Well, they’re perfectly edible.
Mcdonalds has VERY precise standards for their french fries. They are tested in a food lab and must meet certain definitions:Things like how much oil they absorb at X temperature for Y minutes; How much the weight changes before and after frying, how long an individual fry can stand up vertically, unsupported, before becoming limp, etc.
When McD’s decided to open in Israel 20 years ago, there was a huge fight with the local Israeli potato farmers and the Department of Agriculture . The farmers had a monopoly which had been enforced for years by the goverment with a law prohibiting the import of potatoes, so that the local farmers could make more money.
McDonald’s proclaimed that Israeli potatoes did not meet their requirements as measured in food lab tests. They refused to open in Israel unless the government changed the law to allow imports.
McDonald’s won.
They do, but “sophisticated” doesn’t have to mean “everything gets shipped halfway across the globe”. Sometimes it’s a matter of figuring out what should be getting shipped from the other end of the world and what should be made next door.
Surprised that the Venezuelan government hasn’t taken over the local McDonalds there. Two different subsidiaries of ours have had local manufacturing operations nationalized in the last year in Venezuela.
They can’t make their own. The McDonald’s ice recipe is proprietary.
I’m not even going to try to explain the concept of “a joke” to someone like you.
Your “joke”, such as it is, was a complete failure, since McDonald’s isn’t headquartered in Winnetka.
:smack:
(That, too, is a joke.)(Someone want to waste a day and a half and try to explain this to what’s-his-face here? I have to de-fur my wombat.)
I can’t tell if you’re making another joke by pretending not to get the joke…
Where is the humor in confusing Winnetka with Oakbrook? 
He didn’t, he pulled Winnetka out of a map he keeps in his left elbow.
So I gather from this thread that our Freedom Athletes at the Olympics won’t be able to practice their human right of having a Big Mac? And we aren’t at war with them because? Thanks Obama.
Did they move the Olympics to Venezuela? I knew Rio wasn’t shaping up, must have missed the change of countries.
In other news, there’s a chronic food shortage in Venezuela. Not just Big Macs.
The Chavez government set the price that bakeries could sell bread. The cost to make bread is higher than they can charge for it. Big Macs are pretty far down on the list, I’d imagine.
Last I heard, maybe last fall, was an order of fries costing close to $200, and a burger even more. Is that still the case?
Check the first link in my post above, $150 for a dozen eggs.
McDonald fries are really good, though.
That’s a bit of a misleading figure. It comes from converting the price in Bolivars to US Dollars using the “official” exchange rate which was widely acknowledged as a piece of fiction. Using the black market exchange rate, it costs about the same as a burger anywhere else.
The problem is, if you use the black market exchange rate, the average Venezuelan is making something like $200 USD a month. If you’re a Venezuelan with access to hard currency income, life is actually pretty good right now. In the richer neighbourhoods of Caracas, grocery stores are amply stocked with imported cheeses, wines and every sort of first world country good. However, if your income is denominated in Bolivars, and especially if you have a government position with a fixed income, then you’re forced to rely on ever increasingly scarce subsidized food as food on the open market is out of reach expensive.