---
title: "McDonald’s Drive-Thru Goes Digital"
description: "Idling in line while waiting for a Big Mac is so retro."
date: "2016-11-05"
modified: "2016-11-05"
authors:
  - name: "Max Prince"
    link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/max-prince"
url: "https://www.thedrive.com/news/5883/mcdonalds-drive-thru-goes-digital"
categories:
  - "News"
tags:
  - "apps"
  - "Fast Food"
  - "Mcdonald's"
---

# McDonald’s Drive-Thru Goes Digital

![](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/archive-images/gettyimages-2696721.jpg>)
*\<em\>www.thedrive.com</em>*

McDonald’s has more than 36,000 locations worldwide. Its U.S. workforce alone is four times the size of Atlanta, Georgia. The company sells 75 hamburgers per second. But, still, [there are issues](<https://m.bakingbusiness.com/articles/news_home/Food-Service/2015/05/What_led_to_McDonalds_decline.aspx?ID=%7B0980ACCF-0AC7-476A-85B8-B0036028AB4B%7D&cck=1>). Profits have been on the slide, as higher-ups continue to fiddle with the menu and reconsider approach, struggling to keep pace with a middle-class increasingly weary of fast food. More and more, McDonald’s is looking like a towering (if slowly eroding) twentieth-century monolith.

In an effort to catch up with its more agile competition, the company will [soon bring mobile ordering into the fold](<https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-mobile-ordering-is-coming-2016-11>). McDonald’s plans to roll out the new smartphone pay-and-pickup technology next year, both in the U.S. market and other leading world economies, namely Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and France. Becca Hary, a spokesperson for McDonald's, [says](<https://time.com/money/4559181/mcdonalds-mobile-ordering-app/?xid=homepage>) that mobile ordering should be available in as many as 25,000 locations globally by 2018.

![gettyimages-482064441.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/gettyimages-482064441.jpg>)
**Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty**

McDonald's first launched its smartphone app last year with limited features, and [began ](<https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2016/03/30/now-testing-mobile-ordering-on-the-mcdonalds-app/#18a707342c17>)[trialling](<https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2016/03/30/now-testing-mobile-ordering-on-the-mcdonalds-app/#18a707342c17>)[ mobile pay](<https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2016/03/30/now-testing-mobile-ordering-on-the-mcdonalds-app/#18a707342c17>) this summer.

Others in the industry, like Starbucks and Domino's, have seen huge success in their programs—the former [says 1 in 4 customers](<https://time.com/money/4364179/starbucks-cards-money-banks/>) pay via app, the latter that [half of all sales](<https://www.thestreet.com/story/13472302/1/here-s-how-domino-s-pizza-is-clobbering-its-rivals.html>) are now mobile. That’s huge, and while McDonald’s is late to the party, the move could help alleviate one of the fast food titan's biggest pressure points: Bumper-to-bumper cars at the drive-thru, where 70 percent of McDonald’s customers go for their meal.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://twitter.com/themaxprince>)