This time, a US freight forwarding company is swinging into action and using three Boeing 747s to fly potatoes into Japan amid a critical shortage of french fries in Japanese McDonald’s outlets. //
Normally, McDonald’s brings its potatoes in via ship from Vancouver. But flood damage and the impact of coronavirus on global supply networks have caused delays there.
“The fries shortage is primarily due to the supply side of McDonald’s global supply chain,” Hiroshi Ohashi, an economics professor from the University of Tokyo, told NBC. “They procure potatoes from the US, where port shipping has been a bottleneck.”
Step in Ryan Petersen, Chief Executive Officer at Flexport, a US-based freight forwarder company. On Wednesday, he confirmed via Twitter the company had contracted to fly three planeloads of potatoes to Japan to alleviate the french fries shortage.
When news of the potato shortage broke in Japan, there was a scramble to get the last serves lest a person be forced to live without french fries for a week or two. This only caused a further shortage. //
How many potatoes can a 747 freighter fly? One person online did the maths. A Boeing 747 freighter can fly about 112,760 kilograms of freight. A large serve of McDonald’s french fries weighs about 154 grams. That’s about 2.2 million large serves of french fries per plane.
This seems like a lot, but one person pointed out there are 2,975 McDonald’s outlets in Japan. McDonald’s 34,000 worldwide stores go through just over four million kilograms of potatoes per day. On a pro-rata basis, Japanese McDonald’s customers eat 375,000 kilograms of french fries a day. On these numbers, Ryan Petersen might have to back up for some further flying.
