Ordering, paying, collecting points – IT is an integral part of McDonald’s restaurants. To ensure high availability and ease of use, McDonald’s Austria has teamed up with Rittal to implement edge data centres. The result: tailor-made solutions, rapid implementation and a strong partnership.
When you think of McDonald’s, Big Macs, chips, apple turnovers or Happy Meals spring to mind. Hardly anyone thinks of IT. Not even when they’re making their menu selection at the ordering terminal, redeeming vouchers via the app, collecting points or paying by credit card. Yet the digital experience in the restaurants is hugely important. The good news: “If the internet goes down, we can still make burgers,” explains Arman Manutscheri, Director of Technology and Market CTO at McDonald’s Austria. “However, the branches are so heavily reliant on digital systems that we would have to close during prolonged outages. “That’s why one of our biggest challenges is ensuring high IT availability,” explains Arman Manutscheri. As a result, the technology team at McDonald’s Austria regularly modernises the restaurants’ IT systems. By 2023, the point had finally been reached where more than half of the locations had not been updated for quite some time. Meanwhile, new restaurants are constantly being added. “However, these opportunities for growth also mean higher demands on the stability of the IT systems. Naturally, this raised the question: how can we build a foundation for the next 10 to 15 years that provides us with the technological support to deliver a good guest experience? So we set out to find a housing partner who could best meet our requirements,” says Manutscheri, describing the starting point.
Edge Data Centre with VX IT in defined variants
This future-proof solution is called the Edge Data Centre, based on the Rittal VX IT. “The X in VX IT stands for infinite variants. It is the solution for all network and server applications. Whether it’s a network rack in a floor distribution unit, server racks in an edge, cloud or hyperscale data centre. And it’s 100% expandable,” assures Levente Pölcz, Administrator Technical Office Service at Rittal Austria. Together with Mario Peric, Technology Operations Professional at McDonald’s, he implemented the project. The specific solution for McDonald’s: one VX IT rack per restaurant location – precisely tailored to on-site requirements. This has resulted in nine different variants, which are currently installed in 68 restaurants. The key differences relate to the type of cooling. If the room where the rack is installed is air-conditioned, open variants are used. If the rack needs to be cooled directly , it is enclosed and fitted with a fan. Another distinguishing feature is the side on which the door opens – left or right, depending on accessibility within the room. However, the room height and door width also result in specific variants. Particularly important for McDonald’s: the racks were fully assembled at Rittal and only then delivered. “Even the cage nuts for the patch panels are included. The people in charge at McDonald’s don’t have much left to do with the racks,” assures Pölcz. And that is extremely important for McDonald’s highly efficient and tightly scheduled construction sites.
Practical solutions even outside the standard range
As with all projects, the close partnership between Rittal and its customers pays off here too. Many challenges only arise directly on site and cannot be identified on paper in advance. Levente Pölcz knows this from his own experience: “I received the input from McDonald’s and my task was, and still is, to modify the specifications so that everything ultimately fits.” This is precisely where the strength of the collaboration lies: the customer provides their requirements, Rittal delivers the technical expertise and develops practical solutions – even beyond standard series production and across industry and application boundaries.
Gerhard Pospichal, IT VMO at McDonald’s, says enthusiastically: “Although Rittal specialises in mass production, it offers many bespoke solutions. If you come to them with a challenge, the lines of communication are short and the answer is always: ‘Yes, we’ve got that!’ And internally, we no longer even ask whether we can fit a cabinet anywhere at all; we just say: ‘Right, Rittal has a solution anyway.’”