In times of crisis, the aviation industry has a fine history of stepping in to lend
a hand – think emergency airlifts, evacuations, and repatriations.
As 2021 draws to a close, that noble tradition continues. This time,
a US freight forwarding company has stepped into action and deployed three Boeing 747s to
fly potatoes into Japan amid a critical shortage of french fries at Japanese McDonald’s outlets!
First, let’s go over the events that led to the situation. It all stated with a delay
in importing potatoes from North America in late December. McDonald’s Japan announced they
were suspending sales of large and medium serves of french fries across the country.
Normally, McDonald’s brings its potatoes in via cargo ship from Vancouver, Canada.
However, severe flood damage experienced in mid November,
made worse by 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.”
Coming to the rescue was Ryan Petersen, Chief Executive Officer at Flexport, a US-based freight
forwarder company. Though Flexport doesn’t have its own planes, its business is based on booking
space on aircraft operated by the likes of Atlas Air, Plus Logistics, and Western Global Airlines.
Near the end of December, Petersen confirmed via Twitter the company had been 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 servings of freshly cooked spuds. Could you imagine if
someone was forced to live without french fries for a week or two? Nonetheless,
this run on McDonalds french fries only caused a further shortage of the crispy golden snack.
“I did not plan to eat at McDonald’s today. But then, I knew from the news that McDonald’s will
not provide fries in medium portions and large portions from Friday for a week,“ one fries
scoffing local told NBC. “So I went to McDonald’s and had a set meal with large portions of fries.”
So how many potatoes can a 747 freighter fly?
One person online did the math and calculated that a Boeing 747 freighter can fly about 112,760
kilograms of freight. A large portion of McDonald’s french fries weighs about 154 grams.
That’s about 2.2 million large servings 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. Based on these numbers, Ryan Petersen might have to back up for some further flying…
Flexport will doubtless make some handy coin out of their deal – and they’ve generated some
nice publicity as well from this situation. As for McDonald’s Japan, they assured their
customers that large and medium portions of french fries would be back on the menu by January 1st.
Thus, it seems like a major Japanese french fry crisis was narrowly averted.
What do you think of this situation? Share your opinion by leaving a comment.