Mar 10, 2013

McDonald’s introduces traceability across all food products

McDonald’s India can now keep track of the products it sources from 40 different suppliers across the country. To do this, it uses a traceability system to record the movement of each ingredient that goes into making its burgers, a senior official said on Friday.

Every day, McDonald’s uses 8,500-9,000 buns, 3,000-3,500 kg of tomatoes, 2,000 kg of iceberg lettuce and 5,500 slices of cheese. These are delivered to 255 restaurants across India using 60-70 refrigerated trucks.

To maintain quality, these products can now be traced back along each step of the production and transportation process to their point of origin — the farms/ units from where they are sourced — right down to the date of harvest or production batch, Amit Jatia, Vice-Chairman, Hardcastle Restaurants Pvt Ltd, told Business Line. Hardcastle operates and manages McDonald’s 155 restaurants in the country’s western and southern regions, employing 7,000 employees, and serving 16.7 crore customers annually.

Using traceability systems, McDonald’s can track the temperature and location of any product being supplied to a restaurant anywhere in India, in real time and with accuracy (tracking temperature variations as small as 1 degree C). The system allows the company to identify where and when the produce temperature rose outside of preset parameters, and take immediate preventive action.

Traceability, he said, ensures not only consistency in the taste of food at McDonald’s but also puts in place stringent international standards of food safety and quality. If offers customers transparency on food quality and allows a specific batch to be identified, isolated and removed in instances where there is a discrepancy in quality standards.

It ensures the implementation of preventive processes within the McDonald’s supply chain, with significant savings in terms of product waste.

Each burger undergoes over 40 separate tests throughout the chain to ensure that the food served is inspected for safety, he added.

In the near future, McDonald’s will deploy brand extensions such as McDelivery, Drive Thrus, Kiosks and 24x7 operations, and will focus on re-imaging its restaurants with fresh and contemporary designs.

At present, the 16-year-old McDonald’s India has a network of over 300 restaurants across the country. Currently it procures 46,000 tonnes of potato from Gujarat. Its potato supplier in Gujarat, McCain, plans to double the acreage under the tuber to 8,000 acres next year under contract farming.

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