Case Study: McDonald’s achieves optimized all-day menu planning with AnyLogic

Demand and Supply Planning for a Large Fast Food Chain

McDonald’s wanted to expand all-day menu availability across 14,000 restaurants, but faced a difficult tradeoff between menu complexity, limited kitchen space, equipment and labor planning, and maintaining strong customer service levels. Working with vendor AnyLogic, McDonald’s and its supply chain partner HAVI needed a data-driven way to model kitchen operations and support better decisions for the menu rollout.

AnyLogic provided a simulation model that replicated McDonald’s kitchen workflows, equipment layouts, demand patterns, and staffing scenarios, with validation using test-kitchen data. The model enabled virtual testing of thousands of configurations, helping deliver optimized equipment purchases, tailored labor plans, and balanced service metrics such as freshness, speed, and waste reduction, while avoiding costly physical trials across 14,000+ restaurant configurations.

McDonald