The Robertson Hotel chef Glen Kay said the scarcity of hash browns has made it hard for them to serve breakfast without the staples.

"We've been dealing with no hash browns for at least four to five months. Sometimes we get them, sometimes we don't get them," Mr Kay said.

The two main hash brown suppliers in Australia McCains and Edgell just haven't had enough stock, Mr Kay said.

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"The big companies like Maccas and Hungry Jacks always get the first pick while the small businesses are left without supply."

Mr Kay said it has been a hard time for small business with shortages galore.

"First it was eggs, all egg-products like mayonnaise and cakes were affected too. Then the hash browns and now the supply of chips is also limited," he said.

"If there is short supply of items it puts pressure on the costs too, there's high demand but only limited supply so the price increases."

Mr Kay said he had resorted to making his own hand-cut chips because he deemed the quality of chips from lesser-known suppliers to be unreliable.

"The ones in circulation now are so bright yellow, we have no idea what's in them. I will not be serving them at the hotel," he said.

A McDonald's spokesperson said they had "long-term partnerships" with suppliers and they were still serving their full menu.

"Wherever possible we prefer to source local, including Aussie potatoes for our famous fries and hash browns," the spokesperson said.

"We're working alongside our suppliers to continue serving up our full menu to customers."

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A Shellharbour food sales representative of 35 years John Brown said the supply of hash browns and chips was limited but consistent.

"The company I work for, Sydney Freezers, has been trying to manage it fairly well. We have chips and hash browns but we have limited sales, trying to share them out as much as we can," Mr Brown said.

The crippling potato shortage, Mr Brown said, has been caused by continuous rain and flooding in Australia for the past two years.

"The fact that Europe had a drought didn't help either because their potato crop failed to grow as it was too dry so we couldn't even import from them," Mr Brown said.

Mr Brown believes there will be no relief from the Australian potato shortage until April, the upcoming harvest date.

"We've got a massive shipment of chips coming from Europe next month though, that should take some pressure off," Mr Brown said.

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