Now if only every other website on the internet would learn that latency matters...
Because it's really bad. And it's been bad for a really long time.
When all I want is to order a cheap cup of coffee, I get to stare at a throbbing box of fries while it tries to figure that out.
Get to the restaurant and signal my arrival? More throbbing fries.
Sometimes the fries never stop throbbing and the only way to get away from them and onto the next step is to force-close the app and start it again.
When I manage to accumulate enough points to order a free sandwich? "Sorry, something went wrong!" This leaves me with no sandwich, and no points. (I guess I was going to be disappointed no matter what -- maybe they're doing me a favor by fucking it up so bad that getting the food is impossible, since reaching the melancholy destination takes fewer steps this way.)
Over the years I've used multiple phones, from multiple manufacturers, with multiple carriers. It's not me; the app is consistently bad.
Oh. And speaking of carriers: Back when I had metered service, I used wifi where I could. The McDonald's near where I lived had free wifi, but their network had this app firewalled. It'd work anywhere but inside of the building where it was most useful.
But, yeah: The touchscreen kiosks are a bit more responsive than they initially were. It's too bad that they're gored up with finger grease and other bodily effluences, though, because they barely work with the layer of filth that covers them.
I do not go often, but if I do I prefer to sit, order in the page and they bring it to your seat. I dont like the Kiosk.
That sounds, to me, less like something discriminatory and more like something that is simply sadistic.
And it makes perfect sense in this context - if you make $200k salary you probably don’t care enough about a $0.30 discount to fiddle with an app for 5 minutes. But if you’re living on a few dollars of food budget, you probably care a lot about that 30 cents and would fight for it. So making the app bad allows them to segment the market to get an extra 30 cents out of the person who can afford it without excluding the low-budget person.
But even if he weren't that way, making the app deliberately bad to eek a few more clams out of a subset of people is perverse. Deliberately erecting barriers between the products and those who want to buy them is not how business is successfully done at this level. They aren't selling Ferraris here.
"I want to stick it to these rich guys, so I'll make the app terrible!" doesn't make sense. They're neither smart enough to do that, nor dumb enough.
The simplest explanation is that in a world of shitty software, this software is also just shit. :)
It’s not about sticking it to the rich guys, it’s about charging them an extra 30 cents.
For McDonalds, that 30 cents might be tripling the margin on that item.
Your point is entirely about sticking it to the rich guys -- for an entire 30 cents. It is based on the presumption that these can't be stuffed to spend time on an app, and you think that this means that the app is deliberately terrible in order to better-succeed at getting those extra 30 cents.
And I understand that 30 cents represents a lot of money in terms of margins.
But I simply reject that line of thinking. It's simply too conspiratorial to be believable, to me.
This is a company that is so incompetent at this point that when they publish video of their CEO eating a new sandwich (sorry, "product"), they can't even get him to act like he's enjoying any part of that.
But it's not about the CEO. For all I know he's an excellent business guy who is working at the top of a company that is dysfunctional in ways that he can't fix (perhaps nobody can fix it), and he just isn't fond of food at all and was more a bigger fan of math classes in school than the arts.
This company can't get the feels of feels-oriented marketing to hit even close to the mark, but they're masters of making an app deliberately terrible to empower subtle, hidden price discrimination to eek a few more pennies out of people?
And that's a good idea -- somehow -- even though it costs them money (someone has to get paid to stand there and take their order) when people don't use the app? Even though when the app is terrible, it costs them money when people do use it because it's just terrible and affects all customers' overall perception? Am I to believe that people of all income levels aren't driven away when an app is awful?
It's not like McDonald's has a monopoly on fast food. It's a competitive market. People have other options.
My buy-in on the idea of price-discrimination-via-terrible-app [because that's a profit center, somehow] is very close to zero.
even selecting my restaurant is a constant battle. the closest restaurant to my house as the bird flies is not the closest restaurant. even the closest by miles driven involves much more complication than the one i always want to pick. it constantly battles me that i have selected a suboptimal choice. maybe learn that when i am at home, i want to default to my preferred choice, every time, unless i say otherwise.
Can you imagine how complex that must be vs just making like 100 different apps in each country.
