> 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.
Once it detects who you are, it'll check to see how much money you have and jack up all their prices if they think you can afford it. Get a new job that comes with a 10% raise? Your prices at McD's will all go up by 10%.
It'll algorithmically determine how much money you're willing/able to spend to ensure that you're always forced to hand over the most money they can possibly get from you.
I’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.
So far the only jobs AI seems to be trying to take are the 'good' ones. Creativity, analysis, programming. Sure there's the dream that people in all 3 groups will just leverage it to do more and better, but most of the impact so far has been management openly extatic at all the people they can fire/pressure/not hire. Not the revolution I was looking for so far. And that's before taking the new horizons for disinformation and harassment into account.
Grocery stores have operated like that since the 1950's. They have higher prices in-store, but if you can't afford those then you clip coupons to save, yes, often 40% or more.
And CVS and other stores already print coupons attached to my receipt that are customized just for me.
Why wouldn't McDonald's do the same thing with coupons/offers in their app?
The pitch is always "here's how we're going to squeeze more blood from the stone". Public comments like these are targeted at investors, not customers.
Weirdly, when I was broke and jobless, living off the deals from McDonald's was pretty decent. I could normally get a free fries or sandwich practically every day on the app.
Edge 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.
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.
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.
To 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.
> 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.
> 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?
A 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.
Anyone 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.
> 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.
I 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.
I 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.
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.
I 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.
I see this sort of remark every time McDonald's comes up and I always wonder why it doesn't prompt people to check their assumptions. Clearly they are doing well enough so you're missing something.
Seeing as how the remark begins with “I don’t understand how…” it seems you’re the one with unchecked assumptions: namely, about what the text actually says.
The fries can be amazing when fresh and hot. One of the most satisfying things in the world is eating a pound of salty fried potatoes after a big day of hiking.
The food quality is decent. It is also cheaper than 99% of the restaurants out there. It's a cheaper option for people who don't want to cook and don't want to spend a lot of money eating.
I 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.
The food quality is fine. Nutritionally, the burgers and fries are no different from if you made them with ingredients from the supermarket. It's certainly not gourmet, but if you use the app the prices are cheaper than basically anywhere else. Where I am, I can spend $9 on a McDonald's meal or $18-25 for "real food". And actually get enough protein from a double quarter pounder, whereas the expensive "real food" is often three teensy strips of meat on top of a gigantic serving of carbs.
Not 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.
> and the prices are so high that you can and should just go elsewhere and buy real food.
Not sure what you’re implying here, but McDonald’s is still contending for the bottom for price on fast food. Groceries are of course cheaper if that’s what you mean by “real food”, but there aren’t restaurants that really compete with that value meal outside of Taco Bell/Time and maybe Burger King.
At one point I noticed that a Big mac and a large fry was $10, and that I could spend an extra $3 or $4 and get a steak, a baked potato, a salad, and loaf of bread at Outback.
There aren't many big box names that compete. There are usually places that sell you a "meal" for comparable cost.
The franchise has to pay fees and offer specific menu items. Small restaurants can outcompete in both price and quality.
The flip side is those places don't normally get enough foot traffic to offer their stuff "near cost", so they bundle it up into serving sizes in the $$ range that can last you a couple days. And they don't have brand marketing on their side... Joe's Diner can equally be a gem in the rough or in dire need of a new cook and a safety inspection...
> there aren’t restaurants that really compete with that value meal outside of Taco Bell/Time and maybe Burger King.
IKEA does, at least here in Europe. Of course you're not going to find an IKEA on every third block but it you happen to have one around and want some average food a for fairly low (and sometimes very low) price they're a good option. They are also a reliable quality, Swedish meatballs are Swedish meatballs everywhere. A bit like McD, really...
> Not sure what you’re implying here, but McDonald’s is still contending for the bottom for price on fast food.
No, that's exactly my point. McDonalds isn't all that cheap anymore. There are high-quality fast-casual restaurants and local shops that deliver much better quality food at roughly the same price point. E.g.: it looks like $12 is the current price for a Big Mac meal in my area. But I can think of several places I regularly go for lunch that would offer a handmade sandwich and proper side dish, made with organic ingredients no less, for the same price.
They are open for breakfast at 4am when you need to get up early and no where else is open. They are close to the job site and everyone knows the menu already to send one person out to pickup lunch. Many reasons why one might go for mcdonalds even in a food mecca.
This is also the reason for Cheesecake Factory (which is actually good, unlike the other restaurants in its class.) It has everything, so if you take a group of people there won't be an argument.
most of it is trash but there are some items you can order that are a bit more average quality. for instance iirc the quarter pounder patties are grilled in-house and when you order egg on a breakfast sandwich you can choose an option where they use real egg not just the processed stuff.
i’ve also noticed locations in Japan tend to taste a bit better. could be supply chain or something being different. not sure.
“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“
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.
Readit News
> [..]
> 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.
Once it detects who you are, it'll check to see how much money you have and jack up all their prices if they think you can afford it. Get a new job that comes with a 10% raise? Your prices at McD's will all go up by 10%.
It'll algorithmically determine how much money you're willing/able to spend to ensure that you're always forced to hand over the most money they can possibly get from you.
(they will just have high prices, and lower them until less wealthy can buy)
So maybe a daily coffee at off peak hours if it's within your commute idk
Grocery stores have operated like that since the 1950's. They have higher prices in-store, but if you can't afford those then you clip coupons to save, yes, often 40% or more.
And CVS and other stores already print coupons attached to my receipt that are customized just for me.
Why wouldn't McDonald's do the same thing with coupons/offers in their app?
It's just: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
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/
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.
I am guessing the systems will be used for something like this: 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.
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.
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.
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?
Maybe.
You really think you had some novel map mcdonalds didn't have access to lol
I imagine those EAs will be watching this with interest.
> 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.
> 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.
That has already happened with uber.
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.
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.
That is not the experience in other countries though, even in the US it is a pretty consistently shitty experience...
Not sure what you’re implying here, but McDonald’s is still contending for the bottom for price on fast food. Groceries are of course cheaper if that’s what you mean by “real food”, but there aren’t restaurants that really compete with that value meal outside of Taco Bell/Time and maybe Burger King.
The franchise has to pay fees and offer specific menu items. Small restaurants can outcompete in both price and quality.
The flip side is those places don't normally get enough foot traffic to offer their stuff "near cost", so they bundle it up into serving sizes in the $$ range that can last you a couple days. And they don't have brand marketing on their side... Joe's Diner can equally be a gem in the rough or in dire need of a new cook and a safety inspection...
IKEA does, at least here in Europe. Of course you're not going to find an IKEA on every third block but it you happen to have one around and want some average food a for fairly low (and sometimes very low) price they're a good option. They are also a reliable quality, Swedish meatballs are Swedish meatballs everywhere. A bit like McD, really...
No, that's exactly my point. McDonalds isn't all that cheap anymore. There are high-quality fast-casual restaurants and local shops that deliver much better quality food at roughly the same price point. E.g.: it looks like $12 is the current price for a Big Mac meal in my area. But I can think of several places I regularly go for lunch that would offer a handmade sandwich and proper side dish, made with organic ingredients no less, for the same price.
i’ve also noticed locations in Japan tend to taste a bit better. could be supply chain or something being different. not sure.
My opinion that nobody else has is that Japanese McDonald's is bad and worse than Silicon Valley McDonald's. Too much bread.
Kids love mcdonalds. Parents like seeing that, and get some relief.
also, as an adult, unhealthy food is sometimes tasty.
What fresh hell is this?
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.