Simon Kenny: McDonald's NZ Head of Impact and Communications on 90% of their ingredients being locally sourced
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What are the headline figures for McDonald’s locally‑sourced spending in New Zealand?
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Interesting numbers from uh fast food and the impact on our economy. McDonald spent more than five hundred and eighty million dollars on locally produced ingredients last year, over half a billion dollars, ninety percent of that's locally sourced.
How does McDonald’s NZ decide whether an ingredient can be sourced locally?
We got seventeen million kilos of uh Canterbury potatoes, got ten and a half million eggs, got more than sixty four hundred tons of beef. We also export that, by the way, to the tune of three hundred and twenty four million dollars worth. Anyway, Simon Kenny is the head of impact and communications at Maccas, and he's with us. Simon Morning. Good morning, why does that stuff change a lot from year to year? Uh,
the export beef does the new the the domestic uh amount that we use in New Zealand kind of incrementally, but the uh the beef can go up and down quite a bit depending on the the global beef markets, which has been a a big pressure, like everyone knows, price of beef, uh beef mints driven by um overseas demand, yeah.
Yeah. Is is and and is the local side of the equation so it's significant here for obvious reasons because we're a country that grows stuff, does it change materially internationally depending on where you are in the world with McDonald's? In other words, a lot's imported?
Yeah, definitely.
Why does the amount of beef McDonald’s uses in NZ fluctuate year‑to‑year?
Yeah, we're we're fortunate in New Zealand that virtually everything you eat on the menu we can source locally and that's always the first port of call is can can we source locally and that's been going for yeah we're fifty years in New Zealand this year. But um yeah, certainly in other markets, um a lot of um things get imported into into other other countries. A lot of our beef goes to up into um Asia and North America, um, you know, markets that in Western Europe are are are bringing in food from um, you know, all sorts of places.
Do you do that? Does McDonald's do that for other McDonalds? Or does is that a separate thing that they do through New Zealand Inc. as opposed to New Zealand McDonald's?
Uh, like the beef, for instance, there's a a company that's sort of part of McDonald's that that buys beef across Australia and New Zealand just for McDonald's markets. So uh they're they're going, where is their demand from McDonald's in China or uh the US or other markets like that? How much do they need? And and they buy beef on the commodity market in in New Zealand uh to export to those markets to meet their demand.
Is McDonald’s the biggest buyer of Canterbury potatoes and how are those contracts structured?
Yeah. And and how big a take supermarkets out of the equation, but how big a buyer, say of potatoes would you be? Would you be the biggest purchaser of potatoes from Canterbury in the country at seventeen million kilos?
Yeah, well we only buy certain types of potatoes as well. So, um, we're not using your sort of supermarket uh agree or uh other types of um normal uh normal potatoes. Um there's special varieties that we use that that meet the the quality we've got. So we've got farms like Houston Farms down in South Canterbury that would just grow uh those varieties for us. So exclusively buying uh from that supply.
And so they're ongoing contracts, ongoing long term contracts with people because it's a it's the sort of bill that they would come with a contract of that size, isn't it? I mean I I'd I'd fill a paddock full of potatoes if I knew I was going to sell you seventeen million kilos worth.
Yeah, and there's all sorts of specification and quality and and surety of um, you know, um the scale we're buying at. We need to make sure that we've got um someone who can keep supplying it the s size we do. And you've seen, you know, a few years ago there was a let lettuce shortage, seasonal shortage in winter, and so we know we need we need to make sure our suppliers can can keep the lettuce coming to us.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What are the headline figures for McDonald’s locally‑sourced spending in New Zealand?
0:00–0:40
2
How does McDonald’s NZ decide whether an ingredient can be sourced locally?
0:40–1:31
3
Why does the amount of beef McDonald’s uses in NZ fluctuate year‑to‑year?
1:31–2:32
4
Is McDonald’s the biggest buyer of Canterbury potatoes and how are those contracts structured?
2:32–3:48
5
What challenges does McDonald’s face securing eggs and lettuce, and how do they mitigate supply risks?
3:48–4:42
6
How does McDonald’s balance local sourcing with export demands to overseas markets?
4:42–4:57
Speakers
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