{"id":829983,"date":"2025-02-26T12:12:35","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T18:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/26\/can-anyone-stop-the-french-fry-cartel\/"},"modified":"2025-02-26T12:12:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T18:12:35","slug":"can-anyone-stop-the-french-fry-cartel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/26\/can-anyone-stop-the-french-fry-cartel\/","title":{"rendered":"Can anyone stop the french fry cartel?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The story of how french fries got to be ridiculously expensive starts really small, before making you scratch your head about the way the whole world works. <\/p>\n

The short version is that there\u2019s possibly an algorithm-driven conspiracy in which a literal potato cartel has been colluding to raise the price of all of our french fries.<\/p>\n

The long version goes like this: Plaintiffs have alleged in a set of lawsuits<\/a> that the largest potato product manufacturers in the country \u2014 the four that have cornered nearly the entire frozen potato market \u2014 all put their sensitive market data into the same third-party software, which uses that aggregate data to spit out recommendations about how they should price their products. And that software has essentially been giving each company the same recommendations. <\/p>\n

If the CEOs of these four companies got in a room, and while they were all chomping on cigars, said, \u201cHey, let\u2019s all set the price of our french fries at the exact same amount,\u201d that would be illegal. What\u2019s allegedly happening is these companies are using this software in the same way they\u2019d use that room. And there are plenty of people out there \u2014 including people in the US government \u2014 who say that\u2019s illegal. The question is whether they\u2019re right. <\/p>\n

And it turns out the business practice at the heart of this case is happening all over the place. <\/p>\n

There have been big lawsuits and government investigations<\/a> into how this is happening with our rent. Many landlords use a third-party app called RealPage, which takes landlord data and recommends rents. And renters have seen an increase in rental prices as a result. Meatpackers are doing a similar thing, as are hotels. <\/p>\n

Congressional legislation has been introduced to tackle some of this stuff head-on. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) co-sponsored a bill in 2024<\/a> that tried to combat landlords using third-party rental software to set prices. Recently, she introduced legislation that specifically targets algorithmic pricing practices<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Those bills aren\u2019t yet law and have a lot of congressional hurdles to overcome. In the meantime, there are class action lawsuits<\/a> going on around this. In the event that they do come to some resolution, maybe you\u2019ll see a notification along the lines of, \u201cHave you paid too much for french fries? You may be owed money,\u201d and you\u2019ll get 92 cents in the mail. And then you can go buy, maybe, a quarter of a french fry.<\/p>\n

This piece originally ran in the Today, Explained newsletter. For more stories like this, sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Peter.Balonon-Rosen
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story of how french fries got to be ridiculously expensive starts really small, before making you scratch your head about the way the whole world works. The short version is that there\u2019s possibly an algorithm-driven conspiracy in which a literal potato cartel has been colluding to raise the price of all of our french<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":829984,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22880,890],"tags":[14152,8679],"class_list":{"0":"post-829983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anyone","8":"category-french","9":"tag-anyone","10":"tag-french"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}