McDonald's China Has a Mobile Ordering App Now. We Tried It First.

The app is already on version 4.8.21, but McDonald's says it is still a trial release, so don't expect too much.

After a string of digital upgrades — plugging into food-delivery platforms, accepting mobile payments such as WeChat and Alipay, putting big touchscreen ordering kiosks in its restaurants — McDonald's China has taken one more step down the road of digitization.

On Wednesday, McDonald's announced on its WeChat official account that it had launched a brand-new app that "legend has it combines multiple functions in one." Besides folding in the old McDelivery service, the freshest thing here appears to be ordering ahead on your phone and picking up in the restaurant: you go through the ordering process in the app first, then pay in person at a McDonald's to formally place the order.

McDonald's has been preparing this app for quite a while. The first Android version came out in January last year, and that March McDonald's China told QDaily it planned to launch the app in the fourth quarter — a date later pushed to 2017. You could in fact already download it from the App Store before the public announcement, but since it had never been promoted, almost no one knew it existed.

So if you are observant, the version number on the download — 4.8.21 on iOS — may puzzle you. Xu Yingting, vice president of public relations at McDonald's China, told QDaily that this is still a trial-run release.

McDonald's seems to be hesitating over how hard to push it. Posters have gone up in its restaurants one by one, and at some locations staff are introducing the app to customers. Yet as of Thursday evening, McDonald's had put out only one short Weibo post about it. When the company launched its customer-feedback platform for phones in January (essentially a mobile questionnaire), it wrote a whole article about it. Today its official website mentions only the mini program and the McDelivery app, with no trace of the new one.

Fast growth in food delivery is pushing McDonald's to bet more on it. Zhang Jiayin, CEO of McDonald's Greater China, gave a set of figures in a media interview late last year: McDonald's started McDelivery in 2007, and by 2015 it reached 30 cities, with 660 restaurants able to deliver. Thanks to deals with delivery platforms, by the end of 2016 that had grown to 70 cities, and the number of restaurants able to deliver had doubled.

But as we said when we wrote about McDonald's digitization, behind the handsome numbers, third-party delivery platforms also mean McDonald's loses its grip on its own user data, and ending up as just another supplier is not what McDonald's wants. So even though one delivery platform is enough to satisfy anyone who wants McDonald's, McDonald's China would rather pull users into its own app, which means more control. KFC launched an app on the same reasoning.

For McDonald's China, an app was something it had to do. At its Investor Day in March, McDonald's said it would shift its focus from remaking its brand image to raising efficiency, improving product quality and lowering prices. Instead of spending its days working out how to be a healthier McDonald's, it would work out how to improve the customer experience, hoping to draw more people into its restaurants. Launching an app with order-ahead, pick-up-in-restaurant in the United States, Canada, France and elsewhere is part of those measures.

For now, the app's order-on-your-phone, pick-up-in-store feature works only in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou, and the company has not given a timetable for other cities.

We tried it out first, so you can see where the bright spots and the landmines are.

McDelivery, phone ordering for in-store pickup and coupons all sit on the first screen

Opening the app feels like using a mobile web page. The functions are sorted clearly enough, but the interface design has nothing to recommend it.

On the first screen, in order: a scrolling banner of the latest promotions, McDelivery ordering, order-ahead-and-pick-up, nearby restaurants and coupons.

Using McDelivery in the new app is much like ordering it on the desktop site: the same delivery speed, the same food, the same habit of forgetting the napkins, the ketchup or the receipt. But now you can watch the delivery's progress in the app instead of opening the website.

The brand-new order-ahead, pick-up-in-restaurant feature runs smoothly enough. You order, check out, then tap "check in and pay at the restaurant." The screen turns into a QR-code scanner; you scan the code on the straw box beside the counter, pay, and your order number shows up in the "preparing" column on the pickup screen.

The useful part is that you can choose what to eat on the way to McDonald's and pay the moment you walk in, saving the time you would spend queuing at the counter or at a self-order kiosk. But McDonald's only starts making the food after you pay, so you may well still have to wait.

A friendly reminder: scroll to the bottom of the page first and see which coupons you can use

Whether you are ordering McDelivery or picking up in a restaurant, scroll to the bottom of the page first and see which coupons you can use.

On the ordering page, items a coupon applies to do carry a small coupon icon in the top right corner, but the app will not remind you to use one when you place the order. You have to put the coupon in your cart before you start ordering — much like the coupon experience in real life, where you tear the coupon out before you order and hand it to the cashier yourself.

The steps for using a coupon are a bit baffling too; even McDonald's own staff hesitated while demonstrating them. Once you open a coupon and select it, the app jumps straight to the checkout page, as if that one item were all anyone would want. If you want anything besides the coupon item, you have to back out and choose other products, at which point the app has already put the coupon in your cart by default.

