Enhancing McDonald’s China digital ordering system to efficiently manage both regular peak times and promotional surges
HONG KONG, Feb. 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of global technology company Tencent, has been a trusted partner of McDonald’s China since 2017 – a partnership that has helped McDonald’s China bolster its operational efficiency and be at the leading edge of digital innovation in food service. Leveraging its expertise in digitalization and cloud computing, Tencent Cloud supports the seamless operation of McDonald’s digital and store expansion initiatives. Moreover, it enhances McDonald’s China digital ordering system to efficiently manage both regular peak times and promotional surges.
Over the past 70 years, McDonald’s has become a leading retail food service giant with over 40,000 locations worldwide. Shihong Chen, Chief Information and Experience Officer of McDonald’s China, stated, “McDonald’s China chose to create an in-house digital department instead of acquiring a digital system from external suppliers. At the same time, a highly skilled cloud computing partner is still essential to McDonald’s China, for the partnership on architecture and technology while fully understanding the company’s business requirements.”
In the food service industry, consumers expect quick ordering and food pickup. Today, more than 90% of transactions at McDonald’s China are from digital channels. Therefore, McDonald’s digital ordering system must be robust enough to handle both regular peak times and promotional surges to ensure a consistently positive customer experience. However, simply increasing server bandwidth to boost capacity would lead to escalating costs. David Su, Industry General Manager of Tencent Smart Retail, said, “By leveraging Tencent Cloud’s capabilities, the two companies collaborate on auto scaling to reduce costs during low-traffic periods while maintaining an optimal ordering experience during peak times. In complex and variable offline network environments, where network quality could be very low, ensuring that consumers can quickly access McDonald’s China’s online ordering APP and Mini Program presents a big challenge and is a key focus for Tencent Cloud. Additionally, during promotional periods, Tencent Cloud provides extensive technical support to safeguard applet data and protect consumers, while ensuring that product discounts reach genuine customers rather than being exploited by ‘coupon hunters.’ We work very closely with McDonald’s. Whenever new challenges arise, the Tencent Cloud team is there working together on finding the best solution from both a product and technical perspective.”
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