The city of Ontario will celebrate its legacy this month as the birthplace of one of America’s greatest culinary creations: the tater tot.
In 1953, brothers F. Nephi and Golden Grigg created the very first tater tots in their Ore-Ida factory, located on Oregon’s border with Idaho.
In honor of that history, the nonprofit Revitalize Ontario will hold a two-day event Sept. 20-21 celebrating the tot, including novel tater tot dishes, live music and a car show.
“Tater tots are ubiquitous,” said Terry Dols, president of Revitalize Ontario. “They’re all over the world. They may come under different packaging, different names, but everybody loves tots, and we want to make sure Ontario is recognized appropriately for being the official birthplace of tater tots.”
The idea for a Tater Tots Festival was first proposed, rather tongue-in-cheek, by a local attorney, Dols said.
“And the more we thought about it, the more we said, why don’t we do that?” Dols said.
The first festival in 2021 proved so popular, they actually ran out of tots. In subsequent years – with a steady tater tot supply thanks to sponsor and tater tot producer Simplot – the festival has grown to include a tater tot dish competition among the event’s food vendors.
“Our goal is … No. 1, educate the entire population of the country that those good old tater tots were born right here in Ontario, Oregon,” said Laura Hiramatsu, treasurer with Revitalize Ontario. “You can talk to people right here in town, and they don’t even know that.”
THE TATER TOT STORY
The little-known origin story of the tater tot begins with Golden and Nephi Grigg, brothers who grew up in a family of 13 children.
“They were best of friends,” said Golden’s son, Gary Grigg, in a recorded 2012 presentation to the Malheur Country Historical Society. “They had totally different personalities, but they were absolutely the best of friends. Everything they did in their lives they did together.”
The brothers got their humble start growing sweet corn in the 1930s. They would pick the corn at night, using miner’s lamps for light, in order to deliver it fresh to homes and businesses by horse the next morning.
They soon realized they could pack corn on the cob in ice to keep it fresh across longer distances. They purchased transport trucks and grew their customer base from Portland to Salt Lake City.
In the mid-1940s, a frozen food company opened a plant in Ontario, and the brothers started contracting with them to freeze their corn. Now, they could ship coast-to-coast.
“Basically, their sales tripled by 1949,” Gary Grigg said.
After the freezer plant went bankrupt, the Grigg brothers pooled from local investors and started Oregon Frozen Foods company to purchase the plant at auction in 1951.
“They mortgaged everything they owned, their houses, their cars,” Gary Grigg said.
They were able to buy the plant, but it cost $500,000, twice what they had expected, according to a history published by the historical society. The price was higher because another frozen food businessman was also bidding: J.R. Simplot. (More on him later.)
At this point, the Grigg brothers were focused on corn, but the corn season didn’t last very long.
“They began looking for something else that they could process that would keep the plant open year-round and not just two months out of the year,” Gary Grigg said. “And they began looking at potatoes.”
In 1952, the brothers started another company with a name inspired by their location on the Oregon-Idaho border: Ore-Ida Potato Products.
Frozen food at this time was still a novelty. Gary Grigg said his father had trouble securing bank loans because lenders thought “potatoes will turn black if you try to freeze them.”
But the brothers again got locals to invest, and they soon started selling frozen French fries in addition to corn on the cob.
The tater tot was born just a year later. It was Nephi Grigg’s creative solution for French fry waste.
The potato slivers left over after potatoes were cut into fries were being collected and sold as cattle feed, but Nephi wondered if there was a better, more profitable way to use those scraps. He experimented with further shredding the bits and adding flour, parsley and onion powder. That slurry potato mix was pushed through 3/4-inch holes drilled through a piece of plywood.
(That original plywood board — known by locals as “the holy board” – still hangs on a wall inside the plant today.)
“Nephi would stand on one side of the board and shove them through the holes, and Dad would stand on the other side and cut them off as they came through the board,” Gary Grigg said.
The resulting pieces were deep fried into a tasty treat.
Who came up with the name tater tot? While the Grigg brothers didn’t leave official documentation on the subject, the name is believed to have come from Clora Lay Orton, an Ore-Ida employee who entered a factory-wide contest to name the new potato creation.
Tater tots hit the market in 1954, though a search through newspapers.com reveals 1958 as seemingly the first year tater tots received national press. Several New York newspapers wrote about the “new food” with a “delicious, fresh potato flavor.”
A one-pound bag of tater tots then sold for 31 cents.
In 1961, Grigg Brothers Fruit & Vegetable Products, Oregon Frozen Foods and Ore-Ida Potato all merged into Ore-Ida Foods, which then became a publicly traded company.
By 1964, Ore-Ida was grossing $31 million and processing 1 million pounds of potatoes every day, Gary Grigg said.
The next year, the company’s gross earnings doubled, and the brothers sold the company to H. J. Heinz Corp.
“(Golden) told me the growth, in his words, was dizzying,” Gary Grigg said. “They just couldn’t fathom where it was going.”
Golden died in 1991 at age 79, and Nephi died in 1995 at age 81. Nephi’s obituary in the Salt Lake Tribune included a quote that was his life’s motto: “Bite off more than you can chew, and then chew it.”
TATER TOTS TODAY
Simplot, a global food and agricultural company, was founded in Idaho in 1929 by J.R. Simplot — the same man who tried to buy Ontario’s frozen food factory in 1950.
Simplot died in 2008, but in 2022 his namesake company would finally come to own the Ontario factory where tater tots are made.
Kraft Heinz still owns the Ore-Ida brand, but Simplot is the exclusive producer of the brand’s products, which includes tater tots.
The name “tater tot” is actually copyrighted. Other companies may sell tater rounds, tater bites or potato puffs, but tater tots only come from Ore-Ida. The Ontario plant makes 95% of the world’s tater tots, along with other small, fried potato products under various names.
“This plant is 100 percent potatoes,” said Michael Repp, plant director at Simplot’s Ontario location. “More likely than not, if you’ve had a potato product, especially a fried potato product, under a whole host of names, Simplot’s probably making it.”
The tater tot-making process hasn’t changed much since 1952, it’s just done on a much larger scale using industrial equipment rather than plywood. The plant today employs more than 500 people working four shifts around the clock.
“We’re making tater tots 24/7,” Repp said. “From the point that the potato comes into this factory to it’s a frozen tater tot is less than an hour.”
The Ontario plant produces about 560 million pounds of potato products each year, Repp said. About 160 million pounds of that will be tater tots.
The Grigg brothers’ creation is no longer just something made from waste products.
“The tater tot definitely has its own fans today,” Repp said. “There are times that we’ll shred whole potatoes just to make the tater tots, so the tater tot does not need the French fry anymore.”
IF YOU GO: The fourth annual Tater Tots Festival will be 2-10 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20, and 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21, at Lions Park, 790 S.W. Third Ave. in Ontario. The free event includes live music, a beer and wine garden, food vendors and kids’ activities, including a splash pad (weather permitting), and a car show Sept. 21. The “Holy Board” Cornhole Tournament begins at 7 p.m. Sept. 20, with entry fees benefiting the F. Nephi and Golden Grigg Legacy Foundation to raise money for child abuse prevention. For more information and a schedule of events, visit tatertotsfestival.com.
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