Russia’s replacement for McDonald’s says it’ll be out of fries for months

(Representative image: Shutterstock)

When Russia’s former McDonald’s restaurants reopened under a new name in June, their new owner promised the menu would remain mostly the same, just without any “Mc” and “Mac” to be seen. But now, a signature item that needed no rebranding — fries — is reportedly missing from the menu.

The new restaurant chain, “Vkusno i Tochka,” which translates to “Tasty, period,” is grappling with a potato shortage, according to Russia’s state news agency Tass. The shortage is the result of both a lean harvest in Russia in 2021 and supply chain disruptions caused by Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine, which have severely limited imports that could potentially fill in the gaps. Representatives from Vkusno i Tochka told Tass that the fries would not return to menus until the fall of 2022, after the next harvest.

That isn’t good news for Alexander Govor, the Siberian oil mogul who bought the 840 McDonald’s stores in Russia, replacing the famous Golden Arches with a new logo — two orange lines aside a red circle representing fries and a hamburger patty.

Govor stepped in after McDonald’s pulled out of Russia this spring to protest President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. By then, the chain’s Russian stores were already buying nearly all of their ingredients from domestic suppliers, so serving the same menu didn’t seem like a challenge.

Russia is not the only country short on potatoes. On top of shipping snags and the global supply chain crisis, potato harvests were low around the world last year, according to Gro Intelligence, which forecasts agricultural trends.

In the United States last year, potato production fell 7% below its five-year average. In East Africa, excessive rainfall led to a low harvest. And in Canada, exports shrunk after a potato wart outbreak prompted an export ban from the country’s largest producing province. That combination of factors prompted fast-food restaurants in Japan, which Gro describes as a major importer of North American potatoes, to similarly ration their fries.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Carly Olson

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