French Fries Poem by gershon hepner

Unless french fries are very crispy
they should be banished as fast food
and trashed or tossed just like a Frisbee,
not chewed before they are eschewed.
When french fries are looking limp,
mayonnaise and vinegar,
tarting-up potato pimps,
make most men misogynicker
if their wives are serving them,
and send a message to the wench,
informing her them, ad hominem,
to learn a lesson from the French.


Jennifer Ordonez writes about Burger King’s French fries in the WSJ, January 15,2001 (“Burger King’s Decision to Develop French Fry Has Been a Whopper”) .

And the improved fries? The taste is 'terrible, ' Mr. Josephson says. They turned out to be so unappetizing, so brittle - some snap like potato chips - that people are passing on them in droves. 'Fry sales are significantly down, ' stated a 1999 internal memo from a special meeting about the new product. 'Double digit % of consumers avoid BK because of our french fries.' In the annals of consumer-product flops, this one has quietly amounted to a whopper. The finger-pointing now extends from the company to potato suppliers to franchisees. Some postulate the fry itself was over-engineered, what with 19 pages of specs; others say cooking inconsistencies are to blame. Whatever the case, franchisees aren't happy. 'It's not just the fry that you're losing, it's the drink and sandwich also, ' says Matt Schoenberg, president of Sydran Services Inc., which runs 250 Burger Kings. 'This fry is too controversial.' Last month, the company told franchisees that it will roll out another further-improved fry early this year. 'There is no doubt that our current fry on some occasions has been of a disappointing quality, ' says Colin Storm, the interim chief executive at Burger King……To guarantee adequate crunch, Burger King included in its 19-page french-fry specifications an unusual requirement that startled even veteran food scientists. For each mouthful of french fry, the degree of crispiness was to be 'determined by an audible crunch that should be present for seven or more chews... loud enough to be apparent to the evaluator.'…. Burger King insists that it has learned from its mistakes, and that that is what counts. The improved fry will be in restaurants by this spring. It will be firm on the outside, the company says, pleasantly mealy on the inside. And the seven audible crunches? History.

1/15/01