In order to keep track of products it sources from 40 different suppliers based across the country, McDonald’s India has introduced traceability system to record the movement of each ingredient that goes into making burgers at its outlets, a senior official said on Friday.
On a daily basis McDonald’s uses 8,500-9,000 buns, 3,000- 3,500 kgs of tomatoes, 2,000 kgs of iceberg lettuce and 5,500 slices of cheese. These are delivered to 255 restaurants across India using 60-70 refrigerated trucks.
In order 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 farm from where it came, right down to the batch and date of harvest or production, Amit Jatia, Vice Chairman, Hardcastle Restaurents Pvt Ltd, told Business Line. Hardcastle operates and manages McDonald’s 155 restaurants in western and southern regions of India, 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 preventative action.
Traceability, he said, ensures not only consistency in the taste of food at McDonald’s but also sets in place stringent international standards of food safety and quality. If offers customers transparency on the quality of their food, allows specific batch to be identified, isolated and removed in instances where there is a discrepancy in quality standards and ensures the implementation of preventative processes within the McDonald’s supply chain, with significant savings in product waste and operational resources.
Each burger undergoes over 40 separate tests throughout the food chain to ensure that the food that 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 also focus on re-imaging its restaurants with fresh and contemporary designs to enhance customer experience and brand relevance.
At present, the 16-year-old McDonald’s India has a network of over 300 restaurants across the country. Currently it procures 46,000 tonne of potato from Gujarat.
Its potato supplier in Gujarat, McCain, plans to double acreage under the tuber to 8,000 acres next year under contract farming. With improved variety of seeds and other measures, the productivity of the 1,000 farmers it has contracted with has increased by about 25 per cent, a spokesman said.