McDonald’s Wants to Make Fast Food Even Faster

The world’s most well-known fast food restaurant is attempting to make its fast food even faster. As reported by i News, McDonald’s will introduce a new take-away only brand — “to go” — on Fleet Street in the City of London. It is the first time the 63-year-old international burger giant has launched a new format since it introduced drive thru restaurants in the 1980s.

The company will fit McDonald’s to go restaurants with smaller versions of the touch-screen ordering units it has gradually introduced across the vast majority of its sites in the U.K., an innovation which might have led to less queuing, but has also resulted in a reduction in staff, and technical concerns relating to some of its hot items: The cheeseburger’s a la minute preparation, which prevents the fusing of the cheese slice to the burger patty, is a very real concern for some.

The to Go restaurants will also offer a reduced menu of the McDonald’s classics — Big Macs, chicken nuggets, and the “saver menu” of cheeseburgers, filet o fish, and hamburgers — and debut a new, minimalist, concrete-and-Helvetica aesthetic. New uniforms — surely not? — will get a run out, too.

McDonald’s [Official Photo]

McDonald’s [Official Photo]

It’s a move which reflects the changing consumer habits in an industry that has become more hostile to the restaurant’s conventional business model, in a city whose inhabitants and workers are increasingly time-poor. McDonald’s has already enjoyed great success in the food delivery market, while at the same time keeping UberEats — with whom it has an exclusive partnership — afloat.

A spokesperson told i News that it might be something the company looks to roll out, but that it would, naturally, depend on location and the consumer reaction at this first test site. The spokesperson also said that it remained “committed to its original restaurant brand.”

• McDonald’s announces ‘McDonald’s to Go’ – its first new restaurant concept since drive-thru [i News]