Rick Miles

It’s been quite a ride for Rick Miles in the 10 years since he first began supplying fresh Idaho potatoes to Five Guys Burgers and Fries restaurants.

In 2002, when Rick Miles Produce Service Inc. was contracted to supply fresh potatoes for french fries, the chain consisted of five stores. Today, there are 1,075 Five Guys restaurants serving their famous burgers with fresh french fries. The chain continues to grow at a rate of more than 200 stores annually, with a total of 1,500 franchises in development.

“In 2002, they had five franchise stores and our first shipment to them was 150 50-pound bags of potatoes and that would last them for about 10 days,” Miles said. “We now ship weekly between 50,000 and 60,000 50-pound bags.”

That comes to more than 150 million pounds of potatoes annually.

With that rate of growth, Miles recently moved his company from two small offices in Rigby, Idaho, into a new, 11,000-square-foot warehouse in Idaho Falls. The three-level building includes office space, a conference room and test kitchen, along with storage space to alleviate the demands on the packing sheds from which he purchases stock to supply Five Guys.

In the second-story offices, CEO Rick and his wife, Betty, director of new business development, work in one office. Their daughters, Sheri Littleford, chief financial officer, and Brooke Holverson, chief operations officer, work in an adjacent office. Accountant Greg Hayward, Mary Sedberry, in sales, and Albany Horel, sales assistant, work in a third office nearby.

“The underlying factor for putting this facility in was that we’re now shipping out so much product on Thursday, Friday and Saturday that the packing facilities were having difficulty storing enough product,” Miles said. “This will serve as an overflow for those weekends and holidays where we need a lot of extra product to ship.”

Being able to store potatoes on site frees up floor space at other packing facilities during that three-day peak shipping period. In addition to a controlled refrigeration facility, a new receiving area can handle up to 25 truckloads of potatoes or onions — another product that Miles supplies to Five Guys restaurants.

“We’ll be able to bring two loads, four loads, 10 loads, 20 loads — whatever we need — into this facility and have the trucks load here so they can continue manufacturing and packaging at their facility without running our of floor space,” Miles said.

A typical truckload will be 840 50-lb. units, Miles said. Most of the potatoes come from Idaho, with Washington supplying some. A small percentage comes from Prince Edward Island to supply eastern Canada.

According to Miles, it takes five days to get the potatoes from Idaho to the East Coast. His company handles logistics for all deliveries.

“We provide all transportation and negotiate with all the trucking firms,” Miles said.

Because Five Guys’ growth has been constant, Miles’ company has been able to project a year in advance how much product to contract for each year.

“We’ll be starting to make arrangements to contract our Washington supplies within about the next six weeks and then our Idaho product, we’ll have all of the agreements in place by February and that will take us through the ’13-’14 season,” Miles said.

With 200 new Five Guys’ franchises opening annually, Miles estimates that an additional 500,000 to 600,000 50-lb. bags of potatoes will be required.

“We’re actually figuring through the end of July this year we’ll be servicing about 1,250 units and by that time, we’ll have consumed between 2.7 and 3 million 50-lb. units from Aug. 1 to July 31,” Miles said.

Fall potato acreage is up 4.7 percent this year compared to 2011, and the Russet Burbank continues its reign as the nation’s No. 1 fall variety.

Data recently released by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) shows that growers planted 1,002,900 acres in 2012, an increase of 45,500 acres from 2011’s total of 957,400 acres.

Idaho remains the national leader, with 345,000 acres in 2012 — an increase of 20,000 acres from 2011. No. 2 Washington increased its total acreage by 5,000, to 165,000 for 2012. North Dakota came in third with 88,000 acres, an increase of 4,000 over last year. Maine and Minnesota both upped their total acreage in 2012 by 2,000 acres to 59,000 and 51,000, respectively. Idaho accounted for 54.9 percent of the 2012 increase in acres.

Bruce Huffaker’s North American Potato Market News predicts a fall harvest of 422 million cwt, an increase of 30.8 million cwt, or 7.9 percent, from the 2011 total of 391.18 acres.

NAPMN predicts an average yield of 426 cwt. per acre. That exceeds 2011’s average yield by 10 cwt per acre, but falls short of the 30-year trend of 434 cwt. per acre.

Paul Patterson, University of Idaho agricultural economist, advised growers and shippers to exercise discipline and restraint as they take this crop to market.

“Every year’s sort of a new deal and to some extent, the growers and shippers are kind of in control of their own destiny, if in fact they will use the information available to them and make good choices in terms of how they choose to manage and market the crop,” Patterson said. “Using just a little bit of market discipline can be beneficial to everybody involved in the process.”

In other news, Russet Burbank remains the No. 1 variety in acres planted among fall potatoes in seven states, according to NASS. Those include Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin.

Russet Burbanks led with 44.1 percent of total acres. Coming in second was Russet Norkotah with 12.9 percent. Ranger Russet was third with 9.4 percent and Umatilla Russet was fourth with 5.4 percent.