McDonald’s tests drive-thru for digital orders in Fort Worth

Yahoo Finance reporter Brooke DiPalma shares how McDonald's is trying out a drive-thru for digital meal orders in Fort Worth, Texas.

Video Transcript

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- McDonald's is testing a new drive-through lane for digital orders only. Brooke DiPalma is here with the details of the test. Brooke, tell us how this thing works.

BROOKE DIPALMA: That's right. Well, this is actually one of the first concepts-- this is the first test by McDonald's in Fort Worth, Texas. Now, what's a little bit different here is the order ahead component of this new test restaurant design, and the order ahead technology allows customers to order on the app and then flag the restaurant team when that customer is approaching the restaurant, so then they can prepare that order.

But other parts of this new test restaurant design include kiosks, which already exists in many McDonald's restaurants, pick up shelfs for orders, curbside order pickup, parking spaces for delivery drivers, and inside the restaurant, you're also going to see food and beverage [INAUDIBLE]-- conveyors that is, and a new kitchen format. Now, the name of the game here, and the focus, is speed and accuracy. Now, in the release, they said the franchise operating-- the franchise operate owner who is behind this test really said that he's hoping that the restaurant team is able to deliver big and faster, and that the restaurant team can fulfill orders with more ease.

Now, you guys know that McDonald's has been really trying to bring about their Accelerating the Arches campaign for the past few years. That is developed on maximizing marketing. They're developing the core menu, so we've seen them sort of revisit those core menu items a lot over the past year without introducing new things. But really, the triple D's here-- Delivery, Drive-through, and Digital-- they're continuously looking to up the ante there.

- Three D's-- I like that. It's also going to be interesting whether or not this helps kind of alleviate some of the pressures that fast food companies like McDonald's, so many of its competitors, have had with trouble attracting workers. There's been worker shortages, which has been affecting the output of so many of these fast food companies. So you would think the integration of more technology will help them a little bit with this.

Nothing here that was too revolutionary, though. It makes a lot of sense. I'm surprised it's taken McDonald's until now to implement some of these changes. I don't know. We'll see.

BROOKE DIPALMA: Yeah

- It's like turning around a tanker. It's awfully big. You know, it's hard to make changes on the fly when your McDonald's.

Stocks up about 1.8% on the year. Good to see you, Brooke. Thank you.