Behind the scenes: Bringing technical innovation to life at McDonald’s

The idea behind McDonald’s OAL test concept is simple — but like many innovations, going from a concept to production required cross-functional collaboration.

by Jay Stark, Director, Project Management Office — Global Technology

In my time at McDonald’s, I’ve had the great pleasure of working on several significant initiatives that have been delivered at a global scale, driven guest counts, and elevated the McDonald’s brand from a technology perspective. Technology is at the heart of every customer and crew experience in our restaurants, and it’s great to be part of such an amazing business-critical organization.

Occasionally, I get to work on something that’s just really cool. In this case, it’s the Order Ahead Lane (OAL) — a dedicated Drive Thru lane for Mobile Ordering that recently went live in the U.S. and will help inform our future restaurant portfolio strategy.

The OAL takes advantage of app updates that are improving the Mobile Order & Pay experience in the U.S. These updates allow us to begin preparing a customer’s order while they travel to the restaurant, creating a faster and more seamless experience when they arrive. OAL takes these updates to the next level by providing customers with a dedicated Drive Thru lane — the OAL. OAL allows customers who order ahead on the McDonald’s app to skip the standard Drive Thru lane — shortening wait times for everybody — and receive their orders upon arrival via a food and beverage conveyor.

From concept to production
The concept for OAL is simple — the execution is complex and nuanced.

This is a project that took a digital idea and required us to work through all the operational considerations to deliver on the promised experience:

• How do we ensure a heightened and preferred customer experience?
• How do we ensure that the mechanical aspects of the “conveyor” don’t diminish a personalized experience?
• How do we ensure that drinks don’t spill as the order “rides the rails” of the new food and beverage conveyer?
• How do we ensure the crew has the right information and tools to deliver the best customer experience?

With these questions — and many stakeholders — it was important that bringing the OAL to life was a cross-collaborative effort, especially among Global Technology, McDonald’s Operations and Customer Experience teams.

The result — the OAL is an incredible mix of the things McDonald’s does best: technology execution, operational excellence, and a convenient customer experience.

Once we addressed the questions, the team got to work to physically test the concept with a buildout consisting of a conveyor pieced together with plywood and even a car door to simulate vehicle height and customer reach as part of the very early concept.

Many people don’t realize what it takes and the nuance it takes to put something like OAL into place.

Of course, the Global Technology team ensured that the tech worked and that the experience in the Mobile App blended well with the physical customer experience at the dedicated Drive Thru lane. On the physical side, everything from the design of the conveyor belt to food travel time to basket placement was considered.

When one of the elements was physically tweaked, we had to determine what, if any, impact there would be to the tech side. We had to focus on how to bring this technology to life through kitchen operations.

Getting better everyday
As you might guess, there can be a gap between a good experience in a lab and one that’s ready for prime time, with real Crew and Customers. Once the team had proven the concept, they moved to making it real in a test restaurant!

The Customer Experience team provided guidance on the overall experience, the Restaurant Development team updated the restaurant floorplan and added the OAL, and our Tech team made software and configuration changes to enable the experience and then conducted tests to validate things “in the wild” and gathered feedback from Crew.

The cross-functional collaboration and learning was critical to keeping the right mindset as we looked at how to optimize the concept.

This attention to detail, comprehensive view of the Crew and Customer experience, and System-wide partnership is why innovation at McDonald’s is so important and so rewarding.