McDonald’s hit by massive global error making it impossible to order

McDonald’s systems in several countries around the globe have been hit by a massive system error, making it impossible for customers to order food. And nobody knows when it will be fixed.

On Friday, March 15, McDonald’s systems around the world were facing errors, meaning that customers couldn’t order in-store, at the drive-thru or via the McDonald’s app.

Certain countries got their systems up and running after several hours, while some were forced to close due to prolonged issues.

It is unclear when systems will be back up and running

McDonald’s branches around the world were making social media posts about the outage, with McDonald’s Japan posting on X, “Operations are temporarily out at many of our stores nationwide.” They called it “a system failure” and apologized for the inconvenience. McDonald’s HQ also put out a message saying that this was not a cyber security issue and that it was being dealt with.

It's now been 5 hours since McDonalds started experiencing a global 'outage', forcing them to close many stores in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, parts of Europe and the UK.

Surely the world doesn't rely on a single system for taking orders… right? pic.twitter.com/nCUsI4zn64

— Harley (@HarleyJ) March 15, 2024

Whilst some stores were able to reboot their systems and get them working again, others were unable to take any orders at all and had to go old school by writing down orders on paper and telling the staff in the kitchen what to cook.

McDonald’s employees in the US were posting that they couldn’t clock on so were sent home from work. It is not clear what countries have been fixed or are still being affected, but according to 2023 data released by the company, McDonald’s could lose up to $29 million an hour if they are unable to take any orders across the globe.

Although countries like the UK, Australia and New Zealand were able to fix their issues in within a few hours, many branches across the US, Asia and Europe, continued to be affected and with McDonald’s having made no direct announcements as to what went wrong, it is unclear when systems will be back up and running again.

If you were thinking about getting a Big Mac on your lunch break, you might just have to settle for another fast food chain instead.