One thing to note: you can only use one coupon at a time. And coupons do not work everywhere — sometimes they all vanish and the app shows "no coupons available at nearby restaurants."

Also, if the app shows you a coupon you don't want, whatever you do, don't choose "delete." You will not get another chance to pick the one you do want.

You can sign up with a WeChat account, but Alipay is the only way to pay online for now

Anyone too lazy to register a new account every time will get a small lift from the sight of WeChat's white-and-green logo. You still have to verify your phone number again inside the app afterwards, but at first glance this kind of shared account system with a third-party app does feel local. And loyal McDelivery customers are free to keep using their old username and password here.

But once you have ordered delivery in the app, or decided what you are eating at the McDonald's down the street, and reach for WeChat Pay out of habit, you may be disappointed: McDonald's China's app supports only two ways to pay — cash on the spot, and Alipay.

In choosing partners for its account system and its mobile payment features, this big company's thinking looks somewhat contradictory.

Alipay told QDaily that when McDonald's decided to bring big ordering screens with mobile payment into the Chinese market, the first partner it thought of was in fact WeChat Pay. The two sides signed an agreement with a six-month exclusivity clause, so every other way to pay — Alipay and QQ Wallet included — could only be read by McDonald's scanners later on.

"But before this update to McDonald's China's app, their online membership system was actually exclusive to us. So our business lead is talking to McDonald's now, hoping to be added on the account side as soon as possible."

Bringing WeChat, with its nearly 890 million monthly active users, into the sign-up step may still be a way for McDonald's to pile up online users faster. And not only the WeChat account: as we will get to below, McDonald's China's team rolled out a (not very useful) WeChat mini program at almost the same time.

In Shanghai, pick-up-in-store is confined to the city center; in Hangzhou it even works at Xiaoshan Airport

Ordering delivery through McDonald's own app is hardly news — the McDelivery app has been in the stores for a long time. The real draw of this McDonald's China app is the order-on-your-phone, pick-up-in-store business, the same thing that once slowed down Starbucks and Domino's restaurants in the United States and created "invisible queues."

The service covers only some restaurants in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou, so it is hardly a full rollout.

Going by the notes attached to each update of McDonald's China's iOS app, in Shanghai the service quietly began as a pilot at 15 designated restaurants in early 2016, most of them on the city's outskirts. After more than a year of piloting, McDonald's has only widened the coverage to most restaurants inside the Middle Ring Road — and most of the early test restaurants are not on that list. That is why you had probably never heard of the McDonald's app, yet it arrives at version 4.8.21.

Hangzhou is doing a little better: the feature works both at restaurants downtown and at Xiaoshan Airport. Searching the app for restaurants in other Yangtze River Delta cities returns "this feature is not yet available," which suggests those cities may be added before long.

When cities farther away, such as Beijing and Guangzhou, will get order-ahead and in-store pickup is anyone's guess.

The mini program has points and in-store redemption only, and it is not connected to the app

Besides the app, McDonald's has also recently built a mini program called "i McDonald's."

It is very simple — a membership points system, nothing more. To earn points you must register in the mini program, order at the counter, pay by phone, and show the mini program's QR code before paying. Every one of those is required. One yuan earns one point, and a soft-serve cone takes 39 yuan of spending.

Those conditions mean that if you order in the app you earn nothing. The app and the "i McDonald's" mini program are two completely separate systems.

On top of that, McDonald's has another mini program just for coupons — yet another separate system.

There are recent orders and favorites, but nothing obviously personalized

McDonald's new app records your past orders automatically, and you can save favorite items to make ordering easier next time.

But although this lets McDonald's collect what users order and prefer, nothing in the app suggests it wants to use that data. It does not guess what you like and recommend it, and coupons do not change with your tastes. As far as we can see, every user gets the same coupons.

Some items are cheaper than on third-party platforms, but the 9-yuan delivery fee is the same

Last year about 20 percent of McDonald's China's business came from delivery, and half of that came from third-party delivery platforms. Why consumers order through those platforms is obvious: one app holds many restaurants, and there are always promotions.

The existing McDelivery app looks uncompetitive next to third-party delivery platforms; its interface and interaction design are stuck several years back. The new app faces the same question McDelivery did: how do you get users to download an app where they can order from one brand only?

Whichever platform you use to order McDonald's delivery, you pay the same 9-yuan delivery fee, and McDonald's delivers the food itself either way, so the service is no different.

If the coupon in the McDonald's app happens to be for something you want, it beats the third-party platforms. At the same McDonald's, for instance, Ele.me takes 5 yuan off orders over 50 yuan and Meituan takes 10 yuan off orders over 50 yuan, while the McDonald's app takes 10 yuan straight off a McFun Chicken Box and 5 yuan off a taro pie.

