I thought this was hyperbolic, so I looked into it:

> The menu team comes up with interesting ideas like including kale in salads. The procurement team and suppliers then try to get the menu team to understand the challenges. How do you bring kale to 14,000 restaurants? As one example, when they introduced Blueberry Smoothies in the U.S., McDonald’s ended up consuming one third of the blueberry market overnight.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2015/10/14/mcdonald...

I couldn't find any other source to back it up, but still wow! That's an absurd number.

So there is an extreme dearth of blueberries I guess compared to other food goods? I mean, McDs isn’t taking over the entire supply of potatoes or chickens for example correct?

I think the point is that the supply chains probably need upwards of years of time to adapt in some cases, you can’t just turn on a recipe that needs a full cup of blueberries per serving on Monday and expect there to be a spare million cups of blueberries to be lying around the supply chain on Tuesday.

In the case in animal product, there are almost certainly major operations worldwide that have been built and financed purely to serve McDonalds demand. They probably have to even build these out well before entering some markets.

They grow a lot of potatoes in the US. Last week I hauled a load of tater tots destined for McDonalds. I’ve hauled potato products for McDonalds quite often.

They raise a lot of chickens in the US. I’ve hauled chicken nuggets or chicken breasts for McDonald’s in the past quite often.

I can’t even tell you where they grow blueberries.

McDonald's sells blueberry muffins