McDonald's plans to add touch-screen ordering kiosks to thousands of stores nationwide to supplement in-store employees, transforming America's largest fast-food chain.
Customers often buy more when ordering on a screen than when standing in front a worker at the counter because they tend to linger longer, the company found.“
What we are finding is when people dwell more, they tend to select more," McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook
told CNBC Monday. "So there is a little bit of an average check boost that comes with it.”
McDonald's will add kiosks to 1,000 stores every quarter — roughly 10 stores per day — over the next two years, Easterbrook told the network. And the U.S. is late to the game: Kiosks are already fully installed at stores in English-speaking markets such as the United Kingdom and Canada. France was the first country to introduce the self-serve machines.
But it's possible McDonald's will run into consumer resistance. A
poll conducted by MSN found that 78% of customers are less likely to go into a restaurant that has a self-service kiosk. Even if it has the kiosks, most McDonald's restaurants still lets customers order at the counter.
Easterbrook hopes to have self-serve kiosks in all U.S. locations by 2020.
