As we’ve seen over the past month, the global supply crisis and other factors have taken a huge toll on the supply of potatoes scheduled for the thousands of McDonald’s locations in Japan. As SoraNews24 reports, 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 which has more recently included a rapidly dwindling supply of hash browns at McDonalds outlets too.
To make matters even worse for the major fast food chain, the competition have smelled blood in the water and are capitalizing on McDonald’s moment of weakness, the SoraNews24 report reads. Rival chain Freshness Burger boldly launched the We’ve Got Potatoes! campaign and increased their regular and large orders of fries by 25 percent without changing the price.
Now even convenience stores are getting in on the action 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 fries from Agria potatoes arrive through a completely different trade route and are sourced from Europe, mainly Germany. In a press release the chain declared that they will continue to sell fries in the foreseeable future.
