McDonald’s UK has just struck a deal with Samsung to provide Galaxy tablets to the hungry kids waiting for their Happy Meals.
Samsung will be installing Galaxy tablets in most of the McDonald’s joints in UK. This is a part of the ‘experience of future’ program that the company is trying to implement.
McDonald’s wants to attract more kids
While the tablets won’t be used to order food, they would be used to provide in-house entertainment to the kids through social media apps, games and the internet.
It is still not clear what version of the device the company will be using but instead of Samsung’s software, the tablets will run on a customized software provided by a company called SOTI. This software will already come pre-installed with the apps needed.
It’s also not clear if the devices will be running on Android or a completely different OS. We would definitely have to wait and see about that.
While talking about this ‘experience of the future’ initiative, the company’s head of IT restaurant solutions and service of McDonald’s UK, Doug Baker said in a statement, “Technology has an important role to play in all walks of life, including our customers’ eating out experience, so the changes we’re making as part of the ‘Experience of the Future’ programme bring us closer to the way people live their lives today. We pride ourselves on listening to customers and providing an outstanding experience; innovations such as tablets help provide this experience and have been extremely popular with customers.”
It would also be interesting to see how McDonald’s handles the hygiene situation with Samsung Galaxy tablets. Nobody wants to use a tablet which has already been greased by ketchup and cheese by the last customer. If there is no plan from the company’s side about this, we are sure a lot of the parents would be really angry.
McDonald’s has already been experimenting with tech-focused marketing. A few months back, the company offered happy meals to its Swedish customers that could be converted into cardboard virtual reality headsets. In many parts of Europe, the company introduced Samsung wireless charging pads and it has also supported Apple Pay in its stores ever since it was launched in October 2014.
Some of the McDonald’s restaurants already feature tablet technology. So it will definitely be interesting to see how the crowds, especially the kids react to this. We will have to wait and see if the company is only looking to do this in UK for marketing or will it be introducing tablets in all the other joints across the world.
