McDonald’s system outages reported in Japan, UK and Australia

LONDON (AP) — System outages at McDonald’s have been reported worldwide Friday, shuttering some restaurants and leading to social media complaints, while other locations were back up and running after the failures.

McDonald’s in Japan posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “operations are temporarily out at many of our stores nationwide,” calling it “a system failure” and apologizing for the inconvenience.

The website Downdetector also reported a spike in problems with the McDonald’s app in the last couple of hours.

Some McDonald’s restaurants were working as normal again after facing problems, with people ordering and getting their food at locations in Bangkok, Milan and London.

“We are aware of a technology failure that has affected our restaurants. The issue has now been resolved and our restaurants are open,” Fannie Pramming, communications manager for McDonald’s Denmark, said in a statement to The Associated Press.

“The issue is not related to a cybersecurity incident,” Pramming said.

A worker at a Milan restaurant noted that the system was offline for a couple of hours and a technician walked them through getting it back up and running.

Media outlets reported that customers from Australia to the U.K. have complained of issues with ordering, including a customer in Australia who posted a photo to X saying a kiosk was unavailable.

”All McDonald’s restaurants are connected to a global network and that is what’s messed up,” Patrik Hjelte, owner of several McDonald’s restaurants in central Sweden, near the Norwegian border, told local newspaper Nya Wermlands Tidning. “Right now we are restarting all systems and we hope to be up and running again as usual soon.”