One afternoon in April 2022, Josh Saltzman, the owner of a sports bar in Washington, D.C., opened his inbox to find what looked like a french fry price-fixing conspiracy.
Saltzman had received a notice from his bar’s food distributor that effective April 4, the four major suppliers of frozen potato products, which sell products like french fries and Tater Tots to bars and restaurants around the country, were all hiking their prices in lockstep, each by $0.12 per pound.
For Saltzman, it was hard to believe this was a coincidence. “It was just the most obvious example of collusion I’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “All of them were raising their prices by virtually the exact same amount within a week of each other.”
Big Potato may be bad enough, but Big Frozen Potatoes are far worse. I lived in Santa Cruz, CA, many years ago. A favorite activity was a walk down to the Wharf to Nelson's, a fried fish and french fry shop overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The shop was narrow, a long bar in the middle with stools for customers, and behind the bar was the kitchen. On the wall was a french fry cutter. The cook would put in a big Russet potato at the top, then pull a lever that produced a batch of nicely cut potato strips. Next to the cutter was the hot oil kettle. In would go the potato strips and after a short time, out would come the almost delicious french fries I have ever eaten, second only to the french fry shops in Brussels, Belgium.
Why anyone ever conceived of cutting potatoes in Idaho, freezing them, and packing them all over the country in refrigerated trucks is a mystery only explained by some cost calculus of a pencil pusher that doing so reduced costs somewhat. We, the french fry eating public lose taste and quality while the world loses energy that could be used better elsewhere or not at all.
"Fry me a river..."