Imagine two floors filled with a drive-thru and in-restaurant simulation lab, prototyping space, two fully customizable restaurants that can be configured to any restaurants that exist today or are being imagined for the future, and the latest restaurant equipment from all over the world, right in Chicago.

The team at McDonald’s Speedee Labs doesn’t have to. Just over a year and a half since its opening at McDonald’s Corporate Headquarters in Chicago’s West Loop, Speedee Labs is the brand’s innovation hub dedicated to research, development and new technology to enhance both the customer and restaurant team experience. 

What Does McDonald’s Speedee Labs Do?

Spanning 21,000 square feet across two floors at McDonald’s Headquarters, Speedee Labs is the brand’s state-of-the-art innovation hub, testing everything from optimizing menu, equipment and processes to drive efficiency and growth to integrating tech and AI to maximize convenience and reduce complexity. 

Jacques Mignault began his McDonald’s journey over 50 years ago as a crew member in Montreal, Canada. Today, he serves as McDonald’s Global Chief Restaurant Officer, leading the Global Restaurant Team in enhancing the customer experience across McDonald’s restaurants worldwide. 

Take a Look: What’s Inside Speedee Labs

Just beyond the doors of Speedee Labs are 300+ pieces of restaurant equipment which can be configured to replicate the layout of any McDonald’s restaurant from anywhere in the world. Once set up, Speedee Labs’ restaurant team of around 60 crew members and managers work to find new ways to streamline processes, advance systems, ready markets for the adoption of global innovation priorities, and put market promotional calendars to the test. Each year, the team hosts 20-30 McDonald’s markets from across the globe along with cross functional innovation teams across HQ who are eager to enhance every aspect of customers’ restaurant experience. 

“Speedee Labs helps build more confidence, speed to market, and global scalability for our restaurants,” Jacques says. “By keeping innovation at the core of what we do, we’re constantly elevating and expanding our restaurant experience for our customers and Crew.” 

Inside Speedee Labs, the team uses a customizable ceiling-rigged grid system to accommodate varying restaurant layouts. Electrical outlets, water connections, and other adaptabilities make up the one-of-a-kind system. This capability allows market teams to accurately replicate their exact operating environment to learn fast and iterate. It also helps Speedee Labs identify opportunities to restructure the layout for improvement

The drive-thru lab inside Speedee Labs is customized to simulate various drive-thru formats and rapidly experiment with menu boards, service scripts, and new technologies to improve experience and capacity.

Speedee Labs’ prototyping lab is where teams can quickly turn ideas into light-weight physical prototypes for new processes, packaging, equipment, layouts, and products, and collect feedback from the team’s restaurant crew, managers, and real customers. This information is used to develop and iterate on concepts quickly to increase speed to insights.

How Speedee Labs Develops Restaurant Solutions

By asking questions like, “What does the customer/crew need?”, "What are our current pain points?", "How might we approach this differently?", and "Why hasn't this worked in the past?", the Speedee Labs team is able to approach each challenge with tailored digital and physical tools. 

By using proven testing methodologies, the latest tech, deep restaurant knowledge, and a wide network of SMEs across the business, Speedee labs is a shared resource for all things golden. 

“We’re able to bring nearly anything to life in Speedee Labs,” says Nick Chiappetta, Senior Manager of Operations at Speedee Labs. “If we can’t bring it to life in actuality here, there are plenty of teams and tech support to mock-up what that solution may look like through low to high fidelity prototyping that can still deliver meaningful insights when put into action.” 

With two floors, two kitchens, and many test labs, Speedee Labs is helping teams across McDonald's improve the customer and restaurant team experiences one simulated order at a time.