McDonald's Croatia Completed the Digital Transformation of Restaurants

In cooperation with technology partners Combis and Samsung, McDonald's is in the final phase of setting up a solution for simultaneous visual communication with customers throughout Croatia. According to Ivana Šapina, head of Marketing and Public Relations at McDonald's Croatia, this completes the digital transformation of all McDonald's restaurants in Croatia.

"Digitalization of services has been in our focus for some time. We already modernized the kitchen processes, introduced the McDonald's app, which customers received well, and equipped the restaurants with self-service kiosks, enabling guests to get to their favorite products faster and easier. In cooperation with Combis and Samsung Electronics Adriatic, we have now additionally installed display screens with the ordering system in the restaurants and on the McDrive lines, so we can say that at the moment, most of the communication processes with customers, and with the employees in the restaurant, are digitized," said Šapina. She added that the digital user experience achieved by this project is the innovation they were striving for, which will continue in 2023.

In addition to the hardware and software solution, central management of multimedia content from the cloud was set up for over 360 digital screens in all 41 McDonald's restaurants, their current number in Croatia. This way, all communication is coordinated and can be managed in real time. But what exactly is simultaneous visual (or digital signage) communication? Although most associate the term with digital signage, Maja Markulin Klarić, director of the Digital Innovation Department at Combis, says that it is a new standard of modern marketing.

"The effective dissemination of digital messages from anywhere and at any time, which can be changed within minutes, gives them an incomparable advantage over traditional industry formats. Intrigued by the possibilities, we also focused on education, so we became the proud holder of the Samsung Smart signage solution and Smart signage hardware certificates, and we are the sole holder of these Samsung certifications in the whole of Southeast Europe," said Markulin Klarić.

Considering the digitalization trend that McDonald's has been dictating in Croatia for the past few years, it is not surprising that they are behind the project with Samsung Electronics Adriatica and Combis. "The digital signage solutions market is growing strongly, and this trend will only strengthen in the future. That's why, in cooperation with our partners, we invested a lot of enthusiasm and energy to realize, according to our information, the largest project of this kind in Southeast Europe," said Vjekoslav Mikulić, regional key account manager for display products at Samsung Electronics Adriatic.