CALIFORNIA MEMBER PROFILE
Bob & Nathan Bender Tasteful Selections Bakersfield, CA
Member since 2010
Father/Son Team Innovate Potato Category
By Tim Linden I n the 1990s, Bob Bender was a chip potato grower in Nebraska for a major manufacturer. He and his teenage son, Nathan, would often bring home the baby size potatoes that didn’t make grade because of their size. “It was only the large ones that you could make into potato chips,” said Nathan. “We would bring them home and cook them on the grill or prepare them in some other
way. Friends and family loved them.” The Benders remember thinking that there was “something there” that could be exploited but how to turn that item into a business proposition wasn’t even idle chatter. Life went on. Nathan finished high school and went on to the University of Nebraska majoring in agricultural business. Bob continued growing chip potatoes for CSS Farms, opened up a California operation for the chip-growing company and eventually moved to the Golden State in 2004 to run that growing operation. Nathan spent
summers in California helping out and they still enjoyed eating those small baby potatoes that fell through the chain during the harvesting operation. Their company website reveals that they would bring them home by the bucketful. They still hadn’t monetized the idea of growing baby potatoes but Nathan said trips to Europe revealed that there
10 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com MARCH | APRIL 2019
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