What Potatoes Does McDonald's Use? The Russet Burbank Story

Which potato varieties does McDonald's use for French fries?

McDonald's uses a small portfolio of high-starch processing potatoes grown to tightly defined specifications. The dominant variety is Russet Burbank, the long, heavily russeted variety selected by Luther Burbank in 1876 that has anchored the US frozen fry industry for over 60 years. Backup and supplementary varieties include Ranger Russet (released 1991 by the USDA-ARS Tri-State program), Umatilla Russet (1998), Shepody (a Canadian-bred early variety used to start the fry-pack season before main-crop russets are ready), and the newer Tri-State releases Clearwater Russet and Alpine Russet.

All of these varieties share the four traits processors need for an acceptable McDonald's-grade fry: specific gravity above 1.080 (for crispy texture and high fry yield per tonne of raw potatoes), long cylindrical tuber shape (so each potato yields the maximum number of full-length fries), white flesh (for the iconic light-golden color), and low reducing sugars (for color stability during frying). The table below shows the operational specs that processors use to qualify each variety for McDonald's contracts.

Source: USDA-ARS Western Regional Russet Variety Trial Reports; University of Idaho Extension CIS / BUL series; Tri-State Potato Variety Development Program.

Why does McDonald's use Russet Burbank potatoes?

Russet Burbank's commercial dominance is not the result of superior agronomic traits. The variety is susceptible to most major potato diseases (Verticillium wilt, common scab, PVY, late blight), prone to internal defects (hollow heart, brown center, sugar ends), and notoriously stress-sensitive — even mild irrigation or temperature fluctuations cause quality problems. The reason it dominates is that processing infrastructure was built around it.

Four properties make Russet Burbank ideal for the McDonald's fry: (1) Long cylindrical tubers (averaging 75–125 mm) yield the maximum number of long, uniform fry strips per potato, maximizing the premium “long fry” fraction. (2) High specific gravity (1.080–1.095) means more starch per unit weight, producing crispy exteriors and fluffy interiors and increasing fry yield per tonne by 5–10% versus lower-SG varieties. (3) White flesh produces the iconic light-golden fry color that consumers associate with the McDonald's brand. (4) Long dormancy (120–150 days under proper storage) allows the supply chain to run from a single autumn harvest through summer, smoothing out the fry-pack calendar.

The downsides are real. Russet Burbank requires precise irrigation scheduling, split-application nitrogen, and tight harvest-window management. Newer Tri-State varieties such as Clearwater Russet, Alpine Russet, and Galena Russet outperform Russet Burbank on cold sweetening resistance, internal defect tolerance, and yield. But replacing Russet Burbank means re-tuning billion-dollar processing lines, re-training agronomy teams, and re-qualifying the fry against decades-old McDonald's specs — a slow process now underway.

How did J.R. Simplot create the frozen fry industry?

The McDonald's – Russet Burbank lock-in is the result of a single supply-chain decision in the mid-1960s. J.R. Simplot, an Idaho farmer-turned-processor who had developed dehydrated potatoes for the US Army during World War II, pioneered commercial frozen French fry production in the 1950s. In 1965, Simplot struck a deal with Ray Kroc of McDonald's to supply frozen Russet Burbank fries to the chain's rapidly expanding restaurant network.

Before the deal, McDonald's restaurants peeled, cut, and fried fresh potatoes in-store. The 1965 conversion to frozen fries was operationally transformative: it standardized fry quality across thousands of locations, eliminated seasonal supply variability, and lowered labor costs in every restaurant. The decision to standardize on Russet Burbank specs — long, high-SG, white-fleshed — locked the entire global fast-food industry into the same potato. Burger King, Wendy's, KFC, and every other major chain followed McDonald's lead.

Today, the J.R. Simplot Company, Lamb Weston (spun off from ConAgra and now the world's largest frozen potato processor), and McCain Foods (Canadian-headquartered, with major US capacity) together process over 60% of the entire US potato crop. Frozen processing alone consumes approximately 36% of US potato production, with chips and dehydrated products taking another 25%. Idaho, Washington, and Oregon — the Pacific Northwest russet belt — supply the bulk of this flow.

