McDonald's In The Metaverse? Fast Food Giant Files Virtual Restaurant Trademarks

McDonald’s is the latest corporate giant to make a move into the metaverse, one of the hottest investment spaces of the last year. The fast food giant has filed 12 different trademarks relating to virtual food, virtual restaurants, and other virtual products and services.

One of the trademarks filed under McCafe describes “Virtual food and beverage products,” plus “Downloadable multimedia files containing artwork, text, audio and video files and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).”

Another filing describes “Operating a virtual restaurant featuring actual and virtual goods, operating a virtual restaurant online featuring home delivery.”

Josh Gerben, trademark attorney and owner of Gerben Intellectual Property, first spotted the trademarks.

“McDonald's is headed to the metaverse.

The company has filed 10 (TEN!) trademark applications indicating it plans to offer "a virtual restaurant featuring actual and virtual goods" and "operating a virtual restaurant featuring home delivery."

McDonald’s golden arches will join bakery chain Panera Bread in the metaverse, or as the Missouri-base company called it, the “Paneraverse.” According to Gerben, Panera Bread has filed a trademark application hinting the company will offer "virtual restaurants and cafes" under the PANERAVERSE brand.

Recently, Apple, the biggest company in the world, also hinted at incoming metaverse investments. In its latest earnings call, a Morgan Stanley representative asked Cook if he was “thinking about the Metaverse opportunity and Apple’s role in that market.”

Cook said:

“Well, that’s a big question, but we’re a company in the businesses innovation so we’re always exploring new and emerging technologies and I’ve spoken at length about how it’s very interesting to us right now. We have over 14,000 AR Kit apps in the App Store which provide incredible AR experiences for millions of people today. So we see a lot of potential in this space and are investing accordingly.”

In line with the many corporations jumping into the nascent virtual universe, a recent report from data insights firm Gartner claimed that by 2026, a quarter of all people will spend at least an hour a day in the metaverse.

“Vendors are already building ways for users to replicate their lives in digital worlds,” said Marty Resnick, research vice president at Gartner. “From attending virtual classrooms to buying digital land and constructing virtual homes, these activities are currently being conducted in separate environments. Eventually, they will take place in a single environment – the metaverse – with multiple destinations across technologies and experiences.”