a family to eat compared to most other options. I say this as someone whose wife is a keen cook and I know what decent food is... Definitely not defending the food but the price is often right, particularly if you have multiple kids or their friends with them.
- thbb123 2y agoThis is starting to feel like Manna, the Marshall Brain novel: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 > Depending on how you want to think about it, it was funny or inevitable or symbolic that the robotic takeover did not start at MIT, NASA, Microsoft or Ford. It started at a Burger-G restaurant in Cary, NC on May 17. It seemed like such a simple thing at the time, but May 17 marked a pivotal moment in human history.
- abrookewood 2y agoFYI it's a free novel and worth a quick read.
- markisus 2y agoI started reading it. It’s very interesting that the author thought computer vision would be the hardest part about robotics. > Without vision, robots could not move around or manipulate objects. All of the other hardware was there. Legs and balance systems to allow bipedal motion had been in place for decades. Robotic fingers and hands with very fine motor control were easy to create. AI software to set goals and make decisions was getting more powerful every day. Everything was there but the vision system. It turns out that dexterity has been much harder than vision.
- TZubiri 2y agoMy brother are you unable to connect the dots across industries? That has already happened with uber.
- Larrikin 2y agoIn my area, I can pay about five dollars more and get an equivalent meal from Five Guys. Why would I ever go to McDonald's when I can get a meal that I actually taste good. Especially something that should not be eaten that often.
- conductr 2y agoIs this a joke? Five guys is well known for the most outrageously expensive fast food, it’s a meme
- TylerE 2y agoHe’s not wrong. A quarter pounder with cheese and a large fry from McDonald’s is up to about $11. The same from five guys is $16. Which is… five bucks more. (Medium fries from five guys, which is more fries than the McDonalds large) Crap tier fast food has gotten outrageously expensive. McDonald’s fry prices are up over 40% in 3 years
- reaperducer 2y agoA quarter pounder with cheese and a large fry from McDonald’s is up to about $11. I just checked the prices at a location in the downtown of one of the five largest American cities: Quarter pounder with cheese: $4.79 Large fries: $2.39 Total: $7.18
- TylerE 2y agoDid you check the prices, or did you look at a photo of a menu board? I checked the McDonald’s app for a pickup order in my city of 100k in a lcol area just now. Quarter pounder with Cheese: $5.09 Large Fry: $4.29 Total+Tax $10.34
- reaperducer 2y agoI looked on the McDonald's app.
- dukeofdoom 2y agoAnd AI is telling people not to eat at McDonals. As more people outsource their health research to AI, long term, not sure this will go well for McDonald's.
- astrange 2y agoCheeseburgers aren't particularly unhealthy. The fries and soda are bad but you can skip those.
- happycube 2y agoIn the 90's there was a rather large McDonalds in San Jose on North 1st street with an automated fry machine... I checked up on it and it was closed - not even replaced with a shoebox.
- TZubiri 2y agoI don't think the article suggested worker automation
- gdulli 2y agoSlop is certainly on-brand for McDonald's.
- themark 2y ago“McDonald’s tapped Google Cloud in late 2023 to bring more computing power to each of its restaurants—giving them the ability to process and analyze data on-site. The setup, known as edge computing, can be a faster, cheaper option than sending data to the cloud“ What fresh hell is this?
- reaperducer 2y agoIt doesn't sound fresh at all. It sounds like McDonald's going back to the way it used to operate. I knew a guy who used to repair the PDP-11's under the counters that ran each restaurant. He said the #1 failure mode was soda spilled in the machines.
- sgerenser 2y agoI have a very hard time believing every McDonalds once had their own PDP-11. Despite being called “minicomputers” those things were huge!
- neonate 2y agohttps://archive.md/Wocrm https://archive.md/Wocrm
- ksec 2y agoMcDonald cant even get their Apps and Kiosk to work well.
- ivraatiems 2y agoSo they're going to use generative AI, well-known for frequently being completely wrong, to "ensure accuracy"? At least snake oil was just placebo.
- graymatters 2y agohttps://archive.ph/2025.03.11-045359/https://www.wsj.com/articles/mcdonalds-gives-its-restaurants-an-ai-makeover-2134f01e https://archive.ph/2025.03.11-045359/https://www.wsj.com/art...