Big Mac goes Big Tech, with a few hiccups

When McDonald’s first opened for business in the 1940s, its workers stood at physical counters, its burgers and fries were listed on paper menus, and its customers paid cash to its human cashiers. Today technology so infuses every aspect of McDonald's business that it would only be a slight exaggeration to call it a tech company that happens to sell burgers. McDonald's mobile app; its human-less, order-taking kiosks; its digitized menus that change based on trends, the weather and more; and even its generative AI – together, these enable McDonald’s to eke out additional sales and efficiencies worth billions of dollars to the company, which has 40,000 locations in roughly 100 countries.