World News for Students of English

12-01-2022 15:00

If you go to McDonald’s in Japan right now, you may have to take a small serving of fries because the fast-food chain is running short of potatoes.

Customers can only have a small portion of fries for about a month. According to the company, the reasons are heavy snowfall and flood damage near Vancouver, Canada, and many shipping problems that include the health crisis related issues, extreme weather events, and an upsurge in global demand.

In Japan, McDonald’s said that it would offer a 50-yen discount on its hamburger menus when medium-size fries were replaced with the small ones, and it would also stop selling an evening menu that had fries and chicken nuggets.

McDonald’s had to take a similar step in December at its roughly 2,900 branches in Japan. Unhappy McDonald’s customers may not know it; but they’re at the mercy of global events.

Difficult words: to run short (to have few items), upsurge (a sudden or large increase), at the mercy of (in a position or situation in which one can be harmed by someone or something that he can’t control).

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