In the last couple of months, McDonald’s and KFC outlets in countries across the globe have begun scrimping on French fries and other potato-based products. The latest to feel the crunch is McDonald’s in Indonesia, where, as of this week, customers can only order small and medium sizes “due to the limited availability of French fries at this time.”
As JC Gotinga reports for Vice, that was a little over a week after McDonald’s in neighboring Malaysia also made that “sacri-fries,” as the company put it in a pun-laden video announcement on Jan. 24. McDonald’s in Japan also took French fry austerity measures late last year. In Taiwan, meanwhile, some McDonald’s stores went without the early morning incarnation of fried potatoes: hash browns, which were pulled off the menu in the second week of January.
But it’s not just McDonald’s or Asia that are being hit. In Kenya last month, KFC offered fried chicken—its flagship product—as an alternative side dish when it completely ran out of French fries, called “chips” in the country.
Writing for Modern Farmer, author Dan Nosowitz pointed to a “lack of versatility” in the global agricultural trade as the root of current problems, as opposed to a shortage of potatoes themselves.
