Driving Digital Transformation: Managing McDonald’s Multi-Market Menu Board Deployments
At the forefront of McDonald’s digital transformation, I led the management of McDonald’s multi-market digital menu board initiatives. Collaborating with content managers, front-end engineers, QA analysts, and external partners, I ensured seamless execution across diverse markets spanning multiple continents. By designing tailored solution architectures and streamlining operations, I helped deliver innovative, scalable menu board experiences that supported key business growth and secured major global contracts.Highlights
The projects highlighted here were instrumental in securing Coates’ exclusive global partnership with McDonald’s across hardware, software, and content services, unlocking a $50M+ business opportunity
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Supported the end-to-end execution of the world’s largest digital menu board rollout, managing installation logistics, streamlining cross-vendor workflows, and building automated reporting tools to drive operational accuracy and national scale.
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Led content management and deployment for critical U.S. pilot programs, owning scheduling, QA, and in-store testing to validate digital content
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Owned content and data management for McDonald’s global headquarters digital menu board installation at Hamburger University, designing and validating executive-level demos, leading UAT and QA workflows, and enabling marketing and leadership teams to evaluate future-state menu strategies in a live test-kitchen environment critical to global decision-making.
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Led in-market enablement for McDonald’s France, working on-site with their marketing team in Paris to troubleshoot systems, train local teams, and implement localized digital menu board campaigns, ensuring successful adoption and execution aligned with global platform standards.
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Supported McDonald’s LATAM markets including Guatemala, Paraguay, and Suriname, managing localized digital menu board content, promotions, and configurations while partnering with regional teams in Spanish to ensure smooth execution aligned with global standards.
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Led content and data management for McDonald’s global headquarters digital menu board experience at Hamburger University, supporting executive and marketing leadership through validated demos, rigorous UAT, and live testing in a high-visibility innovation environment.
The World’s Largest ODMB Rollout
SKILLS & Subject Matter
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES • DASHBOARDS & REPORTING
LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT • VENDor MANAGEMENT • risk management
overview
My first project with McDonald’s involved playing a key role in supporting the management of the world’s largest outdoor digital menu board (ODMB) deployment, spanning ~12,000 U.S. locations. This work entailed:
Overseeing complex installation logistics and operational execution across thousands of franchise locations, ensuring accuracy, speed, and alignment at scale
Mapping cross-vendor workflows to clarify team handoffs, identify process inefficiencies, and streamline national rollout efforts
Developing automated reporting systems using Google Scripts and Excel Macros to improve data visibility, drive accountability, and support real-time decision-making
Managing issue resolution efforts to overcome hardware challenges and minimize operational disruption
Miami 8 + Romeoville Pilots
SKILLS & SUbject matter
Content Management • CMS • Digital signage • deployment operations
Content development • Data Management • Quality assurance
overview
Following the national hardware rollout, I shifted focus to strategic pilot programs in Miami, FL and Romeoville, IL as key test markets for McDonald’s U.S. digital content and software deployment. These ~10-location pilots served as critical proving grounds ahead of what would later reward the full national launch. My work included:
Managing and configuring screen content across locations, including scheduling logic, dayparting, and promotional alignment tailored to each restaurant’s operations
Owning QA, release management, and end-to-end content deployment workflows to ensure accuracy, consistency, and performance
Building and maintaining content schedules to support dynamic marketing initiatives
Supporting live testing and troubleshooting in-store, working closely with franchise operators and field teams to ensure a seamless customer experience
McDONALD’s HQ
SKILLS & Subject matter
DATA MANAGEMENT • deployment operations • QUALITY ASSURANCE
USER ACCEPTANCE TESTING • CONTENT MANAGEMENT • PRODUCT DEMOS
overview
During this time, I also had the privilege of supporting digital menu board strategy and execution at McDonald’s global headquarters in Chicago, within the Hamburger University test kitchen. This environment serves as a controlled proving ground for new menu strategies, technology platforms, and customer experiences ahead of global rollout. Unlike a standard restaurant deployment, the headquarters installation featured a curated global menu, showcasing products from McDonald’s markets around the world.
This work required a higher level of precision and flexibility than a typical store implementation. Content was both customer-facing and executive-visible, and needed to accurately reflect real-world restaurant logic across multiple markets while remaining adaptable for experimentation, demos, and rapid iteration. My work included:
Owning content and data management for the digital menu board experience within the Hamburger University test kitchen at McDonald's global headquarters to support rapid experimentation and iteration in a test-and-learn environment
Leading QA + UAT efforts to validate scheduling logic, content accuracy, data mappings, and system behavior across multiple scenarios
Designing and configuring executive-level demos for the McDonald’s marketing team and executive suite, showcasing how menu content dynamically responded to time of day, promotions, and system inputs
McDONALD’s FRANCE
SKILLS & Subject matter
Localization Strategy • Stakeholder Training
System Troubleshooting • International Market Enablement
overview
Another market I supported at this time was McDonald’s France through on-site collaboration with the local team at their Paris headquarters. As one of the first international markets adopting the platform, France required hands-on troubleshooting, training, and campaign implementation to ensure successful execution within local operational and marketing constraints.
