Beginning Jan. 2, it started telling employees who felt sick to stay home and it would pay their wages while they self quarantined.
Lessons learned there were applied to its world-wide operations which involve supplying a quarter of the world’s frozen french fries.
For example, canteens have barriers to keep employees separated.
They have to answer daily questionnaires, have their temperature checked and maintain social distancing.
About half of McCain’s sales are to restaurants, so it was immediately left with huge inventories and stopped buying from farmers.
“Our growers in Canada ended up having hundreds of millions of pounds of potatoes on their hands. Same in the U.S.; same in the whole of our operations. What are we going to do with that? Those are issues in the hundreds of millions, not the tens of millions,” Max Koeune, chief executive officer, told Report on Business magazine.
“In Canada, we donated 20 million pounds to the food banks. We’ve done the same in all the countries where we operate, at different scales,” he said.
