From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

CHAPTER SIX
South of the Border
In a famous song about New York, Frank Sinatra sings, “If I can make it there, I’ll
make it anywhere.” The same can be said of the United States as a whole. It is the
world’s largest, most competitive, and most innovative consumer market. Any company
serious about being a global force in its industry must be a major player in the
United States. If the company’s business is convenience food, the United States is irresistible.
No people has embraced fast food outside the home and convenience food
inside it as enthusiastically as the Americans.
In the post–World War II era, Ray Kroc of McDonald’s and other fast food pioneers
built quick-service chains that have become omnipresent in the United States
and household names around the world. By the turn of the twentieth century, half
the meals served in the United States were eaten outside the home, and half of those
were consumed in cars.
In the early years of the twenty-first century, critics of fast food branded it unhealthy
and claimed it was making Americans fat. But the criticism wasn’t dampening
the American public’s enthusiasm for the fare that the quick-service chains offered. In
2006, 34 percent of all U.S. restaurant sales were in quick-service restaurants, whose
patrons spent U.S.$172 billion, up from U.S.$144 billion in 2005.
The McCain brothers had their eyes on the U.S. market from the earliest years of
their company’s history. And they tested it early on, exporting product into the U.S.
Northeast from New Brunswick and operating french fry plants in Maine.
Wisely, they were in no hurry to make a major commitment. This typified their approach
to global expansion: aggressive and cautious at the same time. Asserting that
your ambition is to be the world’s biggest producer of frozen french fries is aggressive.
The goal could not be attained unless McCain Foods claimed a big share of all major
south of the border
FACING PAGE: B.D. Grass
Farm, Blaine, Maine:
windrowers lift potatoes
from the ground for
harvesters to collect.
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