McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, and Tesco say IT outages were “unrelated”

McDonald’s, Tesco, and Sainsbury’s all reported major IT outages over the weekend, although the three major brands claim the downtime was unrelated.

Fast food outlet McDonald’s was forced to close some stores in UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan after customers were left unable to order food on Friday following the IT system outage in its stores.

McDonald’s apologised to customers, saying the incident had been caused by a “third-party provider during a configuration change” and denying online rumours that it had been subject to a cyber security attack.

“Reliability and stability of our technology are a priority, and I know how frustrating it can be when there are outages,” explained Brian Rice, EVP and global chief information officer at McDonald’s, in a statement to his staff. “I understand that this impacts you, your restaurant teams, and our customers. What happened today has been an exception to the norm, and we are working with absolute urgency to resolve it.”

The restaurant said systems were now back online at all its locations, and it was investigating further to find out the exact causes of the issue.

Delivery woes

Meanwhile, UK supermarkets Tesco and Sainsbury’s coincidentally experienced problems with their online shopping platforms, which affected several customers.

On Saturday morning, customers complained that they were unable to make contactless payments at some Sainsbury’s stores, while the chain said it was unable to complete the “vast majority” of online deliveries scheduled for that day.

Sainsbury’s said the issue had been caused by technical issues relating to “an error with an overnight software update”.

In an email from Sainsbury’s CEO Simon Roberts to customers, the store apologised for the outage, which also affected some systems at subsidiary Argos.

“I’m writing to update you on the technical issue that has affected our Groceries Online deliveries and some services in our stores this weekend,” he wrote.

“Firstly, I want to apologise to you and every customer that has been affected by the issue and to thank you for your patience and for bearing with us.”

“I really understand how important it is for everyone to be able to shop with us conveniently and easily, whenever and however they want to. I am sorry if you have not received your usual service from Sainsbury’s this weekend.”

“I am pleased to confirm that all the affected systems are now back online. Our stores continue to be open as usual, and in-store payment services, including contactless, are fully operational.”

The same apology was also echoed on X.

A few hours after Sainsbury’s began experiencing problems, rival Tesco also revealed it had cancelled some online orders due to a “technical issue.” The issue, which did not impact in-store shopping or online orders, was not connected to the issue affecting Sainsbury’s and only impacted a small number of orders, the retailer said.

A spokesperson for Tesco said: “The vast majority of our online orders are being delivered as normal, but due to a technical issue earlier today, we have had to cancel a small number of orders. We are contacting affected customers directly, and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience.”

Despite the similar nature of the outages, all three parties have denied any connection, but the incidents highlight the challenges facing major brands when updating their IT stacks.