But eCoNoMiEs oF sCaLe
If you're balking at makin 100 different apps, then for reference, I am pretty sure my local mcdonalds - just the one restaurant turns over >10 mill a year, so you get a sense of how much they'd want to invest in, idk, the ordering front-end of every maccas in Australia
You can find a seat first, then order directly from your seat, for delivery to your seat (helpful since some McDonald’s in Japan are really busy, and are very vertical, so you might need to climb up some two/three floors to find a seat!).
You can even order McDelivery and they’ll deliver McDonald’s to your house on McDonald’s branded mopeds.
It’s also been pretty fast, even on a slow internet connection.
The only two problems I’ve had with it are:
- Although the menu and the rest of the app is translated to English, sometimes coupons are only in Japanese, and not translated to English (I’m guessing these might be store-specific) (although it’s easy enough to translate that using your phone’s translator) - I’ve had Apple Pay occasionally be down and fail to work, which forced me to redo my whole order, then realize that Apple Pay is still down, then do my entire order again with a different payment method. Although it’s only happened twice a few months ago, so it could be something that they’ve already fixed (or I’m quite unlucky).
Edit: Forgot to add, but no issues like what basch seems to experience with their country’s McDonald’s app. The Japanese one always gives me a sorted list/map view of my closest McDonald’s to pick from, with any favourites marked at the too.
The consistency all changed with the covid shuffle.
Now, it depends on the location and their mood at the time. Sometimes, they bring the food out on a tray. Sometimes, they just dismissively put it on the counter at the front in a paper bag and walk away from it without a word. Sometimes they fill the drink for you; sometimes there's a rack of cups and an implied expectation that you just figure it out yourself; sometimes they bring over an empty cup; sometimes you have to beg them for that empty cup. It sucks.
Same with the kiosk. They have these neat table tents with numbers; they're actually BLE beacons that work with tracking hardware inside the ceiling. They help the employees to get a good idea of where you're sitting before they even leave the kitchen. But sometimes there are no table tents to be had (even in an empty restaurant), and sometimes when they do exist nobody gives a damn about them.
As systems, these things work fine. I've seen them work. But I've observed the implementation of them in recent years to have been an unmitigated mess, and this mess is clearly the result of a geographically-diverse problem with bad local-level management.
Buying a cheeseburger and a Coke at McDonald's -- which built an empire around simplicity and efficiency -- should never be an adventure or a guessing game. It should be the most straight-forward process on Earth and completely devoid of surprises.
But it isn't.
[1]: Well, within the app's limitations. I did rant about that in another comment, above.
But when I touched the icon to open the app, a big M appeared on a bright red screen and then it died and returned to the home screen less than half a second later.
(Good work, fellahs! Good work!)
And that sounds easy, except it wasn't:
1. The Play Store should do better at keeping things actually-updated. There was a time when it would check for updates All The Time. Seriously, that thing subscribed to so many broadcsats that it would trigger updates if you breathed on it in the wrong direction. Leave the house and get in the car and thus switch from wifi to cellular? Plug in or unplug it from the charger? Log into it? Time to download and install all updates in parallel! Your phone will get hot, you'll probably be able to watch the battery indicator decrease at a rapid pace, it will turn mostly-unresponsive to the app you actually want to use, and there's a good chance that it will undeniably use metered cellular data for this.
Which, you know: That was ugly way to do things, but at least apps were kept fresh.
But the current Play Store status of "Lol, wut? You want automatic updates? Yeah, naw dawg. Imma just quietly never do that. Yeah I know you turned them on. Nope, I'm not even gonna give you a shortcut to do that with. You can do the updates one at a time, or you can dig into the buried menu for the button to manually update them all right now. Which I could do for you, but get bent buddy," is also ugly.
(In Google's defense, I do only have something like 20GB of free internal storage space. Except: I also have a couple of hundred GB free on the SD card. Also: This 20GB of internal is more than the total [sd+internal] storage space I had on those phones in the irrevocably-parallel-update days.)
So this first one: We'll classify that as a system problem.
And system problems are not McDonald's fault. Except...
