McDonald's Technology Trials

from the keep-on-trialing dept

McDonald's has been building a reputation for testing out new technologies in their various restaurant locations, though, it's questionable how successful most of these trials are. In the past, we've covered stories about McDonald's plans to offer wireless "speedpass" purchasing of food, DVD rental kiosks, internet access kiosks, and (of course) WiFi access with the purchase of a Happy Meal. Baseline takes an interesting look at a the overall efforts of McDonald's to remain on technology's cutting edge. It sounds like they've had very mixed results. Specifically, the reporter points out that an attempt to trial the WiFi access in Manhattan was a dismal failure. No one else appeared to even be trying the service, but when they set up their laptop, the access point was nowhere to be found. A quick phone call to Cometa (who provides the service) confirmed that it wasn't working, but no explanation was given. Not exactly building confidence in the offering. Other McDonald's efforts seem to have been focused on trying to be a venture capitalist/incubator to seed new technology companies. However, it sounds like they're realizing this is a bit outside of their own core competence, and have decided they might be better off focusing on convincing customers to buy more Big Macs than build new companies.