Starch Madness: Using Jotform to determine the best fry type

I’d be lying if I said I thought curly fries were going to win Starch Madness 2023. Shaped like a pig’s tail, I always considered them more of a novelty fry — barely something you’d eat at a circus or lower-tier fast food restaurant.

But March is an unpredictable beast. 

With a little help from Jotform, we were able to decisively determine that curly fries are, in fact, the best fries in the world. The champion, we’ll call them.

Starch Madness all started with a simple lunchtime discussion between colleagues. The topic seemed benign enough: What’s the best type of french fry? Well, tempers flared. Points and counterpoints were stressed ad nauseam in support of favorite fry types. Some valued texture, some seasoning, some thickness. We knew we had to create a system to settle the debate once and for all.

The first challenge was the seeding.

We used Google Trends to land on our top four seeds, and then a small committee seeded the remaining four. Here’s how it broke down:

• Standard french fries were an obvious top seed.

• Sweet potato was a controversial, yet formidable 2 seed.

• Waffle fries came in as a trendy dark-horse pick and 3 seed.

• Curly fries, well, you know my opinion about them.

• Wedge fries wedged their way into the 5 seed.

• The much maligned crinkle-cut fries earned a 6 seed.

• Shoestring fries limped their way to a 7 seed.

• And then, as a real wild card, tater tots crept into the tournament as an 8 seed.

Next step for the tournament: Order an elephant-meal-sized amount of fries for the office.

There were three rounds in this single-elimination tournament. Each round concluded with tasters voting between two competing fries in any given matchup using a Jotform-powered form.

For convenience, we published the forms for each round of voting as QR codes and taped them around the tasting area — that way people could vote on the spot while the taste of the fries was still in their mouths.

Were there upsets? You bet. Round one saw standard fries fall to tater tots in an absolute stunner.

But the second, third, and fourth seeds all advanced to the semifinals.

And in the final matchup, waffle fries went head to head with curly fries in an incredible heavyweight matchup.

Understandably, the tensions in the office were high, but in the end, everyone was pleased we unlocked a true fry tournament champion.

This was our first Starch Madness, but it surely won’t be our last. And Jotform made the entire event possible.