The Potato Billionaire

One in three frozen French fries sold anywhere in the world comes from the same company, and it all traces back to a small town with a population of about sixteen hundred. There's a sign when you drive into Florenceville, it reads Florenceville, French fry capital of the world. You might think it's a joke, something the local chamber of commerce put up to attract tourists, but that means you don't know the real story. Florenceville is the bounding place of McCain Foods. They sell in over a hundred and sixty countries. They employ more than twenty thousand people, and they process more than one million pounds of potato products every Single.

power and they do over 16 billion a year in revenue. And it started with two brothers from a farming family. They had no technical expertise and a tiny budget. Harrison McCain, this central figure in our story, didn't invent frozen fries. He was a salesman from the sticks who understood a few things about the world a little earlier and a little more clearly than the people around him. But he had the appetite to pursue it in the biggest way possible. This is the story. Of Harrison McCain. In nineteen forty nine, a twenty two year old Harrison McCain walked into a job interview he assumed was a formality. A pharmaceutical company needed a salesman. Heat studied organic chemistry. This should be an easy fit. The sales manager set him straight.

Three graduate pharmacists had also applied. Then he added, The chances of you getting this job are zilch. Harrison didn't budge. He didn't leave. He made an offer he hadn't planned to make. He hadn't even considered until the words were already leaving his mouth. No, no, no, you're making a terrible mistake. I'm just exactly the man you want. I'll borrow money from my old man to buy a car and I'll work for no pay. You only have to pay my expenses. No pay for a solid year. At the end of the year, you pay me my wages for the full year or shake hands. Your choice, not mine. The sales manager said no. But two days later he called him back and he said, I can't even sleep at night thinking about your offer. I'm giving you the job. Harrison beat out three pharmacists, got a salary from day one, and was among the company's best salesmen within a year. He turned rejection into a yes by assuming all the risk. The sales manager had nothing to lose. No one had ever done that before. At twenty two, he

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript, segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

10 free credits is 10 episodes like this one a month. Episodes nobody has transcribed yet cost their length in hours, because we have to actually transcribe them.