Digital Menu Set to Create 15,000 Jobs at 7,000 McDonald’s in EU4 min read

Earlier this year, McDonald’s Europe announced that it would be introducing a kiosk-style digital menu display in its 7,000 fast-food restaurants throughout the EU. The news sparked rampant speculation which led to a widespread frenzy of rumors warning that thousands of servers and cashiers would soon be out of work.

But, Steve Easterbrook, President of McDonald’s Europe, told the Financial Times that, not only was McDonald’s not expecting to cut staff at all as a result of the digital menu launch, the company was “on track to create an additional 15,000 new jobs in Europe in 2011” – more than 2 jobs for each digital menu location. Moreover, the company anticipates further staff increases tied to its business growth in the region.

Louise Lucas of the Financial Times reported that the digital menu kiosk launch was part of McDonald’s strategy to reach cash-flow-constrained customers by making its European restaurants more efficient, convenient, and enjoyable. According to Lucas, “Mr. Easterbrook said that the changes would make life easier for consumers as well as improve efficiency,” saving several seconds per customer transaction for each of the 2 million customers McDonald’s Europe serves daily.

The digital menu technology will also enable McDonald’s to collect, track, and mine customer intelligence and leverage that information to create effective, custom-tailored, customer-specific marketing campaigns.

Contrary to rumor-mill speculation, the introduction of an iPad menu restaurant menu into an eating establishment does not forebode rampant reductions of restaurant staff. While it is true that FöD (Food on Demand) — Sodexo’s award-winning alternative dining concept for college campuses – is able to operate its digital menu restaurants with far less staff than a traditional university dining hall, like McDonald’s Europe, the vast majority of restaurants that have replaced their outdated printed menu with an iPad menu restaurant menu are not looking for a way to cut staff.

Moreover, QSRWeb.com says, deployment of the digital menu kiosks at McDonald’s restaurants in Europe “wasn’t about cutting costs…The point was to provide better customer service.”

While there is a long list of immensely important reasons why restaurants adopt a digital menu, the one over-arching theme shared by most adopters is, like McDonald’s Europe, to enhance customer service. Here are just a few examples from our blog and article archives:

• Rick Blatstein, CEO of award-winning airport restaurateur OTG Management, sees the iPad menu to be “a key member of their staff” and “a large part of [the company’s] customer service.” The digital menu is just what OTG’s customers at Delta airline terminals in New York City’s John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports wanted: “they can order their food or beverage directly on the iPad Handheld Menu and have a server deliver it right to their table – all without having to stand in line or leave the gate!”

• Ralph Porciani, Director of Operations at Turnberry Luxury Collection Resort, “sees the iPad menu as a means to enhance service, not replace staff functions” (see, “Paper wine list folds to iPad menu at Turnberry Resort, Scotland”).

• The iPad digital menu at the Modern Café in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, enables Scott Cooper to “enhance customer service, while making his servers’ jobs easier”; it not only saves time for both servers and guests alike, but provides servers with customer-specific information they “can use to further enhance the guest’s dining experience” (see, “Landmark Restaurant Reinvents Customer Engagement with iPad POS”).

• At Stacked: food well built, in Torrance, California, the iPad menu frees staff “to focus on customer service and hospitality” (see, “Award-Winning Professor Lauds iPad POS System at Stacked”).

• Likewise, by putting its wine list on an iPad menu, III Forks Jacksonville saved valuable server time, reduced waiting time for guests, and improved customer service (see, “To a Year of Wining, Dining, and iPad Digital Menus”).

Disclaimer: This is an independent report sourced from one or more news articles and or press releases; none of the company’s, entities or technologies digressed in this report are affiliated with or a client of Open.

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