A marriage can easily be terminated by a divorce paper and similarly, a 40 year old partnership can be annulled when your competitor buys your ketchup supplier. After four decades of Heinz Ketchup being available at McDonald’s, customers will have to adapt to a different brand of ketchup to eat with their fries, nuggets, or burgers. Although this may be devastating to some, this breakup doesn’t appear to affect my fellow classmate.
Early in February of 2013, Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital Management, the major owner of Burger King, agreed on purchase Heinz ketchup together at an estimated cost of $28 billion, including any previous accumulated debt. In June, the two companies declared Bernardo Hees, who was the ex-CEO of Burger King, to become the new CEO of Heinz Ketchup. The outcome was McDonald’s announcing it would no longer be partnering with Heinz due to “management changes”. The justification behind this, as stated by my classmate is “[obviously], McDonald’s wouldn’t want to form a partnership with a company that is so closely affiliated with [its] competitors” (Victor, 2013).
I agree with my classmate that “[one] thing that happens to a business has a chain reaction that ultimately ends up affecting the customer” (Victor, 2013) as the McDonald’s and Heinz case is evidence supporting this statement.
Since Heinz is perhaps the most well-known condiment supplier, I wonder who McDonald’s will replace them with. Will the value to the customers change or remain constant? I however will not have to worry about this as the only item I ever get from McDonald’s is the hot chocolate which surely doesn’t need any ketchup.
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