Google is connecting cloud technology and applying generative AI across McDonald’s fast-food outlets worldwide.

McDonald’s and Google have formed a multi-year, partnership to connect Google Cloud technology across thousands of outlets worldwide. This partnership sees McDonald’s advancing its technology to become more sophisticated and productive.

The hamburger maker plans to leverage a wide range of Google Cloud’s hardware, data and AI technologies to implement innovation faster and create better experiences for its customers and employees.

“We see tremendous opportunity for growth in our digital business and our partnership with Google Cloud allows us to capitalise on this by leveraging our size and scale to build capabilities and implement solutions at unmatched speeds,” said Brian Rice, McDonald’s executive vice president. “Connecting our restaurants worldwide to millions of datapoints across our digital ecosystem means tools get sharper, models get smarter, restaurants become easier to operate and, most importantly, the overall experience for our customers and crew gets even better.” 

As part of this partnership, McDonald’s will roll out advancements to its outlets and customer platforms from its mobile app, which serves as the gateway for its 150 million member loyalty programme, to its thousands of self-service kiosks in outlets worldwide.

McDonald’s will use edge computing from Google Cloud to power these platforms, bringing information storage and high-powered computing into individual fast-food outlets.

Google Distributed Cloud, a combined hardware and software offering, is planned to be deployed to thousands of McDonald’s outlets so they can leverage both cloud-based software applications and their own software and AI locally on-site, as needed. With Google Cloud edge computing capabilities, McDonald’s will be able to draw insights into how equipment is performing, enact methods that reduce business disruptions, and diminish complexity for crew so teams can focus on serving food.

McDonald’s will be the largest global food-service retailer to use Google Distributed Cloud’s latest capabilities, with plans for thousands of outlets to begin receiving their hardware and software upgrades next year.

Through this partnership, a dedicated Google Cloud team in Chicago will work closely with McDonald’s global innovation centre, known as Speedee Labs. Together, they’ll focus on applying generative AI across a number of key business priorities to power new experiences for staff and customers.

“Through this wide-ranging partnership, Google Cloud will help McDonald’s seize on new opportunities to transform its business and customer experiences, empowering restaurants worldwide with the latest technologies for near-term impact,” said Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud CEO. “Pairing the iconic brand, size and scale of McDonald’s with Google Cloud’s deep history in AI and technology innovation will redefine how this industry works and what people expect when they dine out.”

Users in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud (cloud.google.com) to enable growth and solve critical business problems. 

McDonald’s (www.mcdonalds.com) is a global fast-food retailer with more than 40,000 outlets in over 100 countries.