To support French potato farmers who are struggling to sell crops that would've normally been sold to restaurants, Burger King in France purchased an extra 200,000 kg of potatoes and started handing them out to customers on February 2nd.
Anyone visiting a participating drive-thru will receive a 1 kg bag of raw potatoes. For customers puzzled about what to do with potatoes that aren't served up as French fries, Burger King posted three recipes online. The campaign was developed with Parisian agency Buzzman.
Last year, stories of vegetables left to rot in fields were an early signal of widespread economic disruption caused by COVID-19. Farmers purchased seed potatoes for these crops before the pandemic started and now have little time left before their harvested 'patates' in storage go to waste. Helping out farmers while offering consumers a free kitchen staple is clearly a win-win. And given the low price of most commodity foods, it's not a costly initiative for brands in other countries to copy to their own markets. Any sweet PR buzz you might generate is a nice extra ;-)
