Why Venezuela has stopped selling Big Macs
Venezuela鈥檚 McDonald's has stopped selling Big Macs due to food shortages within the country. The franchisee said that there are not enough supplies to make the iconic sandwich, which requires three pieces of bread.
The franchisee, Buenos Aires鈥揵ased Arcos Dorados Holdings Inc., Food shortages in Venezuela, however, have been ongoing amid an escalating political and economic crisis.
For months, the country has been experiencing severely limited access to groceries and other staples, and inflation is expected to soar to 700 percent by the end of the year.聽Thousands of political and food-related protests have taken place nationwide, as well as looting.
鈥淥rdinary people have not been getting enough to eat for some time, but now the situation means we鈥檙e hearing of families where one kid doesn鈥檛 eat at least one day a week, or parents go without food to give what little they have to their children,鈥� Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, told 海角大神 in June. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not talking about just the really poor or people living under bridges. We鈥檙e talking university professors, paramedics, professionals.鈥�
While Venezuelans have faced shortages of staples in the past, a constellation of forces has aligned to create a large scale crisis.
Plummeting oil prices have taken their toll on the country, whose economy was largely based on this resource. And to maintain its social welfare network, the country borrowed heavily to offset revenue lost from oil.
Some observers say that the government鈥檚 decision to pay off that debt, instead of injecting money into domestic markets, imports, and food production, has catapulted the nation into the food shortage crisis, the Monitor reported last month. Opposition groups have been gaining ground in on the presidency of Hugo Ch谩vez鈥檚 successor, Nicol谩s Maduro.
Depravation of basic needs underlies the political maneuvering, as the Monitor reported in June:
But as the political machinations continue, upwards of 10 lootings occur every day across the country 鈥� from bursting through a bakery door to clear the shelves to ambushing food delivery trucks before they get to their destination, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence. And of the 641 protests that took place last month across the country, 27 percent were related to food and hunger. Protests about food alone went up by 320 percent compared to May 2015, according to the Venezuelan Observatory on Social Conflict.
And the Maduro administration has been for the humanitarian crisis.
And while the absence of the Big Mac is one small piece of an increasingly fraught picture, the impact of the crisis on international companies in Venezuela is revealing: Arcos Dorados is the world鈥檚 largest McDonald鈥檚 Corp. franchisee, with more than 2,000 McDonald鈥檚 restaurants throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
鈥淢cDonald鈥檚 Venezuela is working to resolve this temporary situation,鈥� Daniel Schleiniger, a spokesman for Arcos Dorados, said in an e-mail to Bloomberg. 鈥淭ogether with our supplier, we are evaluating the best options that will allow us to continue serving high quality food to our customers.鈥�
