From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

LEFt: MacFries coming off
the line, late 1970s.
RIGht: Trimming in the early
days was labour-intensive.
bELow: The Russet Burbank.
the company a boost because other potential buyers saw the success McDonald’s was
having using fries supplied by McCain.
Mac deserves credit for the McDonald’s breakthrough, according to Wallace McCain.
It helped that a U.K. dock strike was forcing McDonald’s to fly its fries in from Idaho
at high cost, making a local source of supply all the more attractive. At the same time,
he had to overcome a handicap in dealing with McDonald’s, namely that Harrison and
Wallace had seriously annoyed the chain’s top executives by refusing to let its representatives
visit McCain’s Grand Falls factory. “We told them we knew how to make fries
and did not need them to check or teach us,” Wallace says. “Supplying them in the
United Kingdom broke the ice, also with the decision makers in Canada, the United
States, and elsewhere.”
The fundamental characteristic of a chain is that customers are served the identical
product no matter whether the outlet they enter is in Mexico City or Manchester.
This is what gives a chain its advantage over individual restaurants: a new outlet of
a ubiquitous chain like McDonald’s has loyal customers the day it opens its doors
because those customers have enjoyed its food in other locations. In contrast, a new
non-chain restaurant must build its business from scratch.
Because of its desire for uniformity, McDonald’s wanted Russet Burbank fries, just
like the ones it served in the United States. “Eventually,” says Mac, “we gave them
their Idaho potatoes right here in Yorkshire, but it took time.”
It wasn’t just a matter of picking up the phone and telling suppliers to start supplying
Russet Burbank. If McCain wanted a new variety of potatoes produced in Britain,
it was up to McCain to develop seed potato production. Because of European plant
health regulations, North American potatoes could not be imported into Britain.
McCain was granted permission to import, under strict quarantine, just eight Russet
Burbank seed tubers. Over a period of five years, these were multiplied until there
was enough seed to grow potatoes for processing.
To make quality seed available to the contract growers, McCain bought a Scottish
seed potato company and established McCain Potatoes GB, in Montrose, Scotland.
The new subsidiary was successful and, because of McCain’s efforts, British growers
were able to produce Russet Burbanks for McDonald’s and for the rest of the rapidly
growing McCain Foods (GB) business.
Sales were so strong that the Scarborough plant was expanded in 1972, with the
addition of a second production line at a cost of $3.2 million, a dehydration line, and
more storage space. And when Scarborough could no longer satisfy the demand, the
company opened a second British plant, at a cost of $16 million, in Whittlesey, a town
of fifteen thousand in Cambridgeshire. This plant at the time was the largest frozen
food factory in the world, with an annual capacity of two hundred thousand metric
tons of potatoes. Cedric Ritchie, then chairman of the Bank of Nova Scotia, officiated
at the opening.
Establishing itself as a major force in the British food industry made McCain an
international company, and that had important repercussions. For one thing, it made
the company more attractive to Canadians as a place to work, since a job at McCain
Foods held the possibility of foreign travel.
Allison McCain had no intention of working in the family business when he visited
England in 1975. He had lunch in London with his uncle Harrison McCain and
Mac McCarthy; they suggested he tour the Scarborough plant and the new one in
Whittlesey, which had just started production.
52 From the g round up
crossing the AtlA ntic 53
LEFt: The pizza line in
Scarborough, c.1979.
RIGht: Mac adjudicating a
McCain pizza eating contest,
1980.