A temporary closure notice is pictured from a McDonalds in Shimbashi district of Tokyo on March 15, 2024. (Photo by PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images)
McDonald's locations around the world were hit with system outages Friday morning, leaving some locations closed while others were back up and running after the failures.
Earlier, McDonald's in Japan posted on X, formerly Twitter, that "operations are temporarily out at many of our stores nationwide," calling it "a system failure." In Hong Kong, the chain said on Facebook that a "computer system failure" knocked out orders online and through self-serve kiosks.
There was also a spike in reported problems with the McDonald's app, according to DownDetector.
The Chicago-based company later said the outage was caused by a third-party technology provider and was not a cybersecurity issue. It started around 12 a.m. CDT during a configuration change and was close to being resolved about 12 hours later.
"Reliability and stability of our technology are a priority, and I know how frustrating it can be when there are outages. I understand that this impacts you, your restaurant teams and our customers," Brian Rice, the company's global chief information officer, said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press.
"What happened today has been an exception to the norm, and we are working with absolute urgency to resolve it. Thank you for your patience, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused," the statement added.
Here’s what to know:
McDonald's outage
People stand in front of a temporary closed McDonalds in Shimbashi district of Tokyo on March 15, 2024. (Photo by PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images)
Media outlets reported that customers from Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and the U.K. have complained of issues with ordering, including a customer in Australia who posted a photo to X saying a kiosk was unavailable.
"All McDonald’s restaurants are connected to a global network and that is what’s messed up," Patrik Hjelte, owner of several McDonald’s restaurants in central Sweden, near the Norwegian border, told local newspaper Nya Wermlands Tidning. "Right now we are restarting all systems and we hope to be up and running again as usual soon."
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A worker at a restaurant in Bangkok said the system was down for about an hour, making it impossible to take online or credit card payments but allowing it to still accept cash for orders.
At another location in Thailand’s capital, there was plywood over a door with a sign saying, "Technicians are updating the system," even as customers were ordering again and paying digitally.
A worker at a Milan restaurant noted that the system was offline for a couple of hours and a technician walked them through getting it back up and running.
A spokesperson for McDonald’s in Denmark said the "technology failure" was resolved there and its restaurants were open.
There are more than 36,000 McDonald’s restaurants in more than 100 countries.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. It was reported from Cincinnati.