Until it isn't, though. When the thing you are selling is essentially a commodity, when the business model only works because you are balancing some crazy thing margins that rely on all the other gizmos to make work, when the tech supplants the most minimal staff (which is largely seasonal, unskilled, and poorly paid) possible to even keep the lights out, suddenly the fact that this went a bit sideways becomes a big, big problem. It's not like a mom and pop diner who all of a suddenly can't use the handheld CC system.
unless you realize how much logistics happens to keep ingredients arriving on an Just in time basis and keep track of every little QA data-points so crucial to the fast food chain employee experience.
Cutting that $1,- off the average meal bill that allows McDonald's to sell their francises deals as more profitable then being independent depends on both the reality and perception of it being an integrated system, so there is every incentive to make the IT system as global and pervasive as possible.
Where I live we still have restaurants that only take cash. There are even two places nearby where you can walk in 24/7, grab what you want out of their fridge, and put your cash in a box on the way out. Cash only can still work.
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Burgers.. They are not transported via HTTP (yet), and still, we can't buy them due to IT trouble?
Seems easy enough.. You tell what you want, they make it, you hand over your cash money and they hand over the burger.
Until it isn't, though. When the thing you are selling is essentially a commodity, when the business model only works because you are balancing some crazy thing margins that rely on all the other gizmos to make work, when the tech supplants the most minimal staff (which is largely seasonal, unskilled, and poorly paid) possible to even keep the lights out, suddenly the fact that this went a bit sideways becomes a big, big problem. It's not like a mom and pop diner who all of a suddenly can't use the handheld CC system.
unless you realize how much logistics happens to keep ingredients arriving on an Just in time basis and keep track of every little QA data-points so crucial to the fast food chain employee experience.
Cutting that $1,- off the average meal bill that allows McDonald's to sell their francises deals as more profitable then being independent depends on both the reality and perception of it being an integrated system, so there is every incentive to make the IT system as global and pervasive as possible.
There's probably not a single person in that restaurant with an authority to make a decision like that.
In 2024, if you can only take cash, you might as well close down until you sort out CC processing.
Where I live we still have restaurants that only take cash. There are even two places nearby where you can walk in 24/7, grab what you want out of their fridge, and put your cash in a box on the way out. Cash only can still work.
Where I live those fridges and the cash box would both be empty in a matter of hours.
Now imagine that instead of a local restaurant, it was a global conglomerate with restaurants in nearly every country
Look at the date on the article below. McDonald's grew into a global conglomerate well before they started accepting cards.
https://money.cnn.com/2002/11/26/news/companies/mcdonalds/
Seems like custom printed burgers would be a cool gimmick if they can get the render time down.