Potandon Produce LLC in Idaho Falls, ID, one of the country’s largest shippers of table stock potatoes and onions, will have a new booth at the PMA Fresh Summit Expo in Anaheim this year featuring a unique layout, according to Dan Fitzgerald, marketing manager. The booth will have four different sections, and as visitors walk through the booth, they will follow the journey of a Potandon potato from its development in a seed breeding facility to the farm where the potato is grown, then to retail store, and finally to the consumer’s kitchen.
“As you walk around the booth,” he said, “you would start in the innovation section” with exhibits focusing on innovations to meet consumer demand, including the development of new potato varieties designed to give consumers what they want in a potato.
“Potandon is the only potato supplier with its own seed breeding and development company,” he said. The company, a Potandon subsidiary, is called Sunrain Varieties LLC.
One Step…Done! ready-to-microwave garlic rosemary mini-red potatoes from Potandon in the Green Giant Fresh brand. According to the Sunrain website, the company’s variety development process “starts by understanding what the ultimate consumer is looking for in appearance, color, skin, taste and nutrition. At Sunrain we partner with high-end retailers, processors, executive chefs and national marketing campaigns to clearly define what today’s consumer is looking for and providing an end result to meet those needs.”
The end products are potato varieties that are “new and exciting” and are good for both growers and consumers, Fitzgerald said.
Among the innovations to come out of the program, he said, are the proprietary Klondike Rose potato “that has been really successful over the years,” the low-carbohydrate CarbSmart yellow potato introduced at Fresh Summit in October 2018 and in the market since January, and the new HeartSmart mini-potato with red skin and red flesh that was bred to be a good source of potassium. “This is a new product that hasn’t been put out there yet,” Fitzgerald said.
HeartSmart will be marketed in three-pound bags. “We will have some mock-ups at the show,” he said.
From the Potandon booth’s innovation section, show visitors will go into the farm section to learn about how potandon’s many growers produce the crops. From there, they will enter the retail store section with a replica of a produce department displaying “a full line-up of Potandon’s varieties and bulk products. Those will include “russets and all the colored varieties — reds, yellows, purples, medleys, and minis,” he said.
It will also feature Potandon’s new value-added product called One Step… Done! consisting of one pound of either red or yellow mini-potatoes and a patented seasoning disk in a patented two-chamber gusseted microwave bag. As with most Potandon products, it is available under the Green Giant Fresh name. “We’ve got those in five varieties,” Fitzgerald said. “It is probably the most convenient packaged fresh potato with seasoning and butter” because the pouch’s upper chamber releases the seasoning into the lower chamber at “just the right moment” during the six-minute cooking process in the microwave. “You don’t need to add any extra ingredients” or interrupt the cooking process half way through to mix or stir.
The third section of the booth simulates a home kitchen, and “we are going to be sampling” the One Step… Done! products to visitors, “showing how easy that process is with the One Step… Done! potatoes and serving up all five flavors,” he said.
The company’s theme at Fresh Summit this year will be a focus on convenience and on the health benefits of potatoes, he said.
