McDonald’s Newest Offering is a Mobile Ordering App

Taking a cue from other fast food chains like Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, Domino’s, and Taco Bell, McDonald’s is going mobile. This means you’ll soon be able to order a Big Mac and fries with a just few swipes and taps on your smartphone.

McDonald’s is getting ready to launch a pilot program for a new mobile ordering system that will get diners their Golden Arches fix with an app that allows them to sort through location- and restaurant-specific menus, save their favorite items, pay for their meals, and pick up their orders in stores or via drive-thru windows.

“It starts with providing the right menu options and pricing information to customers,” McDonald’s chief digital officer, Atif Rafiq, told The Street. “We are going to give customers a lot of control, and we need to make our operations work in this type of world.”

Currently, McDonald’s has a smartphone app that provides nutritional information, serves as a store locator, and maintains loyalty and rewards program information that gifts frequent customers with free beverages and other goodies through special mobile offers. The chain’s mobile ordering system will be made available in select cities sometime this year, with plans to roll out the system globally as quickly as possible. “It's important for us to work out the kinks so we can scale it up as soon as possible,” Rafiq said.