The Tater Trio and Idaho Tater got a change of scenery from small town Salem, Ohio to the big city of Chicago this past week! We had a grocery store event at Angelo Caputo’s Fresh Market in Elmwood Park, IL just 30 minutes outside of the city. The spud has been to several Caputo’s locations in Illinois and it was time to give Chicago some potato love! The store had a special promotion during our visit and sold 10lb. bags of Idaho® Potatoes for only $1.99 each! Talk about a steal. They even had their potato stands in front of the truck so people could grab their spuds when they saw our tater. We made sure to give everyone recipes so they had some new ideas for their potatoes! We met some awesome fans and employees while we were there. Shoutout to David, Caputo’s famous greeter (he has a following and customers always ask for him, no joke), who helped us with passing out Big Idaho Potato truck postcards to all of the visitors! After the fans were done getting their #spudselfies, we parked our truck at another Caputo’s location in Addison, IL that had a little more room for us to park for a few days. Thanks to the manager Jose at that location who let us park right in front of his store, and keep it there for a few nights while the #taterteam stayed in Chicago for some days off!
From Chi-Town, we drove to Rochester, Minnesota for another grocery store stop at HyVee South Grocery. Don’t cha know we had a wonderful time! This was the second year we stopped at HyVee and we were so excited because one of our favorite people, Bret the perishables manager works there! He is seriously the kindest person and he even made the Tater Team breakfast before the start of our event. He really took care of us and we are so appreciative of him! At the event, folks could see our Big Idaho Potato and it was a cook-off fundraiser for the Special Olympics Minnesota. SO athletes from one of the teams called the Rochester Flyers came to help out. The athletes definitely warmed our hearts and they gave us so many hugs the whole time! They were so excited to see the truck and were amazing at handing out information flyers to customers. It was a fun afternoon with even greater company! Thanks to HyVee and Bret for having us!
We weren’t done with Minnesota yet, and headed to Winona (also know as the Historic Island City) for Steamboat Days 2019. It is an annual festival held every summer in June and features fun for the whole family! There is a softball tournament, concert, 5K run/walk, kid’s fishing competition, car show, a grand parade, and SO much more. The Budweiser Clydesdales were also in town too! We were invited for the Grand Parade on Father’s Day that went through the main street in town! In the parade, there were pageant queens, cool cars, military floats, and even a pumpkin cannon. I’ve seen a spud gun, but the pumpkin cannon was pretty impressive I must say. Steamboat Days attracts 25,000+ people to town during the festival and the tater team had fun waving to spec-taters in the parade! Thanks again to Mike, one of the parade coordinators who helped us out and made the parade go smoothly.
After the parade, the Tater Triplets filmed a few videos that will be dropping soon! For one of them, we dressed up as Aladdin characters and did a re-make potato-style because the new movie was just released! It is sure to be hilarious. Here’s the costumes we wore:
Up next, we are going back to the west coast where we will participate in the Reno Rodeo parade and be reunited with Ron the Tater Toter! Until next time potato peeps!
-Tater Twin Kaylee
