McDonald's: Want VOIP with That?

A hungry consumer pulls up to the drive-through window in a California McDonald's restaurant and places a dinner order. The person taking the order points out that the caller placed only three drink orders for four dinners and reminds the diner of a special that day on apple pie.

This might be a fairly typical fast-food—or, in industry parlance, QSR for quick-service restaurant—exchange were it not for the fact that the customer and the order-taker are dozens of miles apart, connected through a VPN-secured voice-over-IP hookup.

Although it's unlikely to ever replace the chain's once-famous slogan, "you deserve a break-even today" is more in line with the financial motivation behind the initial nine-store experiment.

Read the rest of this eWEEK story: McDonald's: Want VOIP with That?

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.