Fast Food Employees Routinely Battle Tech Failures, New QSR Research Finds

Canopy’s new Fast Food Fault Lines report shows that when fast food restaurant tech fails, employees resort to manual workarounds, contributing to lost orders and customer abandonment, whether in the drive-thru, at self-service kiosks, or when using mobile-ordering systems at quick-service restaurants (QSRs).

ALPHARETTA, Ga.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Canopy, the trusted provider of remote monitoring and management (RMM) software for connected products, today released a report examining the technology breakdowns that hinder the quick-service restaurant (QSR) industry. Fast Food Fault Lines: Canopy’s 2026 Restaurant Tech Report surveyed over 500 QSR employees from fast food titans like McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Domino’s Pizza, and found that workers deal with chronic technology failures across drive-thru, self-service kiosks, and mobile-ordering systems. These malfunctions frustrate customers and hurt sales: 48% of employees have seen customers abandon orders due to tech outages.

QSRs face growing pressure to increase revenue, reduce manual work, and improve the customer experience via new technologies. Yet Canopy’s research shows that technology often falls short of this promise: nearly one in five QSR employees experience tech issues at least weekly and 31% report having to pause their regular job duties at least once a week to address them.

Canopy’s Fast Food Fault Lines report highlights the scale and operational impact of technology breakdowns. Key findings include:

• Drive-thrus are a key point of technology failure in QSRs. Drive-thrus’ constant flow of traffic exposes them to unique challenges, most commonly payment processing issues (38%) and timer errors mistiming or missing cars (28%). Nearly half (49%) of drive-thru employees said they’re required to use workarounds, such as writing orders on paper or asking customers to pull forward early, once a week or more.
• Self-service kiosks are a double-edged sword. When they work correctly, kiosks let customers help themselves. When they malfunction, employees get pulled away from core tasks to troubleshoot. More than half (56%) of QSR employees are asked to fix kiosks daily or weekly.
• Mobile orders are the toughest to manage. Nearly one-third (30%) of QSR employees experience mobile order problems every week, with mistimed or missing orders causing the biggest headache and potentially indicating backend integration issues.

Why this matters: QSR technology failures lead to lost revenue, employee burnout, and bad customer experiences. Drive-thrus, self-service kiosks, and mobile ordering platforms benefit from the service optimization and advanced AI applications made possible through remote monitoring and management capabilities.

“The fast food and fast casual restaurant of 2026 depends on dozens of technologies working together to give employees leverage and customers an easy, consistent experience,” said Steve Latham, CEO of Canopy. “Whether in the drive-thru, ordering at the kiosk, or using the mobile app, our research shows that tech problems cascade into disruptions in service, taking employees away from their jobs while frustrating customers enough that they leave. QSR operators need holistic visibility into the health and performance of every component in the restaurant tech stack plus an automated way to fix issues should they occur, if not before.”

As ordering channels within QSRs expand, the new success metric will be how these systems work together under pressure. Canopy provides end-to-end visibility and management of the devices and network stack that support restaurant operations, enabling QSR teams to manage services more effectively and deliver a more reliable customer experience.

Download Fast Food Fault Lines to get the complete findings.

About Canopy

Canopy provides remote monitoring and management software for connected products like self-checkout kiosks, security systems, smart lockers and point-of-sale systems. Product and technical support teams use Canopy to automate remote device management and proactively reduce service costs for connected product fleets globally. See and solve problems automatically with Canopy. To learn more, visit goCanopy.com.