Now Serving: Your Favorite Food & Drink, On Demand

We are entering a world where you can expect to have any item, from any place brought directly to you on demand — and track where it is in real time. And today, we’re taking a small step in the United States to make McDonald’s part of this on-demand service economy.

Starting this week, McDonald’s will be offering on-demand delivery at 88 restaurants in New York City through a pilot partnership with Postmates. Select customers in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn can now have their favorite McDonald’s food brought directly to them by using the Postmates app.

Food delivery is being redefined by the wholesale shift of the experience around the needs of customers. I’ve been referring to this as the Uber-ification of the restaurant and food business, since it’s fueled by the transparency and control that mobile provides.

We’re excited by this step and also keenly focused on many factors we need to address in order to make this a really great option for more of our customers. In various parts of the globe, McDonald’s already has a large delivery business (in countries including Singapore and China) so we’re familiar with what it takes to make it an appealing option for customers at-scale. Ultimately, customers want reduced wait times, economical pricing and high quality food to arrive at their doorsteps.

On-demand food is still in its early days and we’ll be using our unique scale to help our partners ensure the experience is both convenient and a good value. Remember, it was not cheap to get your package shipped from Amazon ten years ago, but now most people don’t blink an eye about online shipping. That marketplace has evolved in favor of consumers, and so will delivery as companies like McDonald’s work with innovative companies in the on-demand space to make the end-to-end customer experience better.

Exactly what will the new marketplace look like for the everyday food business in the next few years? You can trust that McDonald’s is working creatively to help shape it, and to make it work with the highest level of convenience that digital allows.

-Atif Rafiq || McDonald’s Global Chief Digital Officer|| @atifatif