Spar/Simba: Good news on potato supply

Spar have featured a couple of times before on 6000 miles… with their notes about Ricoffy and their bizarre It DOES NOT INCLUDE CHUNKY outburst. Now they’re back at it, publishing a blame-shifting, buck-passing photocopied note from Alan Henderson CEO/BUGM of Simba (Pty) Ltd. on their shelves.
Here it is (bigger here):

Simba make potato crisps, although it seems that they haven’t been making many of them recently.

But Alan has some good news for his Valued Customer – namely that the situation has developed in line with the scenario which he laid out in his last note. Pretty much, anyway. This either shows acute business acumen or some degree of clairvoyancy. I think I might get him to do my Lotto numbers this week. Pretty much, anyway.
Anyway, the upshot of his amazing predictive powers is that from the 20th September (“Week 39” in crisp speak), they should be up to full production with their contracted potatoes.

At this point, I’d like to pose a question: what sort of sicko company contracts potatoes to make potato crisps? That’s like getting a cow to work in a slaughterhouse or a bunch of grapes to help out at harvest time in Stellenbosch. I guess this comes down to workers’ rights again – you can almost see the fat cat bosses shouting down from the offices at their potato staff on the factory floor:

“Get on with it or you’ll be next to be peeled and fried! Muhahahaha!”

Yep, that’s probably what happens at Simba. Probably.

Alan then talks technical about his pipeline being relatively dry. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to take from this. It seems to me that you require some sort of prior knowledge of the potato crisp manufacturing process to work out what effect this relatively dry pipeline might have on the general supply of potato crisps. Is having a relatively dry pipeline a good thing or not?
I’m guessing that it probably is, as your crisps would surely go soggy in a damp or wet pipeline.

No-one likes a soggy crisp. It’s an oxymoron, moron.

Clearly, as Alan says, he has an agro strategic issue to deal with. Damn straight – and that’s nothing to what he’ll have if Zwelinzima Vavi and his COSATU buddies find out how he’s treating those spuds on his production line. Then there’ll be real aggro: Potato pickers proactively picketing the potato plantation, preventing picking and prolonging the preparation and production of potato products. Possibly.

For that reason, Alan has drafted in Rod Robinson from North America to be his fall guy Operations Director. Rod is the guy that will be sent out of the barricaded Simba headquarters to receive the memorandum of demands from assembled hoards of aggrieved trade unionists and root vegetables. More pay, better working conditions, longer soil breaks, no compulsory slicing and frying our own kind etc. You know the kind of thing.
Poor Rod won’t know what he’s let himself in for. They might even peel him.

And what better time to strike as we approach the peak season? While Alan has high hopes for the last quarter now that the alleged seven week potato shortage is over, the Trade Onions may have other ideas.

The good news is that you will be the first to know via this blog. And Spar. And Simba. And Alan.