If the coupon is not for something you want, that is another matter.

Next to McDonald's "translated" feel, KFC's app looks like the work of a local team

Third-party delivery platforms can meet users' needs perfectly well, yet on the question of "we must have our own app," KFC has been even more eager than McDonald's. We compared the two while we were at it.

KFC's concentrated overhaul of its app also happened in the first half of 2016. Afterwards the app not only combined delivery and in-store pickup but also carried a fairly complete membership account system:

You can look at coupons and points directly; it supports every kind of mobile payment tool and has its own membership card and top-up system; there are entry points for various member privileges. Features such as K-Music (a playlist made with QQ Music) and K-Running (something like a knock-off Nike+) are a bit much, but presumably KFC sees them as ways to make users stick.

After a while with McDonald's China's slightly stiff app, opening KFC's makes the gap between a "translated version" and a "local version" much clearer: promotional ads everywhere, coupons handed out through pop-ups and other overblown effects, top up X yuan and get X yuan free. KFC's app is localized to such a degree that you would think it came from the product manager of a Chinese delivery platform.

KFC has also been keener to work with local delivery platforms. Yum China's 2016 annual report shows that delivery contributed 10 percent of the company's sales for the year — and alongside KFC's own app, the contribution of third-party delivery platforms came up again and again.

On Baidu Waimai, one of the delivery platforms we tested, KFC even has a special combo called the "Baidu Spread Your Wings Bucket." It was one of the bundles made to order in March, when Yum China's three main business lines and Baidu Waimai jointly held a "Super Brand Festival."

For McDonald's, working with the big delivery platforms is mostly a matter of having a more efficient sales channel.

The American McDonald's app is flashier; Japan and France are both using the data they collect to sell more

In November 2016, McDonald's said it would roll out an app with mobile ordering and payment worldwide, covering 25,000 restaurants by 2018. But the pace differs from country to country, and so do the features and the design.

McDonald's in the United States has not formally launched an app with ordering in it; for now the app is used to look at coupons and nearby restaurants. In design terms, though, both the side-to-side and the up-and-down swipe effects are fairly flashy.

When the ordering app does launch, the American approach will be that customers order in the app and collect the food as soon as they reach the restaurant. To make sure the food is made at the right moment, the app will also track users' locations.

McDonald's in Japan is using the data its app collects to sell more. Silvia Lagnado, McDonald's global CMO, has said the Japanese app suggests adding a shake or some Chicken McNuggets, then remembers these bigger orders so customers can place them again easily. The payoff: Japanese consumers who use the app spend 35 percent more at McDonald's than those who don't.

McDonald's in France, where online ordering and payment are already running, is also using its app to collect user data and push different coupons each week according to customers' tastes.

McDonald's has more and more ordering channels, and each one feels different

Last year Xu Cong, CMO of McDonald's China, said in an interview that McDonald's was steadily raising its "accessibility," reaching consumers by every available means. Ordering is probably the most visible part of that. With the new app out, here are all the ways to get a McDonald's meal: the McDonald's app, the McDelivery app, the in-store self-order kiosks, third-party delivery platforms, and the mobile website (which you can also find through McDonald's WeChat official account and its Alipay membership page).

What you can order and what the service feels like differ from channel to channel, of course.

The self-order kiosks in the restaurants match the counter and carry the most items. Delivery being what it is, every delivery channel offers fewer. But the McDonald's app's pick-up-in-restaurant ordering also sells fewer items than the restaurant does — the Chicken McNuggets combo that every third-party delivery app carries, for instance, is missing.

The kiosks also let you change how much ice or which sauce you get, a piece of thoughtfulness that Zhang Jiayin, CEO of McDonald's China, once singled out at an event: "Your own requirements may be fairly complicated, but now you don't have to say anything — you can just order from the machine." None of the apps have done the same, though it would be easy enough, and that includes McDonald's own new app.

QDaily asked McDonald's China about its plans for these digital channels. McDonald's China declined the interview, on the grounds that the new app is still in its trial run.

The app is not stable yet

Version 4.8.21 or not, this McDonald's app that the company says has not formally launched is not stable. During testing the Android version crashed now and then, the phone warning that the app was not responding and leaving us to quit and restart.

Search Weibo for "McDonald's app" and you will find other problems users have hit: the menu failing to load, the app freezing the moment a coupon is tapped, dozens of emails landing in a user's inbox during activation.

And if something does go wrong while you are using the app, you can reach McDonald's through all sorts of online and offline channels — but the app itself has no customer service.

Cover image from McDonald's official website