This work extended beyond remote support and required close, in-person partnership to adapt global systems and content workflows to the needs of the French market while maintaining consistency with broader platform standards.
My work included:
Traveling to Paris to work directly with the McDonald's France marketing team to support implementation and adoption of digital menu board campaigns
Troubleshooting content, data, and system issues in real time, resolving edge cases related to localization, scheduling, and promotional logic
Training local marketing and operations teams on content workflows, campaign setup, and platform best practices to enable long-term self-sufficiency
Supporting the configuration and execution of market-specific campaigns, ensuring alignment with France’s promotional strategy while adhering to global platform standards.
Acting as a bridge between global product teams and the French market, translating local requirements and feedback into actionable improvements.
McDONALD’s LATAM
SKILLS & Subject matter
Market Localization • Content Operations • Data Configuration
International Market Support • CONTENT MANAGEMENT
overview
In addition to North America and Europe, I also supported McDonald’s LATAM markets, including Guatemala, Paraguay, and Suriname. While the core platform and workflows mirrored other regions, these markets introduced additional complexity around localization, language, and regional operating nuances.
My work included:
Supporting digital menu board content and campaign execution across LATAM markets, ensuring accurate localization and alignment with regional marketing strategies.
Managing content, data, and scheduling configurations to accommodate market-specific requirements while adhering to global platform standards.
Communicating and collaborating with local teams in Spanish to troubleshoot issues, clarify requirements, and support successful implementation.
Acting as a bridge between global teams and LATAM markets to ensure smooth execution and consistent adoption.
McDonald’s canada ROLLOUT
SKILLS & Subject matter
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT • Requirements gathering
global CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT • DATA MODELING • team leadership
overview
Following earlier U.S. pilot programs, I took on the most complex and rewarding project to date: leading content operations for McDonald’s Canada’s full digital transformation across ~1,500 restaurant locations. This national rollout marked our first use of a new System on Chip (SoC) platform and encompassed hardware, software, and content services, executed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. My work included:
Leading a global cross-functional team of ~10, including Campaign Managers, Front-End Engineers, and QA Analysts, to deliver robust and scalable digital signage solutions tailored to McDonald’s Canada’s highly diverse content and data needs
Managing agile ceremonies and sprint cycles across international teams to ensure quality delivery and on-time execution
Building and managing content schedules, deployment logic, and campaign release workflows customized for localized promotions, dynamic dayparting, and bilingual markets
Collaborating across engineering, the Cossette design agency, and McDonald’s marketing and operations teams to ensure creative intent, operational feasibility, and system logic remained aligned
Coordinating the synchronized rollout of content, hardware, and software in partnership with internal teams and field operators, navigating the added complexity of pandemic-era deployment constraints
Why was it so complex?
The McDonald’s Canada rollout was exceptionally complex due to its scale, hyper-specific configurations, rapid-fire promotions, and lack of accessible business logic, requiring deep coordination and custom solutions across 1,500+ stores.
1. Screen Configuration Mapping at Scale
Each of the ~1,500 McDonald’s Canada locations required an intricate matrix of data modeling and content logic to accommodate the operational and linguistic diversity across the country, with each variation requiring its own legal regulations and tailored set of menu creative per brand standards. I designed and maintained a data model that supported:
6 language variations
6 dayparts
2 screen orientations
5 menu types
700+ content profile configurations
10,000+ assets
This breadth of variation made scalable scheduling and accurate deployment a highly complex undertaking, requiring a rigorous discovery phase and complex data modeling + configuration mapping for each store.
2. Dynamic + RObust Promotional Calendar
Rollout occurred in parallel with a highly active promotional calendar, each coming with a 24 week production timeline (per brand standards) with over 10 simultaneous campaigns running at a given time, each shifting up to 10+ times per month.
With each promotional asset requiring multiple variations given language and daypart needs, this was a massive undertaking during the rollout, requiring agile coordination to keep all content timely, compliant, and personalized for local markets throughout deployment.
3. AI-Driven Data Integrations and Logic Reconstruction
Determining accurate content for each store required reverse engineering third-party restaurant data to infer product availability, menu configurations, and promotion eligibility at the individual location level.
With no access to the incumbent vendor’s business rules, deemed proprietary, we rebuilt the logic from the ground up by referencing hundreds of visual menu configurations to form educated assumptions, which were then validated by the McDonald’s marketing team.
To support AI-driven menu boards, this logic was extended to enable real-time decisioning, allowing menu content to dynamically adapt based on factors such as time of day, inventory signals, customer context, and historical performance.
This intelligence was powered through deep integration with POS (Point of Sale), COD (Customer Order Display), SS (Suggestive Sell), DY (Dynamic Yield), and LPR (License Plate Recognition), with each layering on additional logic to deliver a responsive, personalized digital experience.
This multi-market effort not only elevated McDonald’s digital signage capabilities but also showcased the impact of bespoke content solutions at scale. By architecting detailed configuration logic, orchestrating fast-moving digital marketing campaign operations, and building seamless integrations to support diverse market needs, we supported major global contracts and played a pivotal role in securing a $50M+ opportunity.