Shane Parrish

Why not just do it here?

Harrison wasn't really impressed.

The idea felt too simple.

But he wasn't coming up with anything better, and he was getting more desperate by the day, so he grasped it.

His brother Wallace joined him.

They started digging in and found a picture of two countries at different stages of the same industry.

In the United States, the frozen food business at the time was real and growing fast.

The Americans had plants, distribution networks, freezer cases in supermarkets, and fleets of refrigerated trucks on highways.

The technology had been developed in the 1940s and fast food chains were gobbling it up.

In Canada, there was nothing.

Few grocery stores even had freezers.

There were no distributors for frozen products.

The market and its entire infrastructure was missing.

Harrison's instincts started to sniff opportunity in the lack of competition.

There was not a single serious frozen fry producer in the entire country.

Instead of fighting for shelf space against five other brands, the fight would be creating the shelf itself.

To learn more, he showed up at frozen food plants across the US and talked his way in.

walking production lines, asking questions, and studying machinery.

On one visit, a plant owner gave him an honest assessment.

Don't do it.