There’s a New York Times article about a shortage of french fries at McDonalds Japan due to an American dockworker dispute. In the article, there’s a line:
It’s not clear from the article whether this means only McDonalds Japan is using American french fries or every McDonalds internationally. If so, that must be an amazing feat logistically to ship french fries to every corner of the earth and sell them for, well, potatoes.
Does anyone have knowledge as to whether every McDonalds worldwide uses only American potatoes?
It’s a misunderstanding of the policy. McDonalds’ policy is to use, as much as possible, the agricultural produce of the country it’s in. So in America, they’ll try to use 100% American potatoes, but in the UK, they’ll use UK potatoes.
Now, Japan is not one of the great food-producing nations of the world, and of what food they do produce, potatoes probably aren’t high on the list. So maybe the Japanese McDonalds do need to import potatoes. But it’s not because of company policy, it’s because there just aren’t many local Japanese potatoes.
Sure, but then why not ship french fries from McDonalds China or McDonalds Australia? Surely that would be a better alternative than rationing or air freighting. The article seems to imply that the only source of McDonalds french fries is from the US which is what I found so weird.
Why not ship from China? There’s a clue in the article, “This summer it had to take Chicken McNuggets off the menu after a supplier in China was found to have mixed expired meat into its deliveries.”
Consistent with many of the comments made above, recall “The McDonald’s Index”.
This is an index used by investors to compare costs and economic circumstances in various countries.
The underlying theory is that McDonald’s uses locally sourced ingredients in their foods, so a comparison of the costs of McDonald’s products is a good comparison of the economic circumstances of individual countries.
PS: this is a variation of “The Mars Bar Index”.
Macc’s fries need to be specifically manufactured. You don’t just take a potato and chip it.
You take the chip and your blanch it and coat it in sugars… this puts the correct sugar to make it uniformly yellow/golden… and then half cook it at the factory.
There are two manufacturing factories for Macca’s in Australia, and one in New Zealand. They use potatoes from farms near enough to the factory.
Japan does produce a lot of potato itself and is nearly self sufficient - I don’t know why Macca’s has to import all of their fries from USA… but maybe the complicated manufacturing process is protected somehow there.
Maybe the volume was too small in the past, there’s been a bit of a boom.
Also Japan are very fussy about which states of the USA they can import from, and I take that to mean that they do it for quarantine - being an island they can be free of potato diseases… so switching country of origin may be quite a bureaucratic and technical process…
They will get more fries air lifted in for a Jan 5 restart of unlimited fries.
From another New York Times article, “Japan’s locally grown potatoes are mostly eaten fresh, rather than as fries, and production has been declining for years.”
Nitpick for anyone trying to search for this - it is called the “Big Mac Index”. For all I know it probably will still come back, but here it is for any interested:
Someone else did something similar called the “iPod index” - and since no one uses iPods anymore - it’s become the iPad Index
Not really. there is a proprietary process involved and it’s different for every chain. There is a very large potato processing plant in the town next to mine that’s a huge employer for the region. I’ve had several friends work at the plant, one in quality control. They only do one company’s fries on a given day (or week) and things have to be switched up between companies. The plant used to have a McD’s contract, but does not any longer.
If it was a matter of just cutting them up and frying them in the standard fry oils, everybody’s fries would taste the same. You’d be surprised how many ways you can handle potatoes.
In fifteen years, I’ve never seen anything but local potatoes sold fresh. It appears that all the imports go directly to restaurants, with fast food chains accounting for most of the demand.
From what I’ve read, the fries McDonald’s Japan imports are pre-cut (and probably pre-processed) and that is why they could not rapidly change to other providers as these products are prepared to specs.
McDonalds claim to use only local produce but in Australia at least they are lying. Potato farmers have been conned by McDonalds worse than any other producers. First they started paying a bonus to Tasmanian farmers to grow larger potatoes of certain varieties. As soon as they had saturation and every farmer grew that variety for McDonalds they cut their prices. A few years ago for no reason other than greed they started inporting their potatoes from New Zealand.
It’s not so simple.
McDonald’s is VERY picky about its potatoes, and they have strict quality control. They have specific standards that have to be met in laboratory testing–each fry must weigh a certain amount before and after cooking, absorb X amount of oil, remain crisp for X amount of time, etc…
Certain species of potatoes meet those standards, but not all. And if local potatoes don’t meet the lab tests, then McD’s corporate headquarters require the franchise to import potatoes that do meet the standards.
Cite: my memory, from 20 years ago when Mcdonald’s decided to open its first restaurants in Israel.
Potatoes became a political issue in the news. The Department of Agriculture had regulations about how many potatoes would be grown, and of what species. (in a desert climate, allocation of irrigation water, and which crops can be grown, is a big -and legitimate- issue). McDonalds demanded a different kind of potato …and eventually, the government caved in to the corporate demands.
But are McDonalds America french fries different in specification from McDonalds Australia? So different that they would be unsubstitutable? I certainly never noticed a difference, eating fries in both countries. It just seems weird that instead of putting up a sign saying “We’ll be serving Australian french fries this month, sorry for the inconvenience”, McDonalds Japan would go to the trouble of air lifting in American french fries, shipping them from the east coast and imposing rationing rather than deal with a McDonalds from anywhere else in the world.
ISTR a news story from a few years back where McD’s was using some kind of flavoring agent in their fries that was beef-derived, and vegans and many people in India were very agitated about it, as the fries weren’t really vegetarian.
And, if you look at the US McDonald’s ingredient list, they have “Natural Beef Flavor” listed as an ingredient, along with dextrose.
So they actually do something different than literally cut them and fry them, and I’d bet it’s uniform the world over, because having consistent tasting products is a major goal of theirs, even if they’re sourcing ingredients locally.