McDonald’s hit by global outage, forcing some restaurants to shut down

McDonald’s stores in parts of the world had to suspend operations or online orders Friday due to what the company called a “technology outage.”

Locations in Japan, China and Australia temporarily halted use of their in-store kiosks, while others reported McDonald’s app blackouts. This caused some locations to shut down their drive-thrus and others to temporarily cease operations.

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

“Notably, this issue was not directly caused by a cybersecurity event,” Brian Rice, EVP, global chief information officer at McDonald’s, said in a separate statement posted on its website, “rather, it was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change.”

On March 15, McDonald’s Australia posted on X that earlier in the day it had experienced an outage which impacted all of its restaurants, but that by late evening, most of its restaurants had reopened.

Throughout the day, people in Australia reported closed drive-thru lanes and nonfunctioning kiosks and apps.

McDonald’s Japan also posted on X that there was a system failure in the country, apologizing for any inconvenience and asking people to “please wait for a while until the service is restored.”

McDonald’s Japan later said that many stores across the country had “temporarily suspended operations.”

The South China Morning Post also reported that the mobile app and self-order kiosks of McDonald’s restaurants in Hong Kong also broke down.

According to the SCMP, McDonald’s said on its Chinese-language Facebook page that due to a “computer system failure,” its mobile and self-ordering kiosks were not working, asking its customers to order directly at restaurant counters. Later that day, the company said the problem was fixed.

Other places that saw similar outages included the United Kingdom, Taiwan and Singapore, where a reporter from Channel News Asia said that McDonald’s locations they visited were not operating, with self-service kiosks showing black screens.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com