Image courtesy of the Coates Group.
McDonald’s has named Coates Group as its global digital menu board content management system provider and one of two approved digital menu board providers alongside Acrelec Group, according to a press release.
While Coates Group has been providing solutions to McDonald’s for 50 years, this appointment marks its largest partnership engagement to date following a multiple-round RFP process.
«Our goal was to find one global provider that could deliver our digital CMS vision, which is to enable a consistent ordering experience to all our customers around the world through a single, cohesive hardware and software solution,» Hashim Amin, McDonald’s vice president of global product and engineering, said in the press release.
The five-year agreement will enable McDonald’s first globally-standardized DMB solution and provide its markets with Coates’ Switchboard CMS to power content and marketing strategies.
While Coates Group will manage the overall partnership and be the sole CMS provider, the solution offers markets a choice of DMB hardware as well as installation and support services from Coates or Acrelec.
Coates Group first partnered with McDonald’s in Australia in the 1970s as a traditional signage and merchandising provider. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the partnership grew into Asian and European markets with the introduction of new signage technology.
In 2017, Coates Group was awarded the outdoor digital menu board hardware rollout for McDonald’s U.S.
Coates supports 50 McDonald’s markets with self-order kiosks, CMS and digital menu boards.
Acrelec, founded by two former McDonald’s employees in the early 2000, has over 80,000 installations in 80 countries.