North America Edition
In the past month, the global supply crisis and other factors have taken a huge toll on the supply of potatoes scheduled for the many McDonald’s locations in Japan. What started as a week-or-two prohibition on anything bigger than a small order of fries has worsened into a month-long potato austerity.
To make matters even worse for the well-known fast food chain, the competition is now capitalizing on McDonald’s moment of weakness. Rival chain Freshness Burger boldly launched the ‘We’ve Got Potatoes!’ campaign, increasing their regular and large orders of fries by 25 percent without changing the price.
Now even convenience stores are participating, with Ministop announcing the Bucket Potato, which boasts three times the regular amount of their X Fried Potatoes for 641 yen.
The reason that Ministop can pull this off while McDonald’s is struggling with their own potato supply from North America is because Ministop’s Agria potatoes arrive through a completely different trade route and are sourced from Europe, mainly Germany.
Source: japantoday.com