What makes a potato good for French fries?

A processing-grade potato has to clear six quality thresholds simultaneously. Miss any one, and the resulting fry fails the visual, textural, or flavor specs that fast-food chains enforce. The table below summarizes what each threshold is, what the ideal value looks like, and what goes wrong if the potato falls short.

Source: USDA-ARS processing-quality guidelines; University of Idaho Extension storage and quality bulletins.

The single most important constraint is cold sweetening. When potato tubers are stored below approximately 6°C (45°F), starch hydrolyzes to glucose and fructose. These reducing sugars caramelize during the high-temperature fry via the Maillard reaction, producing dark brown to black fry color that is visually unacceptable. Russet Burbank is moderately susceptible to cold sweetening — it can be stored at 7–10°C (45–50°F) for up to 10 months, but loses fry color quality late in the storage season.

This is why newer Tri-State varieties — Clearwater Russet (released 2008), Alpine Russet (2008), and especially Galena Russet (released 2018 by USDA-ARS Aberdeen) — are progressively replacing Russet Burbank in the long-storage segment. Galena Russet can produce light, acceptable fries from storage at 5.6°C (42°F) for up to 7 months — a temperature at which Russet Burbank fails completely.

Where are McDonald's potatoes grown?

The Pacific Northwest dominates US processing potato production. Idaho grows approximately 30% of the US crop with yields averaging 430–450 cwt/acre (~48–50 t/ha) and the world's largest concentration of Russet Burbank acreage. Washington state contributes another 23% from the Columbia Basin, with state-level yields exceeding 600 cwt/acre (~67 t/ha) under center-pivot irrigation — the highest commercial potato yields anywhere on Earth. Canada's New Brunswick and Manitoba also supply significant fry-grade russets to McDonald's, particularly through McCain Foods, the world's largest frozen potato processor.

Other US production zones include Oregon (Columbia Basin and Klamath Basin), Wisconsin, North Dakota, Colorado's San Luis Valley, Maine's Aroostook County, and parts of Michigan. The fresh-market russet from these regions typically goes to retail; processing-grade tubers go to Lamb Weston, Simplot, and McCain. For state-by-state details, see our US production breakdown.

The contract farming model determines what gets planted. Processors sign contracts with growers 6–12 months before planting, specifying variety, acreage, harvest date, and price. The grower is locked into the processor's variety choice; the processor is locked into the grower's land. From field to fry, the cycle runs roughly 6 weeks: harvest in September–October, cure for 1–2 weeks at 12–15°C, transition to long-term cold storage at 7–10°C, then process in batches over the following 8–10 months.

How has the French fry industry changed potato farming?

The fast-food fry economy has reshaped American — and increasingly global — potato agriculture in three ways. First, the share of potatoes flowing to processors has risen from under 30% in 1960 to approximately 69% today (USDA NASS), with frozen processing alone taking over a third of the US crop. Fresh-market potato consumption per capita has been flat or declining for decades; processed potato consumption continues to grow.

Second, variety development has been driven by processor specs rather than consumer preference. The Tri-State Potato Variety Development Program (USDA-ARS Aberdeen + University of Idaho + Oregon State + Washington State) has released over a dozen processing-grade russets since 1991 — Ranger, Umatilla, Western, Blazer, Premier, Gem, Alpine, Classic, Clearwater, Teton, Mountain Gem, Payette, Galena. Each release targets a slightly different processor pain point: cold sweetening resistance, internal defect tolerance, longer dormancy, PVY resistance.

Third, the global frozen fry trade has built powerful national export franchises around the same variety package. Belgium exports $4.8 billion of frozen fries annually — more than the US, Canada, and China combined — using Bintje, Innovator, Agria, and similar high-SG European varieties. The Netherlands is the world's top seed potato exporter, supplying processing-grade seed to 80+ countries. The total global potato processing market is approximately $40–80 billion across frozen, chips, dehydrated, and starch — built on the variety architecture McDonald's set in 1965.

For deeper context, see How Potatoes Are Processed, our global trade guide, and the country profiles for USA, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, China, and the Netherlands.