National Tater Tot Day

Facts About the Rise of Tater Tots

Crispy on the outside and soft in the middle, Tater Tots are more than just a popular side dish—they’re a clever example of food innovation, branding, and cultural adoption. What began as a practical solution to potato waste in the 1950s evolved into a frozen-food staple with deep regional roots and global variations. These facts trace how a humble factory experiment turned into an iconic comfort food with lasting influence.

• Golden-Brown Solution to a Food Waste Problem

  Tater Tots originated as a way to turn French fry trimmings into a sellable product: in 1953, Ore-Ida founders F. Nephi and Golden Grigg finely chopped leftover potato slivers from their frozen fry line, mixed them with flour and seasoning, and extruded and cut the mixture into small cylinders rather than sending the scraps to cattle feed. 

• A Name Born from a Factory Contest

  The term “Tater Tot” was coined through a company-wide naming contest at Ore-Ida, won by plant worker and housewife Clora Lay Orton, who combined the slang “tater” for potato with “tot” for its small size; the phrase later became a registered trademark that anchored the product’s brand identity. 

• How Raising the Price Made Tots Take Off

  When the new potato bites first appeared in grocery stores in the mid‑1950s, shoppers initially overlooked them because their extremely low price suggested they were low-value scraps; Ore-Ida reversed that perception by raising the price, which prompted consumers to treat the product as a legitimate, desirable frozen side dish and boosted sales. 

• Breakfast Debut at the National Potato Convention

  Ore-Ida gauged interest in its new potato bites not with an ad blitz but by feeding them to hotel guests: at the 1954 National Potato Convention in Miami Beach, company president Nephi Grigg persuaded the hotel kitchen to serve the product at breakfast, and the enthusiastic response from attendees helped convince the company to proceed with large-scale production. 

• From Small-Town Plant to Heinz Acquisition

  After developing its signature formed-potato product in Ontario, Oregon, Ore-Ida expanded to a larger plant in Burley, Idaho, reached about $31 million in annual sales by 1964, and was acquired by the H. J. Heinz Company in 1965, helping to establish frozen potato specialties as a major category in the processed food industry. 

• Minnesota’s Tater Tot Hotdish as “Soul Food”

  In Minnesota and the Upper Midwest, Tater Tot Hotdish—a casserole built from ground meat, canned soup, vegetables, and a topping of potato bites—has become a regional “soul food,” closely associated with Lutheran church suppers, funeral lunches, and potlucks where economical, easy-to-transport, one-pan meals are central to community life. 

• A Frozen Potato Snack with Global Cousins

  Although “Tater Tots” is a U.S. trademark, similarly formed, bite-sized potato products are sold abroad under other names, including “potato gems” and “potato royals” in Australia and New Zealand and branded variants such as “Tasti Taters” and “Spud Puppies” in Canada, illustrating how the concept of crispy, extruded potato bites has spread internationally.