2. After I first ran the McDonald's app and it died in a flash, I did try to run it again shortly thereafter. It wouldn't launch again (tapping the icon resulted in nothing happening at all) until I hunted down its ghost and killed that too. Then it ran. And then it rather quickly prompted for an update, which I applied. That was >3 cumulative attempts to get somewhere with it, with all but one of those attempts being things a dumb user who just wants some fast food should never have to do.
So this version of the McDonald's app that had been capable of begrudgingly actually ordering some coffee when I'd last actually used it. But later, this same version had somehow become incapable of even prompting for an update. This lead me to a choice: I could choose to either give up, or choose to dance around with it and make it work. That's bad.
And since the McDonald's app lives within a system that doesn't reliably deliver automatic updates, and it demonstrably fails to thrive in this condition, then that leads me to conclude the following:
Both things are McDonald's fault. None of these conditions were handled with grace.
Unless the goal actually is sadistic (wherein the suffering is the whole point), then all of this business could have been handled smoothly from within the McDonald's app as a continuous and informative flow from the first launch.
Other apps manage to do this. This one does not.
Score: 0.
I eventually got a refund after digging throw their web site for an email address, and emailed them the statement showing where it has been paid. With the back and forward while they asked for evidence, it took over an hour of my time in the end to get the refund. It wasn't the money. It was the principle.
The app is by far the slowest, most unreliable way to place an order with them. Period. The next slowest (although far better) is the kiosks. They also unreliable when the printer doesn't work (which is most of the time), and you make the mistake of forgetting the receipt number. Other fast food outlets have solved this problem by getting you to enter your name. That's beyond McDonalds apparently. The fastest, and most reliable way by far is to talk to a human.
The order should be the reverse. It is beyond me how they get it so badly wrong. Maybe price discrimination is the reason. Nothing else makes much sense for an organisation of the size and resources of McDonalds.
When they first came out, everything was snappy because it wasn't loading recommendations or additional tracking. There were a lot fewer customization options.
Now, you click on something, and you wait a while, and then it asks you what you want to change and if you want to add these other suggested items. When you want to check out, it lags and then pops up another dialog asking if you want to add more items to your order.
I was always proud of the American stores having lots of nice napkins, sauces, etc for self-service but we lost that years ago.
I’m not against talking to people for transactions. I’m against being forced to use inefficient machines.
But yes, the cash register should be able to support the data entry skills of teenagers growing up with TikTok.
A dumb easy solution is to just create a call center of sorts and allow the same voice interaction human-to-human while the other person enters in your commands quickly and you just pay the kiosk at the end. They could have done this with very little investment in technology. Could improve the drive-thru experience too (my experience is they can't hear anything you say, I'll have to repeat myself 3x minimum, and chances are I won't be able to understand them if they ask me anything either).
When I visit Shake Shack, it's the one place I see that the kiosk is mandatory. But, at least they are iPads and decently designed. It's still very tap heavy and slow to enter simple customizations. The main thing they did right was put 6 of them out, so it's rare you have to wait for one because if you do have to, it's probably a long wait. It's also when one of them will step up to the register and start to help alleviate the line. The worst thing they did, was prompt for a tip at the self-service kiosk before you've seen your food or even found out if anyone is actually working back in the kitchen.
2022's conveyer belt, hadn't seen: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mcdonalds-automated-restaurant-...
No sooner did I hit post than I had to run. But on my way, I thought with what I wanted to edit my post, which was to clarify the current testing Taco Bell is doing in the drive through. But I assume wherever you do it, once it gets good enough, maybe you can move it into the restaurant. Like you say, labor savings, so they'd have to move it into the restaurant the moment they could get away with it.
Also, when the app or kiosk bugs out and fails to correctly process an offer, or lose an order, McDonald's cashiers and managers are in my experience typically trained to set things right. Not only will cashiers honor "app only" deals at the register when something goes wrong, managers will occasionally comp the entire order.
Germany btw
Do you want to add one of [x]?... No. How about now, add one of [x]?... No. Do you want to round up your total to [n]?... No. Do you want to eat in, even though we'll still put it in a takeaway bag so this option is really just the equivalent of a close door button on an elevator in that it does nothing except placate you?... Yes.
If you've ever watched TV with someone who gets distracted and sets down the remote after each button press while Netflix's UI slowly loads, you know that three or four UI interactions can turn into a several-minute ordeal.
