News comes across the wires that the once formidable relationship of the McDonald’s ‘french’ fry and Heinz Tomato Ketchup is rapidly being reconsidered pursuant to Berkshire Hathaway’s appointment of Bernardo Hees to run the Heinz operation.
McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc apparently believed in a philosophy that Mickey D calls the “three-legged stool”.
The stool is only as strong as its three legs and in this instance: One is McDonald’s itself, the second is franchisee partners and the third is supplier partners.
In Canada McDonald’s deals with more than 100 Canadian suppliers and those suppliers up until now have included Coca-Cola, Danone, Heinz, McCain, Minute Maid, Mother Parkers, Nestle, Renée’s, Quaker and Saputo.
In the US some of the more notable suppliers are those already name some interesting others namely Gaviña Gourmet Coffee, Lopez Foods, Keystone Foods and Keystone100 Circle Farms.
In the UK they have a number of different suppliers but the main ones are as follows: OSI (beef), Cargill Meats Europe (chicken), Noble Foods (eggs), Arla (milk) and McCain (potatoes). Their products are all delivered to restaurants by Keystone Distribution a logistics and distribution supplier.
According to Reuters the switch will be more apparent overseas than in the United States, as McDonald’s only serves Heinz ketchup in two domestic markets – Pittsburgh and Minneapolis per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report on Friday.
Burger King, where Hees previously served as CEO, has been a Heinz customer for “decades” and uses its products in roughly 80 percent of markets around the world, spokesman Miguel Piedra told Reuters.
This seminal scene from the movie Kill Bill says a lot about how irrelevant this spat is between McDonald’s and Heinz is to most of the world where ketchup is not the first choice as an accompanying condiment.
With the world of tomato ketchup almost completely dominated by heinz perhaps it is time for the McDonald’s to consider mayonnaise as the default alternative, the only question is who will be the supplier?
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