The prices of all kinds of things have stayed stubbornly high even as inflation has cooled. And a spate of lawsuits point to algorithmic price fixing as the culprit. Just look at frozen potatoes. This episode was produced by Peter Balanon-Rosen with help from Devan Schwartz, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Bpyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Chef Jay Murray at Grill 23 in Boston shows off a dish of tater tots. Photo by MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are frozen potatoes and why are they important?
On the show today, we're gonna talk about potatoes. Frozen potatoes in particular. Tonight's forecast, a freeze is coming. We're gonna talk about frozen potatoes because they actually have a lot to say about where the country's at right now.
Brixton's baked potatoes mascot. You see it there. It's the tater trump.
Go ahead, please.
Taterbots, coming up on Today Explained. Support for the show comes from Yonder. There's a certain time and place for you to be checking your phone, and the classroom probably isn't one of them. Shouldn't school classrooms have, at the very least, the level of focus a stand-up comedian would demand of their audience? Yonder says they are committed to fostering phone-free schools.
Learn more at overyonder.com. That's O-V-E-R-Y-O-N-D-R dot com. Overyonder.com without the E in yonder.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of the tater trump?
Yes.
Okay. So Josh takes to the internet. He sees all of the prices of potatoes going up, but also by the exact same amount. And he says, something's going on here.
In this moment of frustration, he's like, it's happening in this way that looks really a lot like price fixing. I'm going to go online and write some tweets about it. The tweets go viral. And then no one really talks about it for, you know, a couple of years.
Two years later, Josh's tweets show up cited in this, like, series of private lawsuits calling out price fixing in this frozen potato industry. Huh. So, you know, but, you know, he was not the only one to have been harmed by this because all of these lawsuits are being brought with the help of, you know, these...
Antitrust lawyers buy grocery store chains, restaurants, food suppliers all around the country who are saying, like, these prices are going up, they're going up in lockstep, and it's hurting our bottom lines.
When we talk about the potato companies, who are we talking about? Would people know the names of these companies? Are they, you know, like everyday companies that you see at the grocery store?
These are companies that are a little bit behind the scenes. Their names are Lamb Weston Holdings, Cavendish Farms. Probably you're unfamiliar with them if you are a layperson.
I've heard of Cavendish.
OK, yeah. You know, like they are often part of bigger agricultural conglomerates. in the case of Cavendish Farms. But, you know, these are not big brand name companies because they're not usually selling their products to consumers at the grocery store. You're not going to be going to buy your frozen French fries.
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