Ah, McDonald’s French Fries. According to a poll we recently ran here, 48% of about 42,000 of you prefer this restaurant’s slender tan starch sticks to all the other restaurant tuber cutting offerings, with this percentage more than double the next runner up which was a blanket choice of “Other”- i.e. nearly all other restaurant french fries combined. While many view McDonald’s as a hamburger joint, the truth is, beyond in the present day McDonald’s making about 1/3 of their revenue from their franchises on real estate (all once causing Ray Kroc to quip he wasn’t in the hamburger business, but rather “My business is real estate”), McDonald’s came to dominate the world of fast food for primarily one reason- their french fries, with an astounding 1 out of every 200 potatoes grown in the world today used to make these salty sticks of potato guts. Which is extra good for the company as french fries are also one of the most profitable non-beverage items on the menu. So just how did these french fries come to be? What exactly is in them and how are they made? Why were they the center of a surprisingly bitter and occasionally riotous and deadly fight? And just who invented french fries at all in the first place?

Well, tuck in ladies and gents, and let’s do a deep fried dive into the history of the french fry and its perfected version at McDonald’s, shall we?

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

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