Another massive corporation makes the move into the Metaverse, which is one of the hottest spaces for investments since last year. This time, it is McDonald’s, who has announced their intentions to sell virtual food and beverage products by filing 12 different trademark applications related to virtual food, virtual restaurants, and other virtual products and services.

There are two specific filings by McDonald’s that confirms their intention of entering the Metaverse. The first trademark describes “virtual food and beverage products,” plus “downloadable multimedia files containing artwork, text, audio and video files and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).” The second trademark describes “operating a virtual restaurant selling actual and virtual goods, operating a virtual restaurant online featuring home delivery.”

McDonald’s joins Panera Bread as the second food brand to be joining the metaverse. Previously, Panera Bread has announced that it will be operating “virtual restaurants and cafes” under the brand name PANERAVERSE.

Partially the reason behind many corporations moving into the metaverse, as we have seen from corporate behemoths such as Nike, McDonald’s, and Samsung, is from the research report released by data insights firm Gartner, which was covering tech trends in the next 5 years. It claims that by 2026, 25% of all population will spend at least an hour in the metaverse per day.

Gartner defines the metaverse as a virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital realities. By 2026, the metaverse will no longer be singularly defined by gaming/leisure. Gartner predicts that corporations will be utilizing the metaverse as a way to create virtual collaborative offices to enhance the efficiency of the hybrid/work-from-home model. Thus, the metaverse will see an exponential increase in use cases in the next 5 years, depending on the growth and scaling of various metaverse environments, and how well the blockchain protocols behind the metaverses can support it.

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