Best Fries for Your Restaurant? Start With Everyday Fries.

Before the frozen french fry was invented, every restaurant that served fries was cutting potatoes in the back of house.

That meant a prep cook was peeling all morning, blanching before service, and frying to order. Even today, chefs who studied under the French brigade system often recall the drudgery of peeling potatoes.

Plus, the varieties available changed from month to month, depending on what was in season. Operators were dealing with changes to color or texture (or, in some cases, sending out an inferior fry) as potato varieties switched.

Which is why the first commercial frozen fry, which arrived in the late 1940s, was such a revelation.¹ It took all of that work and inconsistency off the operator’s plate. It came out the same way every time, no matter the season, with no cutting or blanching, meaning far less labor. Operators took notice and within a couple of decades many of the country’s largest chains had moved from fresh-cut to frozen. That switch also turned fries into one of the most reliable and profitable options on the menu. It made it possible for fries to become an everyday item for many operators.

And those operational needs still define the everyday fry. As an operator, it’s the fry you rely on most that becomes the default side dish for a wide range of menu items. For many operators, the everyday fry’s needs have also evolved, with new innovations allowing them to survive a delivery bag, for instance. With such a wide range of options available, operators today can also choose the everyday fry that best fits their menu and concept.

Whatever your preferred option is, the everyday fry eases back-of-house stress, fits your brand, and delivers on what your guests want.

Fries are a menu superstar

As a go-to side dish and workhorse on so many menus, we sometimes take for granted just how essential they are.

Indeed, two-thirds of operators menu them, and at many key concepts they are nearly universally offered:²

• 98% of burger concepts offer them

• 93% of sports bars

• 89% of family-style restaurants

• 87% of chicken concepts

And their reach goes well beyond restaurants, too. Nine out of ten lodging operations menu fries, along with nearly 90% of hospitals and 86% of college and university dining programs.²

Guests also love fries. Nearly 9 in 10 (89%) say they love or like fries.³

In other words, your everyday fry may be even more important than you give it credit for. While the sandwich or burger itself may switch out on the plate as seasons and LTOs come and go, that everyday fry stays the same, meaning it’s in front of a lot of guests, appearing on plate after plate, and combo after combo.

Do you have an everyday fry?

Whether you use the term or think about it this way or not, you probably already have an everyday fry. It’s the case you order week after week, always keeping it stocked (and it’s a bad week if it’s missing).

But your choice of everyday fry is probably shaped by the type of operation you run and who your guests are.

For a QSR or fast casual concept, the everyday fry usually focuses on hold time. Nearly half of QSRs menu fries, while fast casuals recorded more fry penetration growth last year.²

For these operators, takeout and delivery have become core parts of their business, which means their everyday fry has to survive for 20 to 30 minutes in the bag, but still taste fresh and crispy like it just came out of the fryer. So their everyday fry may be built for delivery.

For a sports bar or casual dining concept, the everyday fry is increasingly becoming a base for more over-the-top builds like loaded and topped fries. Indeed, cheese is the single most common ingredient paired with fries on menus, followed by onion, sausage, beef, and chicken.²

These loaded fry options are really resonating with guests. One drive-in chain’s loaded queso fries made over three-quarters of interested guests say they’d visit just for them, while a burger chain LTO that piles its seasoned fries right on the burger patty scored 73% in craveability.²

For these casual operators, their everyday fry needs to hold its shape under cheese, chili, or a protein.

For a family-style or midscale restaurant where fry penetration is the highest of any segment, it’s all about the classics when it comes to everyday fries.² Straight cut, skin-on or not, maybe brined with sea salt so it tastes perfect straight from the fryer, it’s the fry that shows up next to nearly every sandwich, burger, and entrée. And the loyal guests in this segment expect it to look and taste the same every time they visit.

For a hospital or campus dining program, the everyday fry may be more focused on volume and batch cooking. It may need to come out of a convection oven rather than a fryer; it probably has to hold on a line through a lunch or dinner rush, and it has to satisfy that student or nurse who may choose it multiple times a week.

That’s why “what are the best everyday fries for my restaurant?” has no single answer and why your everyday fry may look different from the operation next door or across the street.