I can enter an elevator is under a second and push the button. This is doubly faster when not waiting for the doors to open fully, effectively making my button push at 0 seconds from door full open.
If you're saying "3 seconds is not long to wait, so it's the same as the button doing nothing", this is false, untrue, and I often use it.
Alternatively, requiring elevator door to wait 3 seconds as a default does not negate someone overriding that.
I've manipulated the button and seen timing differences. It does work. It does make a difference.
Did you mean something else?
Let me expound a bit —
The close-door button cannot override the ADA minimum 3-second open time… the door must remain open for at least 3 seconds no matter what you press. But, most are configured to automatically close at 3 seconds. So as soon as the door-close function is no longer overridden, the door starts closing anyway, so pressing the button has no effect. With the door-open button and door sensor, they generally start closing immediately when they’re not active, so since the doors are already closing, the door-close button has no effect. If the door-open button is configured to open the door more than momentarily, the door close button should function.
If the elevator is designed to stay open longer than the 3-second period during which the door-close button is overridden, it will be available after the first 3 seconds. So if it’s configured to stay open for 10 seconds, the door-close button will be inactive for 3 seconds, but will start a door close, when pressed, from the 4th through the 10th second. At 10 seconds, the door will be closing anyway.
If a regular people-moving elevator is configured to be capable of closing the door in less than 3 seconds, it’s out-of-code. Since professional elevator companies maintain and configure most (all?) up-to-code elevators, and they’re probably liable for them to some extent, I doubt that’s common. It’s not like I’ve studied it or anything though.
I’m pretty sure that timing it out with a stopwatch would reveal that no matter what is happening, the door stays open for a minimum of 3 seconds. Anything beyond 3 seconds depends on how it’s configured, but most are configured to close as soon as they legally can.
The 1991 requirements don't seem to mention this, and it wasn't until 2012? that the new rules came into effect it seems. And that's only for new construction or alterations. How many elevators are legacy? And it's not like I use elevators daily, I think the last time I used one was 2 years ago.
But an interesting dive into it. Thanks for responding cogently.
I ordered from the wrong location once, and it's fine, they don't work the order until you arrive, and they refund it at the end of the day, but they lost a sale because I was so frustrated that I just drove home without picking up food like I was expecting to.
And the way prices are now, you need to order in the app if you want a chance at value, so if I don't have time to poke at the app, I won't go.
As far as I can tell, they're at least supposed to use location services to start the order when you're nearby. When the store isn't super busy my order is typically ready when I arrive, and I've ordered 10-15 minutes before arrival a few times and my orders weren't cold.
Maybe this is what they're supposed to do, but the system and/or employees don't do it reliably.
Or perhaps it's because I typically do counter pick-up, and almost always have a small (1-3 item) order.
It makes sense that they wouldn't prep your order if you're just going to be waiting in a long drive thru line anyway, though this could obviously lead to further delays because they don't reliably have larger orders finished in the time it takes to get from the speaker to the pick up window.
I've only used the app a couple times so I only knew the first half of that.
Not being able to start a new order is also great when you had a successful order that the app didn't notice and then you have to clear app data days later when you want to order again... but I think McDonalds may have added a button to just order anyway in the past not too long.
Just low end uncustomised NUCs overheating behind the screen
No idea if that’s still the case
And the app continues to get worse each update. The checkout process used to be quick and responsive. They've since made it require additional clicks and take much longer.
Causing delays for unprofitable customers. Any business is going to do it if they can. /tinfoil
(Their margins shouldn't be this bad.)
I wonder how slow you can make an app before a significant number of people will just order elsewhere? Give it a few more years of downgrades to the app, and I'll have reached it.
That's funny about it being bad enough, it just makes you want to leave.
And to anyone reading- be careful with the McDonald's spyware, by the way. You might have it for lunch. Then by dinner time, see a little icon on your phone and realize they've been tracking your precise location all day.
But an important part that I wish I *bolded* at this point, is *for a company its size*.
Support told me that I was better off abandoning the account and creating a new one.
While I did recover my phone, I decided that it was best to simply stop doing business with Walmart, and I haven’t missed them one bit!