Shane Parrish

And because they had zero brand recognition in these new categories, Harrison plowed every dollar of profit straight back into marketing and advertising, racing to build loyalty before competitors noticed what was happening.

McCain didn't just survive Australia.

It became the dominant frozen food brand across multiple aisles, not just the French fry aisle.

By the early 1980s, McCain Foods was no longer a scrappy Canadian startup.

Sales topped over a billion dollars in 1985.

and they had plants in eight countries producing frozen fries, vegetables, desserts, pizzas, juices, and oven meals.

They had the financial muscle now to enter any new market without betting the farm, but the biggest market on earth was still barely touched.

In January 1981, Harrison sat down and wrote a strategy memo.

He took stock of the company country by country.

The United States got one sentence.

I think we should try to find another food company in the US that is profitable, pay the top price, and move it into our business.

That sentence would take 16 years to be executed.

They waited for the right opportunity.

And patience was not a quality anyone normally associated with Harrison McCain.

But he understood that he'd be competing in a way that he never did before.

Everywhere else, McCain had been creating markets.

The playbook worked because there was no established competition to fight.

America was the opposite.

It was home to the original fast food chains and to large, well-funded frozen food companies that had been in business for decades.

For the first time, Harrison would be fighting for ground somebody else already had, and those companies were not going to roll over.