Macca’s returns after nationwide outage

McDonald’s restaurants across the world are back up and running after a rare IT outage caused mayhem, forcing some stores to close their doors.

The internal systems at McDonald’s went offline about 3pm on Friday, with outages reported in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Japan, parts of Europe and Canada.

Some stores closed completely, while others were only taking cash orders.

The outage lasted about 10 hours in total, with the fast-food chain issuing an update about 1.15am on Saturday morning to say all restaurants have now reponed.

“We’re back and we missed you!,” a McDonalds spokesperson said in a post to X.

“A huge thank you to our wonderful customers and hard-working crew for your patience and support.”

In a statement shared late on Friday night, McDonald’s said the issue was due to a technology outage.

“We are aware of a technology outage which impacted our restaurants; the issue is now being resolved,” the statement read.

“We thank customers for their patience and apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. Notably, the issue is not related to a cybersecurity event.

“We can confirm some restaurants are back online and serving customers, and we are continuing to work to restore all remaining restaurants as soon as possible.”

One store had a sign on its door apologising for the technical bungle.

“Due to a technical issue, we are unable to serve customers at this time,” the sign read.

“We apologise for any inconvenience and hope to be back up and running soon, however the matter is out of our control.”

Angry — and hungry — customers vented their frustrations online.

One person wrote on social media: “Ahhhh it’s the end! We’re all gunna starve.”

Another person joked: “Go to Hungry Jack’s. The burgers are better at Hungry Jack’s.”