How McDonald's India Centralized Menu Board Management Across a Mixed Device Fleet with Pickcel
McDonald's India brought pricing, promotions, and seasonal menus for its digital menu boards under one dashboard, without replacing the Android and LG webOS screens already in place.
This digital menu board case study looks at how McDonald's India operates a network of digital menu boards across its West India operations, running on a mixed fleet of Android media players and LG webOS displays. Before Pickcel, pricing, seasonal menu items, and regional promotions were managed through point-of-sale systems and Excel spreadsheets, with every change pushed out to each location individually. Pickcel provided a centralized digital signage platform that connects directly to those existing POS and Excel workflows, so the operations team can update pricing and menus network-wide from a single dashboard instead of configuring each screen separately. The rollout worked with the hardware already installed across locations, so no screens needed to be replaced to bring the network under central control.
Industry
QSR
Screens deployed
1,300+ digital menu boards
Region
India (West operations)
Hardware
Mixed fleet of Android media players + LG webOS displays
Deployment timeline
Under one week, zero on-site installation visits
Prior workflow
POS systems + Excel spreadsheets, updated per location
Per-location updates couldn't keep up with West India scale
POS and Excel workflows. Mixed hardware. Promotions that took days to reach every screen.
Pricing and menus were updated location by location
Before deploying Pickcel, McDonald's India managed pricing and menu content for its digital menu boards through a combination of point-of-sale systems and Excel spreadsheets. Every price adjustment, seasonal item, or regional promotion had to be entered and pushed out to each location separately, across a West India footprint that had grown large enough to make manual updates slow and error-prone. For an operations team covering hundreds of locations, that meant even a routine price update carried real coordination overhead before it ever reached a customer-facing screen.
A mixed Android and LG webOS fleet blocked a simple central system
The device fleet added a second layer of difficulty. Locations ran a mix of Android media players and LG webOS displays, and any new way of managing content centrally had to work across both platforms without forcing a hardware upgrade at any site.
Network growth turned routine updates into a bottleneck
As the network expanded, this combination became a bottleneck. A national pricing correction or a limited-time promotion could take days to reach every screen, and gaps between what one location displayed and another risked showing customers outdated prices or expired offers at the counter.
“A national pricing correction or a limited-time promotion could take days to reach every screen.”
One Dashboard Across Android and LG webOS
McDonald's India replaced screen-by-screen updates with one centralized dashboard for its West India network — connected to the POS and Excel workflows the team already used, without replacing existing screens.
One centralized dashboard for the West India network
McDonald's India brought in Pickcel's digital signage software to replace screen-by-screen updates with one centralized dashboard for its entire West India network. Instead of coordinating changes location by location, the operations team schedules and pushes pricing, menu, and promotional content across every screen from a single point of control.
Existing Android and LG webOS screens stayed in place
The platform was built around the fleet already in place rather than requiring a new one. Pickcel supports both Android media players and LG webOS displays natively, so McDonald's India did not need to replace any existing screens to move to centralized management. That decision shaped the rollout timeline directly: sourcing and installing new hardware at every location would have added weeks and required on-site visits the existing-hardware approach avoided.
POS and Excel workflows connected to every screen
Pickcel also connects into the POS and Excel-based pricing workflow McDonald's India already used. Because the integration works with pricing and menu data maintained in those existing systems, the operations team did not need to adopt a new planning process, only a new way of publishing changes. Price updates and seasonal menu changes now flow through to Pickcel and out to every screen on the network at the same time, removing the manual step of re-entering the same change location by location.
1,300+ Boards Live in Under a Week
More than 1,300 digital menu boards from one dashboard
The full West India rollout completed in under a week, with no on-site installation visits required at any location — because the existing hardware fleet stayed in place.
The mixed device fleet no longer means two disconnected systems. Android media players and LG webOS displays run from the same platform, so the operations team manages one network rather than maintaining separate processes for each hardware type.
Updates that once required action at each location now go out to the full network at the same time, from the same POS and Excel-connected workflow the team already used — without site visits for routine pricing or menu changes.
Pickcel is a cloud-based digital signage software platform trusted by 9,000+ businesses across 70+ countries, managing 150,000+ screens. Certified ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II. In the QSR sector, Pickcel also powers digital menu boards and in-store displays for chains including Third Wave Coffee, supporting centralized pricing and multi-location content management across similarly mixed-hardware environments.
QSR Teams Trust Pickcel
"Pickcel handles a complex mix of LG webOS and Android players across our network. With POS and Excel integrations, our operations team can roll out price changes and seasonal menus centrally, without touching the signage software layer."
McDonald's India
Digital menu board operations team
Questions About McDonald's India's Rollout
Can digital menu board software manage a mixed fleet of Android and LG webOS screens?+
Yes, and that flexibility extends to how McDonald's India opens new locations too: since Pickcel already manages both device types from the same dashboard, a new outlet doesn't have to match the hardware standard running at other stores. It can install Android media players, LG webOS displays, or a mix of the two, and join the same centrally managed network without a separate setup process.
If McDonald's India needs to push a price correction outside its regular update cycle, does that go through the same POS and Excel-connected setup, or does it need a manual workaround?+
It goes through the same setup used for planned changes. Pickcel pulls pricing and menu data from the POS and Excel systems McDonald's India already uses rather than only syncing on a fixed schedule, so a same-day correction reaches every screen the same way a scheduled seasonal update does, with no separate manual step to push it outside the normal update path.
How many screens does McDonald's India manage centrally with Pickcel?+
McDonald's India manages its digital menu boards across West India operations through a single Pickcel dashboard. That covers the full West India network, not a partial or phased rollout, with every location running on the same centrally managed system. See the At-a-Glance summary above for the exact current screen count.
How long does it take to deploy digital menu boards across a large QSR network?+
Timelines vary by network size and hardware. McDonald's India's West India rollout benefited from a specific starting point, existing hardware already in place and no device swap required, so it moved faster than a rollout that does need to replace screens, or one at a very different scale, should expect. The exact timeline for this deployment is in the At-a-Glance summary above.
Can seasonal menus and price changes be rolled out to all locations at once?+
Yes, and the same dashboard isn't limited to all-or-nothing pushes. A regional promotion or a price test can be sent to a defined subset of McDonald's India's locations only, without triggering the same change across the rest of the West India network, useful when a rollout needs to happen in stages rather than everywhere on day one.
Does switching to digital menu boards require replacing existing screen hardware?+
Not for this rollout. Down the line, if an individual screen fails or reaches end of life, McDonald's India isn't locked into sourcing an exact match: because Pickcel supports Android media players and LG webOS displays equally, a replacement can be either type, priced and sourced on its own terms, without any change to how the rest of the network is managed.
