More on the Salad Bar Challenge to Potato Industry

Last month at the Potato Expo United States Potato Board CEO Blair Richardson presented a challenge to the industry — help place potato friendly salad bars in school cafeterias across the country.

USPB Chief Marketing Officer John Toaspern says this challenge allows the industry to market potatoes as fresh, wholesome vegetables to the next generation of consumers, Generation Z. In addition, Toaspern shares a secondary marketing opportunity through this proposed idea.

Toaspern: "Overarching purpose is this experiential marketing for the Gen Z students, it does give us a chance to work with the school lunch folks and to position potatoes, again as a fresh, healthy and economical — which is very important to school lunches — product that they should be using more and various different ways than they currently are. And so by providing them with these ideas we hope it will certainly impact potatoes on the salad bars but have a spillover into how they use potatoes in the rest of their food lines."

Between now and the March US Potato Board meeting, the USPB is asking all industry members to let their USPB representatives know what they think of this idea.