McDonald's hit by outages at stores worldwide

McDonald's said on Friday it had halted operations at many of its stores in Japan due to a system disruption and was facing technical outages at some other outlets worldwide, including Australia.

Many McDonald's stores in Japan stopped taking in-person and mobile customer orders because of the system disruption, a spokesperson at McDonald's Holdings Company Japan said, adding that the company was working to restore operations soon.

A McDonald's Australia spokesperson said they were also aware of a technology outage impacting its restaurants nationwide and were working to resolve this issue.

The company operates nearly 3,000 stores across Japan and roughly 1,000 in Australia, its websites for the regions show.

The New York Times said McDonald's Hong Kong was also experiencing a "computer system failure," stating that the mobile ordering and self-ordering kiosks were not functioning.

The fast food chain has about 245 outlets in Hong Kong, according to its website.

IT issue

Some of the more than 160 stores in New Zealand also reported outages. A company spokesperson told the New Zealand Herald newspaper: "Restaurants are experiencing an IT issue that's impacting their ability to process orders."

McDonald's Hong Kong and New Zealand did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on the outages. McDonald's Corp also did not immediately respond to a request for a comment about the cause of the outages suffered worldwide.

The website Downdetector said user reports didn't indicate a current problem with the McDonald's app in Canada, although there was a small increase in reported problems since 2:45 a.m. ET.

"All McDonald's restaurants are connected to a global network and that is what's messed up," Patrik Hjelte, owner of several McDonald's restaurants in central Sweden, near the Norwegian border, told local newspaper Nya Wermlands Tidning. "Right now we are restarting all systems and we hope to be up and running again as usual soon."