If you’ve ever found comfort at the bottom of a Chick-fil-A waffle fry box, or nursed a hangover with a box of Taco Bell’s surprisingly decent nacho fries (okay, they’re actually pretty bad), you have one company to thank: Lamb Weston. And if you’ve never heard of them, that’s by design. Lamb Weston is the Pablo Escobar of frozen spuds. The supplier of all things fried and golden to McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, KFC, Taco Bell, and more. They even supply Costco and Sysco, the people who feed half the nation's cafeterias. And now, ironically they’re getting cooked.

A hedge fund called Jana Partners just lit the fryer on high and is ready to toss Lamb Weston’s board in headfirst. Lamb Weston’s stock is down 37% over the past year, and investors are starting to realize that selling frozen potatoes to literally every fast food chain in America should be more profitable than this. Jana Partners, who owns about 7% of the company, isn’t buying the "everything’s fine" act. They ran a shareholder survey and the results were not what you want to see if you're sitting in a leather swivel chair with a nice view.

The average confidence rating in the board was 1.3 out of 10 (this has to be a Guiness world record). To put that in perspective (and yes, I looked this up) Lamb Weston’s board confidence score of 1.3 out of 10 is lower than the average Yelp rating for Taco John's, which stands at 2.61 out of 5, making it the lowest-rated fast-food chain in America. And it gets worse… over 80% of major shareholders want serious board changes, and half want the entire board yeeted into the Idaho sunset.

The letter is a little long and boring but Jana basically said, “You can’t fix years of failure with a quick CEO swap and a consulting firm.” If the board gets overhauled, we could see major changes… possibly even a sale of the company. Jana’s done this before. Last time they stirred the pot, they blocked Zendesk’s deal with SurveyMonkey, and investors rejoiced like they’d just gotten free guac at Chipotle.

Now they’ve set their sights on Lamb Weston. If they win, we could see a complete board reboot, a possible sale, or at the very least… someone who knows how to stop tanking shareholder value while selling french fries to every fast food chain on Earth. If they succeed, it could mean a leaner, meaner, more profitable Lamb Weston. And maybe cheaper fries (okay, probably not, but let a man dream).

Stock.News has positions in McDonald’s.