McDonald’s has said it expects to launch a smartphone app this summer as part of an effort to catch up with competitors on the digital front.
Speaking at the UBS Global Consumer Conference, newly anointed chief administrative officer Pete Bensen admitted that the company had been “late to the game” on this but that it was dedicating “significant resources to catch up and to get ahead of the pack”.
He said: “By the mid-year we will have the first global app that is released in the McDonald’s system, different countries are going to pick that up at different paces.
“We think about the digital app as kind of on two tracks, an experience piece and an engagement piece. We think about then experience piece as the restaurant locator, the order and pay kind of functional aspects.
“The engagement piece is kind of the fun element of McDonald’s so are there things we can do around music, things around some of our global sponsorships that we have, like FIFA or Olympics. Obviously with 70 million customers a day in our restaurants around the world you can imagine that attracts a lot of partners and people that would be interested in working with us in that regard.”
The US will see the launch of the global app this summer.
Bensen said: “Initially we’ll focus more on some of the promotional aspects of the app and again depending on a country’s priorities that will determine which pieces of the app they turn on.”
