IT operation of restaurants and introduction of self-service kiosks in Mc Donald's

McDonald ́s is a company operating one of the world's largest fast food chains since 1940. With a strongly established and easily recognizable brand of two golden arches, it is a symbol of business success. It has become the largest fast food restaurant operator in the Czech Republic since opening its first restaurant in Prague in 1992.

McDonald ́s stands for perfectly thought out processes invisible to the customer. Every action is driven by the desire to provide the customer with the best and fastest possible service. And he wanted to elevate these processes to involve technology in the process of serving the customer. McDonald ́s intended to change and redesign its branches in the country about seven years after it introduced self-service kiosks in its Paris location. The model had proved successful, so McDonald ́s Czech Republic was looking for a suitable partner for this project.

McDonald's has successfully implemented global process and technology standardization. This translates, among other things, into the IT environment of the restaurants. A few years ago, McDonald's decided to significantly increase the involvement of IT in the sales process as well as in the food preparation and other ordering processes worldwide. This is being done as part of the restaurant's SPA concept, which includes a comprehensive redesign of the restaurant, service processes, order preparation and customer service.

In the old concept, customers ordered solely on the basis of reading the posted menu and the possibilities for individual adjustments were relatively limited. In the SPA restaurant, apart from the proven hits on the notice board, the possibility of ordering via self-service kiosks is widely used, where the customer not only chooses and specifies the details of his order in peace and quiet, but also picks up the identification stand of his order, pays and sits down at the table where his order is delivered.

Backward compatibility is also supported, where the customer has the option to proceed as they have been used to for many years, namely to select from the display, pay cash at the checkout and pick up their order in the dispensing section. However, IT technology is also making inroads here - for example, traditional menu posters are being replaced by LcD displays with controlled content, and in the dispensing area the customer is informed on a monitor about the preparation and dispensing of their order.

The SPA concept is fully under the control of McDonald's in terms of architecture, development and technology (in terms of the selected manufacturers and the final form of their products involved in the solution).

AUTOCONT, as the selected partner for installation and operational support, has been given full support, particularly in terms of establishing relationships with manufacturers and intensive support for the transfer of know-how. It was up to AUTOCONT to set up process operations with a number of manufacturers, some of which were not yet represented in the Czech Republic in terms of business processes, logistics, warranty and post-warranty service and competence support. AUTOCONT was able to quickly assemble the appropriate teams and project-manage the complete IT re-installation at around 100 restaurants on a very tight schedule.

The last of AUTOCONT's tasks was to set up functioning processes of direct technical support for the restaurants, proactive measures both organizational and technical, and to set up relationships with manufacturers with one common fundamental goal - to minimize limitations or disruptions of restaurant operations, because this means only one thing and very, very undesirable - losing sales.

The solution continues to evolve towards higher capacity, stability and reliability, where AUTOCONT contributes its expertise in the IT field and of course also expands with new technological elements, such as RF customer localization for order delivery by the operator and others, where AUTOCONT, on the other hand, plays the role of an exclusive service partner and is fully covered in terms of know-how by McDonald's and the manufacturers of the corresponding technologies.