Shaping the Future
The next 20 years brought nearly continuous growth for the company. Four significant events in the 1960s propelled Reser's Fine Foods closer to national dominance.
In December 1960, Al took the company public. He was 25 years old.
"We went public in New York. I really didn't know what I was doing. I just knew I was going to get money I couldn't get otherwise because I had already gone to nearly every bank in the state."
"It was a time when a lot of people were investing in small, entrepreneurial companies," Pat adds. "At his age, it was a pretty exciting time for Al."
"I had to deal with seasoned New York stockbrokers," Al continues, "and I learned a lot. I always say I got one diploma in college and I've gotten hundreds of diplomas since then. This was one of those diplomas."
Going public provided the money for more growth, and shortly after Reser's Fine Foods stock appeared on the National Over-the-Counter (OTC) Stock Exchange, Al moved the company from Cornelius to a much larger facility on Allen Boulevard in Beaverton, Oregon.
Lois recalls the major step. "We moved in there in January-nobody eats potato salad in January-and we looked at that big building. Then we looked at each other and thought, 'What have we done?' But within three years we had a good salad base. We were out of the tough struggle and becoming recognized."
Darrell remembers as well. "Moving from the Cornelius production plant, such as it was, to 33,000 square feet on Allen Boulevard was just mind boggling. Instead of 144 square feet of finished goods cooler, we had 1,600 square feet of space. It seemed like a cavern."
The move also brought improved operations. For the first time, Reser's had a continuous potato cooker and no longer cooked potatoes in 100-pound batches.
"An engineer who worked at Birds Eye built the cooker in his garage," Darrell explains. "It doubled or tripled our production and we used that cooker for 20 years."
As the company continued to grow, even the seemingly cavernous Allen Boulevard plant was too small. By the mid-1960s, the Allen plant had an additional 60'x120' finished goods space that was half cooler and half freezer.
The purchase of a meat plant and the German Boy Brand label in 1967 moved Reser's toward more dependable, year-round production. The company started producing meats during the salad off season, according to Ronda Farber, Manager of the meat plant, with a product line that included link sausage, mild and hot beer sausage, and a pepper snack stick.
"We started with a handful of products and about 15 employees," Ronda says. "Now we have about 400 SKUs-not just Reser's label-packaged a variety of ways, and we have between 95 and 100 employees. We're USDA inspected, and we've expanded our product line to protein salads, chubs, lunchmeat, and a variety of snack meat sticks. We used to have one stuffing machine. Now we have three. We used to have one drying room for pepperoni. Now we have four."
The days of long sticks of sausage hand cut in a miter box and the "pants presser" machine that sealed just the side of a hand-stuffed bag are long gone. Now a single, sophisticated machine forms the pockets, loads the sausage, removes the air, seals the package, cuts the packages into individual units, and applies labels and code dates.
Once again, Reser's outgrew its facilities. The Allen Boulevard plant, which now houses meat and pasta production, wasn't big enough to serve the growing business.
By the early 1970s, the company bought 16 acres at the corner of Jenkins Road and 158th Avenue in Beaverton. Although the oil crisis and skyrocketing costs dampened the company's plans initially, the 52,000-square-foot Jenkins plant became reality in 1978. Since then, one expansion added 50,000 square feet of cooler, freezer, and second-floor offices, and a second expansion added 20,000 square feet of dry storage, production, offices, and cooler.
And by the time Reser's Fine Foods settled into the plant on Jenkins Avenue, the product line had grown substantially.
"We probably had about 10 different potato salads, five or six macaroni salads, 20 different gelatin salads, and 12 different chip dips," Darrell recalls.
In the 1970s, distribution moved to the top of Reser's priority list. When Gayle Bergstrom, Al's sister-in-law, took a part-time job in the Transportation Department in 1973, there were three long-haul trucks. She had planned to help out only for a little while. Today Gayle serves as General Manager of Southern Cal Transport, which was established in 1975. With its fleet of some 80 trucks, it serves as Reser's primary outside carrier.
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