USPB Board Unanimously Supports Salad Bar Challenge

DENVER, CO — After nearly three months of widespread industry discussion, input and questions, the full membership of the United States Potato Board (USPB)—meeting together with state and national industry representatives—unanimously supported the use of up to $900,000 in USPB reserve funds to match the salad bars donated by the industry in year one of the Salad Bar Challenge, beginning July 1, 2015 with the start of the USPB’s new Fiscal Year (FY) 2016.

USPB President & CEO Blair Richardson addressed Board Members, regarding the “Potato Friendly” Salad Bar Challenge, answering questions regarding this “never before attempted” initiative he unveiled January 8, 2015, at the 2015 POTATO EXPO in Orlando, FL.

“We want the potato industry and this Board to question this salad bar challenge and come out in the end with a product everyone helped create,” Richardson explained. “We know salad bars are used in schools. We also know that to date, no single agriculture promotion group has stepped forward to promote these.

“It’s important to understand while it’s easy to find ways this initiative will not work; it is just as easy to find ways in which it can work. There’s a wide range of school lunch needs and opportunities out there. Sure, we are going to find schools where this salad bar challenge won’t work. It won’t be a solution for everybody. But we want to go to schools that have the greatest potential. Right now, this is a discovery and learning process.”

Asked about this new experiential marketing approach by the USPB and actually conducting a program getting potatoes in front of consumers, especially school children, newly-elected USPB Domestic Marketing Committee Co-Chair, John Halverson, Chief Operating Officer, Black Gold Farms, based at the Arbyrd and Charleston, MO, farms, noted, “This is a win for all parties involved in that we are helping teach young people what to eat to be healthy, as well as with the USPB’s participation in the program, we will also have a platform to tout potatoes’ health benefits by working with nutritionists and others responsible for school lunch rooms every day.

“This is an opportunity to tell the story of the healthy potato to school age kids, and by doing so, also creating eating habits that are healthy and include potatoes. Hopefully, in the long run, this will increase potato consumption along with improving the image of the potato,” Halverson remarked.

The proof of concept for “Potato Friendly” Salad Bars is currently in a testing phase. The Colorado Potato Administrative Committee worked with the USPB in late 2014 to place two salad bars into one Denver-area school district. The district now has salad bars in nine of its 16 schools. Results from this experiment will be made known to the potato industry at the USPB’s 2015 Summer Meeting in August.

“We will learn a lot between now and then,” Richardson declared. “We will report back after we’ve had a chance to learn and determine how to make this work, and we will be a lot smarter by August. We don’t have all the answers yet because this is new and untried.”

Halverson added, “The stigma that potatoes are one of the foods that make you fat, and/or is unhealthy, is one of the challenges we have to overcome. Through promoting healthy recipes and by making potatoes prepared and available on the salad bars in a variety of ways will help to promote this.”

Richardson explained, “Funding the Salad Bar Challenge with $1.3 million in the USPB budget does not mean the money will be automatically spent. The staff and USPB members will be good stewards on behalf of the industry, and will sensibly commit limited USPB financial resources towards research and testing.”

Also in attendance, National Potato Council Executive Vice President, John Keeling, commented in support of the industry’s effort to introduce potato friendly salad bars in school lunch programs: “Our goal is to establish nutrition as the new measuring stick in the school lunch program, and relieve the focus on specific foods or food groups,” he said. “Right now, there are no upper limits on potatoes in the school lunch program. As a nutritious vegetable that is economical for schools, and liked by students, potatoes can play a greater role in meeting actual nutrition goals in school lunches.”

In further business, the Board also instructed USPB Marketing Department staff to utilize $400,000 from the Domestic Marketing budget to support the salad bars in the schools. The funds are to be used to provide recipes, serving suggestions, decorations and other materials to the schools throughout the country that have or will receive the salad bars to help them incorporate healthy potato items on the bars. To accomplish this objective, the USPB will be issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for consultants or agencies that can work with the staff to develop the messages, recipes and materials.

Halverson summarized what most Board Members were also saying, “I believe this will complement the current activities of the USPB by broadening our target audience outside the typical retail shopper we are already targeting. Kids are big influencers of what mom buys at the grocery store, so by showing kids how many wonderful potato dishes there are, both hot and cold, we will be turning them on to help mom grab that bag of potatoes. This is a great new program that is truly thinking outside the box…potatoes, salad bars, and school kids, who would have thought this could come together to promote and tell our story!

For the U.S. potato industry to realize the full potential of this program and what it can achieve by putting healthy potato dishes in front of school children, as well as improving the positive image of potatoes with this key group of influencers and future consumer decision makers, it is absolutely critical all sectors of the industry—from input suppliers and manufacturers, all the way through to the marketing chain—step up and donate at least 300 salad bars this summer that can be immediately put into use this fall for the beginning of the 2015/2016 school year. For more information and to see how you can become involved in donating a salad bar to be matched by the USPB, please visit the USPB’s Salad Bar Challenge web page. To ask specific questions, or to start the process of donating a salad bar, please visit the Staff Directory page on uspotatoes.com to speak with any member of the Marketing or Industry Communications & Policy teams.

For more information on the USPB as the nation’s potato marketing organization, positioned as the “catalyst for positive change,” and the central organizing force in implementing programs that will increase demand for potatoes, please visit www.uspotatoes.com. In an effort to enhance diversity of the Board, USDA encourages women, younger growers, minorities, and people with disabilities to seek positions on the board.

Source: United States Potato Board