I don’t quite understand this story. Doesn’t McDonalds have a global distribution supply network? Franchises don’t buy hamburger buns at a local bakery? Or hamburger from the local meat packer? do they? I was under the impression all the Franchise supplies were shipped in? So every McDonalds burger is the same everywhere.
McDonald’s has potato farmers growing their special spuds all over the planet. If you shipped frozen fries from the States, a small order of fries would cost 300 pesos in Bariloche.
Ace, ace, ace…please look up the term “contract baking.” If there is any essential ingredient in McD’s food, they provide it. Then the local bakery bakes it. As for the rather mistaken idea that their food has some hidden power to resist mold or spoilage, I’m afraid you’ve been smoking your running socks again. McD’s has also been accused of witchcraft, buggery and who knows what else. Doesn’t mean a lick of it is true.
eta: As for shipping supplies in from another country, look up “nick of time” supply chains. It’s not like the Chilean distribution network has a whole countries worth of extra food lying around.
Although, oddly enough, McDonalds Japan’s french fries are all imported from the US. I get that Japan is an island nation and it might not be economical to use Japanese potatoes in french fries but why they don’t just use McDonalds China french fries or McDonalds Korea french fries is a mystery to me.
Lack of access to hard currency would be my guess. Nobody in surrounding countries wants any bolivars due to rampant inflation and it’s all but impossible to exchange them for US Dollars due to currency controls.
There are old burgers that never decay. Heres one from 1999.
I thought Fast Food franchises used a sophisticated distribution network just like Walmart or any other global conglomerate. I’ve seen Tractor trailers unloading supplies at McDonald’s.
Guess I learned something again. My hamburger buns was baked locally.
The reason you see semi trailers unloading stuff at McD’s is more due to the fact that there are likely a gazillion franchises in that area as opposed to the food was trucked in from Winnetka.
McDonalds burger patties contain ground beef and salt. Why would they waste money on expensive preservatives? The patties are preserved before serving by a mysterious process known as “freezing”. They get cooked, and then sold, and if they aren’t sold within an hour or so they get dumped in the trash.
It’s not like McDonalds is selling food that might sit on a pantry shelf for years before being eaten, like a Twinkie. Frozen food arrives, gets cooked, and then sold or thrown out, they don’t keep old burgers for years in the back room hoping to sell them someday.
As for decades old hamburger patties, if you dry out a thin meat patty how can it rot? Rotting requires bacteria, and bacteria need moisture… This process of preserving meat goes back tens of thousands of years. The scary mysterious chemical that preserves flesh for years? Sodium Chloride.
my relative works for glassos bread bakery one of the top 10 in southern ca and they merged with a place called fresh start a bakery whos sole original purpose was to provide mcds with English muffins and they moved on to the sandwich buns …
Although I think all the meat they use is American because the corp that owned all the mcds in Iceland dropped the franchsement and signed up with a local place because the recession made shipping meat to Iceland unsustainable… that’s why theres no Iceland mcds anymore…
They do. Most likely the french fries here in NY aren’t made from local potatoes. It’s not a local cash crop that could handle a McD’s type order. New York also doesn’t produce enough steers to satisfy McD’s, or grow enough wheat for all the McD’s buns being baked. But then those buns are baked, in bulk, and shipped to the 16 million franchise operators. Baked locally doesn’t mean at the bakery down the block where you buy your baguettes. It means at a commercial high-production bakery. Locally might be 100 or 200 miles away, but not transcontinental.
When a company like McD’s works internationally, they also have to be cognizant of local tastes, and local laws regarding the importation of food. I could, but I’m not going to, look up Venezuela’s laws on importing wheat and beef. Are there tariffs that make it cheaper to source locally?
Also, even if McDonalds shipped all its burgers from a central Burger Depository in Kansas, the individual franchisees would still need to buy them from the parent company. And if nobody has any money in Venezuela, that would include the Venezuelan McDonalds franchisees.
Thank you for informing me. I had jumbled up other Global Corporate Business practices with fast food.
Venezuela used to be known for its beef and agricultural products. They screwed up by focusing their economy on Oil exports. It’s never a good thing to rely on importing your food. They’re paying the price now.
When McDonald’s first opened in Russia (January 1990), a lot of the stuff had to be imported from Germany, the nearest big supplier. (The cheese especially was distinctly European.) Nowadays, pretty much everything that can be provided locally comes from old Soviet state farms that have been rededicated to producing McDonald’s food.
You got that right. If your economy shifts from a net exporter of food to a net importer of same, you got trouble. Could be a little, could be a lot. But definitely trouble.