On Friday, October 8, 2021, McDonald’s China announced the release of its first NFT in celebration of its 31st anniversary of entering the Chinese mainland market. And also, the official opening of its new headquarters building in Shanghai. The design of the new Shanghai offices was the inspiration for creating the NFT.
McDonald’s Big Mac NFT
The first token to drop from McDonald’s China is called the “Big Mac Cube”. It is named after one of the restaurant chain’s most popular sandwiches.
The Big Mac Cube “is a three-dimensional dynamic digital creative work inspired by the brand spirit of McDonald’s and the shape of the new headquarters building.” The 188 NFT creative works that will be released will be available to employees and customers of the franchise in the form of limited gifts.
CEO of McDonald’s China, Zhang Jiaying, expressed his pleasure that McDonald’s was the first domestic restaurant brand to release an NFT. “McDonald’s is a young and trendy brand that has always paid attention to fashion trends and cutting-edge technology,”
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The Big Mac Cube draws inspiration from the structure of the new headquarters building in Shanghai. The design represents the company’s signature colors of red, orange, and yellow.
The fast-food franchise also designed the pieces based on five company values as well as three keywords. The values are service, tolerance, integrity, community, and family. While the keywords are love, technology, and trend. With these, the company designed eight three-dimensional scenes and combined them with the shape of the new headquarters building to create a “big nothing”.
Commenting on the inspiration, the CEO also continued: “McDonald’s China’s new headquarters building is a brand new development of McDonald’s China. Milestones. At this special moment, we use the form of NFT to share McDonald’s innovation, digitalization, and trend art with employees and consumers.”
Fast Food Chains And NFTs
McDonald’s is just one of the fast-food chains to have recently delved into NFT. Other companies like Taco Bell, Burger King, as well as Budweiser have previously released NFTs.
In March, Taco Bell became the first fast-food chain to jump on the NFT trend. The company released five versions of digital art called “NFTacoBells”, selling five copies of each. The 25 total pieces of crypto-art sold in under 30 minutes on Rarible, an NFT trading platform.
Last month, Burger King also launched an NFT campaign with the online NFT platform Sweet. The “Keep It Real Meals” initiative showcases QR codes appearing on nearly six million meal boxes. Scanning the QR codes unlocks a digital collectible, and collecting them could lead to unlocking bonus NFTs.
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McDonald’s has been making efforts to adapt to the ever-evolving digital world. Just last month, the franchise became the first major fast-food restaurant in the world to accept Bitcoin as a payment option. This was possible because of El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender.
Featured image by Wall Street Journal