Fast-food value meals have been credited with helping get inflation-weary diners back into their favorite chains. 

But there’s a dark side, it appears—at least, if you’re a company that supplie🌸s those chains with potato products: Fewer fries are arriving with t👍hose orders.  

Lamb Weston Holdings (LW), which on Wednesday reported its latest financial results along with plans for 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:a broad restructuring and a scaled-back outlook, said that its customers' restaurant traffic has been—and is expected to remain—under pressure. That sentiment has been echoed by other food suppliers lately, including 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Hunt’s ketchup owner ConAgra Brands (CAG) and 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:spice giant McCormick (MKC). 

Customers Seen Responding to Promotions

Lamb Weston Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tom Werner said Wednesday that there was “early evidence” of improving 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:restaurant traffic in the summer months, with customers responding to promotions and, perhaps, getting used to higher prices. Demand for fries isn’t dropping, Werner said, with th꧟e rate at which people add them to orders “🌜steady” in the company’s key markets. 

But some promotional 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:value-meal offers, We𒁃rner said, include frꩵench-fry portions that are smaller than consumers might have ordered before.

“We're obviously pleased with the growth in restaurant traffic, but it's important to note that many of these promotional meal deals have consumers trading down from a medium fry to a small fry,” Werner said on the earnings call, a transcript of which was made available by AlphaSense. ”So, while we benefit from improving traffic trends, consumers trading down in serving size acts as a partial headwinds for our volumes.”