CHICAGO _ McDonald's is testing its mobile order and pay technology in some West Coast cities ahead of its nationwide launch later this year.
The burger giant is allowing customers at 29 restaurants across Monterey and Salinas, Calif., to test the service and will let visitors to 51 restaurants in Spokane, Wash., try it out and offer feedback starting Monday. McDonald's, headquartered in suburban Chicago, plans to roll out the technology to all 14,000 U.S. restaurants starting in the last three months of this year.
McDonald's is late to the mobile order and pay game, but CEO Steve Easterbrook said at a recent investor conference that the company wanted to avoid running into problems that plagued some other big chains, like Starbucks, which found the feature was more popular than expected, leading to long lines that turned some customers away and hurt sales.
McDonald's order and pay service, through its existing app, will use geofencing technology that will alert a restaurant when a customer has arrived. The customer then gets a pop-up on his or her phone to indicate whether the diner will pick up the food through the drive-thru or at curbside check-in spaces. This allows McDonald's to ensure the food is freshly prepared but also lets customers visit any McDonald's to pick up their order.
The world's largest burger chain already has unveiled mobile order and pay service in some other countries, like Japan, where the average check size when a customer uses the app is 35 percent higher. Customers that use technology to order food tend to spend more because they can save custom orders and they also tend to visit more often.
