J.R. Simplot Company

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1 input J.R. Simplot Company supplies

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Intelligence

What's known

Sourced claims about this company's role in supply chains, chokepoints, concentration, incidents, dual-use connections.

• Did you know2024

  J.R. Simplot Company owns and operates phosphate mines in the Pocatello, Idaho phosphate district — one of the richest phosphate deposits in the US — and uses the mined ore to manufacture diammonium phosphate (DAP) and monoammonium phosphate (MAP) fertilizers for American farmers. The same phosphate ore Simplot mines to grow crops for its own potato supply is also the raw material source for phosphoric acid, which is used as a food acidulant in cola beverages (the tartness in Coca-Cola and Pepsi is orthophosphoric acid derived from phosphate rock), industrial metal cleaning, pharmaceutical production, and — notably — as a feedstock for organophosphate compounds including nerve agent precursors. Simplot is simultaneously: a McDonald's french fry supplier; a phosphate fertilizer mining company; and an industrial chemical manufacturer whose mine output flows into carbonated beverages, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and (via the broader phosphate mining industry) chemical weapons precursor supply chains. A global phosphate supply disruption (the top reserves are in Morocco, Western Sahara, and China) would simultaneously affect Simplot's fertilizer operations, American farmers' input costs, Coca-Cola's flavor chemistry, and the food security of countries dependent on phosphate fertilizer imports.

  J.R. Simplot Company ↗

• Origin2024

  J.R. Simplot Company was built by John Richard "J.R." Simplot, who started sorting and selling potatoes from an Idaho farm at age 15 in 1923 after his father refused to pay him for his labor and he left home. By the late 1930s, Simplot had built Idaho's largest potato processing operation. During World War II, Simplot won US military contracts to supply dehydrated potatoes to the Army, making him extraordinarily wealthy. In 1967, Ray Kroc of McDonald's Corporation — then rapidly expanding nationally — approached Simplot about supplying McDonald's with a consistent frozen french fry that could be standardized across all franchises. Simplot had already invested in frozen fry technology and agreed to become McDonald's primary US potato supplier. The McDonald's relationship, sustained for over 55 years, is the foundation of Simplot's growth into a $7B+ revenue company. J.R. Simplot died in 2008 at age 99 as one of the wealthiest people in American history, with his founding insight — that McDonald's needed a consistent, standardized frozen fry — creating more personal wealth than any other relationship in the food industry.

  J.R. Simplot Company ↗

• Concentration2024

  McDonald's Corporation sources approximately 70-80% of its US frozen french fry volume from two suppliers: J.R. Simplot Company and Lamb Weston (spun off from ConAgra in 2016). These two Idaho-based processors have supplied McDonald's for over 50 years and produce the specific potato varieties (Russet Burbank, Ranger Russet) in the specific dimensions (3/8" shoestring) that define the global McDonald's fry experience. The standardization of McDonald's fries that Simplot enabled in 1967 — using frozen distribution to eliminate variability across franchises — is the single innovation most responsible for making fast food chains globally scalable. Approximately 9 million pounds of potatoes are consumed at McDonald's US locations daily; the supply concentration between Simplot and Lamb Weston means that a disruption at either Idaho processor would reduce McDonald's fry supply nationally within weeks, as the specific potato varieties and dimensions cannot be sourced on short notice from alternative suppliers.

  McDonald's Corporation ↗