The everyday fry as an operational staple

Because it’s served with so many orders, the everyday fry also has an outsized impact on the back of house. A specialty fry may earn a longer cook time or a fussier build, but the everyday fry can’t. Consider:

• Different fry sizes have different cook times and impact the fryer capacity. The everyday fry removes any unwanted variation.

• An everyday fry may need to sit under a heat lamp, in a pass-through window, or in a delivery bag and still perform.

• Longer, more uniform everyday fries cover the plate with fewer pieces, keeping portion sizes predictable.

• The same fry can come out perfectly across shifts and crews, whether it’s the opening cook or the new hire prepping them.

• A great everyday fry needs almost no training or prep.

This is why frozen fries are the go-to for everyday fries. And that performance and consistency matter to guests, too. When asked what matters most in a fry, 72% of consumers said it had to be crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, and in head-to-head testing, frozen fries delivered those attributes more consistently than hand-cut.⁴

Plus, nearly half (47%) said they’d visit a restaurant just for frozen fries, compared to 39% for hand-cut.⁵

And for to-go orders, a whopping 80% prefer the frozen fry.⁴

What are the easiest-to-cook everyday fries? Start with a frozen fry in a size that fits your fryer and volume. They can go from freezer to basket to plate with no cutting or blanching and the cook time is fast. If you don’t have a fryer, coated or battered fries deliver crisp, consistent predictability from the oven.

And what’s the best way to cook an everyday fry? Don’t overthink it. Preheat the fryer to the temperature on the case, fill the basket no more than half full so the oil temperature doesn’t crash, cook for the posted time, shake, and salt as soon as they are out of the fryer while the surface is hot enough to hold it. Then get them out to the guest or a vented to-go container as quickly as possible.

The goal for an everyday fry is a process anyone on the line can repeat over and over again without even thinking about it.

Finding your perfect everyday fry

So how do you know if the fry you have is the perfect everyday fry? Consider these questions:

• Where do most of your fries actually get eaten? Is it on a plate in the dining room? In the car? Twenty minutes away at home?

• What does your brand promise? Does your fry fit that promise? A skin-on steak-cut fry offers a different type of experience compared to a shoestring fry.

• Is your fry mainly a side or does it need to carry a lot of toppings?

• Are you cooking your fries in an oven or a fryer?

• What does your labor situation look like? How much experience does your crew have?

As you answer those questions, your options start to narrow.

A midscale concept with a fryer and lots of classic offerings might land on Simplot Classic® fries, a conventional extra-long fancy cut built for plate coverage and yield. A brand that promises “real” ingredients might prefer Simplot Select Recipe® or Skincredibles® skin-on fries, with a hand-cut look and, in the Select Recipe® line, a sea salt brine that delivers consistent flavor. And an operation where most orders are taken to go or delivered might decide its everyday fry is an extra-crunchy option like Conquest® Delivery+® fries, which stay crisp for 40 minutes or more.

Simplot knows everyday fries

It helps to start with a company that knows how to create the perfect everyday fry and has lots of options that fit all of these needs. In fact, Simplot was the company that first developed the original commercially viable frozen fry in the late 1940s, patenting the process in 1953.¹

We’ve been developing everyday fries that fit both operator and guest needs ever since then.

You can see the full range on Simplot’s Everyday Fries page. Or go directly to the Match My Fry tool, which narrows the lineup by cut size, shape, peel, and flavor to find the fry that fits how you operate.

Simplot’s expert culinary team can also help. Comparing cuts that work in your fryer, on the menu items you plate the most, and focusing on your hold times can help you decide if the fry you’re using is the one that makes the most sense for your operation.

The frozen fry caught on in restaurant kitchens because it made one of guests’ most-loved menu items consistent and predictable. Seventy years later, that’s still the job of the perfect everyday fry.

¹ J.R. “Jack” Simplot, City of Boise Parks & Recreation ² Fries: U.S. Menu Trends, Technomic, Q4 2005 ³ Consumer Preferences, Datassential, May 2026 ⁴ French Fry Concept Analysis Summary Report, Datassential, March 2025 ⁵ Launches and Ratings, Datassential, February 2025