How did McDonald’s change customer’s ordering mindset?
TL;DR: McDonald’s implementation of their self ordering flows is AWESOME!
While we were developing & deploying Frunk at restaurants & bars around Singapore, news arrived about how McDonald’s had begun the move towards self ordering flows.
Author’s note: McDonald’s change is the forefront of business evolution! We all have seats to view and analyse the progress of an experiment with huge impacts and great learning possibilities for both F&B restaurants and the larger business world. In my opinion, this is as radical a change as Adobe going all-in in their shift towards a subscription pricing model.
My first thoughts were: “Wow! They’re going down the same path as us!” If McDonald’s is implementing it, that’s great validation to the idea, right? Well, not really. But that story is for a future post.
Problem statement, in a nutshell
How does an organization, McDonald’s in this case, go about orchestrating a change to the inbuilt ordering flows that their customers have been trained to do since birth?
1) Let’s start with the Carrot
McDonald’s kicked off their campaign by the creation of a “brand new dining experience”, where customers are able to customize their own burgers, and get them delivered to their table. Being a long time lover of McDonald’s & a tinkerer at heart, I was amazed! What could be greater than getting to experiment with flavour profiles, figuring out what you love, and being able to re-create it in future.
Also, McDonald’s combined this with a restaurant service experience (let’s not expect too much here; after all, it’s only McDonald’s and not a full service restaurant) where the food gets delivered to you hot off the stove while you chat with your friends or play with your phone. Cool x2!
2) Time for the marketing spin
For all the awesomeness of building your own burger, McDonald’s knew (read: marketing spin) that this new dining experience will cause longer ordering times. The previous method of ordering won’t work anymore. And that’s why they require a new method of self ordering systems!
In order for McDonald’s to give customer the new dining experience at a speedy pace, customers needed to place their orders through a self ordering system.
3) And finally, the Stick
How many lines do you see above?
And, how many ordering lines do you see now?
Brilliant, don’t you think? In order to encourage customers to utilize the self ordering system, McDonald’s REDUCED the number of service counters available. Customers using the counter ordering flow now experience longer lines and waiting times.
And, that’s how you change customer’s mindsets successfully.
Innovating at the restaurant concept stage
Whenever interested parties question me about Frunk’s failure, I’ve consistently maintained that changes to the ordering flows have to be implemented at the core level of the restaurant concept. Implementing it at the operational level is insufficiently deep, and will likely cause more problems than it solves.
Author’s note: Another start up has raised funds to solve the exact same problem! I truly wish them all the best. Perhaps they’ll read my posts and learn from the missteps, mistakes and successfully create a revolutionary Singaporean startup. We definitely need more success stories in Singapore.
