Now anyone with even the smallest grasp of procurement knows that in most cases standardization is good, but one has to wonder how far this decree should be taken.
This coming Monday, McDonalds will close their three Icelandic restaurants turning Iceland into one of few McDonalds free zones in Europe (the others being Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina). In a Reuters interview, Jon Ogmundsson, managing director of Lyst, holder of the McDonald’s franchise in Iceland, blame rising cost of supplies as the main reason for the closure. With McDonalds famed for their comparability across the globe – taste wise, if not cost wise – changing the ingredients seemed out of the question.
“For a kilo of onion, imported from Germany, I’m paying the equivalent of a bottle of good whiskey.” Now, the
Icelandic economy is still in a freefall so there are of course other aspects that play into this equation as well, but one might wonder what could have happened if the purchasing professionals at McDonalds in Iceland had stayed a little more on their toes when it came to sourcing their ingredients for 2009.
