Kg of potatoes consumed at McDonald’s

Question

Hello everyone, was working on the above question. I wanted to know your opinions on the structure. My approach is as follows:

- Population * % of fast-food eaters * % that would eat McDonalds. (this would give me total eaters of McDonald's)

-second step is segment into age assuming even distribution and applying different consumption habits for each age segment. As teenagers people tend to consume McDonald's more frequently than elders. Then I can assume a certain weight of potatoes used in each meal to get to the final number.

And then add a certain % for waste.

Does this approach sound reasonable? Or should I segment into age first then do the same routine?

help will be appreciated

Answer 1

Hello,

I would reverse the process starting from population segmentation by age, since in that way your guess about fast food eaters would be more educated.

I would try with the following process:

Population segmentation by age
Assumption on % of fast food eaters for each segment
Assumption of consumption for each segment

In this way you calculate the meals served in all fast food of the city. Now you have to do the an assumption on McDonald market share and apply it to the result.
The last thing to do is an hypothesis on the average usage of potatoes per meal served (consider different size and type of meals).
At the end you can increase your number in order to consider waste.

Be careful that this approach is valid if you are talking about McDonalds of a specific country. If you are interested in the global consumption you should first of all estimate the opulation with access to McDonalds.

Does it make sense?

Best,
Luca

Answer 2

Hi,

It's important to remember that there's no one correct approach to this. The most important is that you've gone through the problem logically, accounted for each "branch" of your tree, and articulated yourself clearly.

In this case, I think you've passed the test.

Also, I hope you clarified both timeframe and geography!