Mildred Reser started selling potato salad to pay the bills back in 1950. The recipe she perfected in a rural Cornelius, Oregon, farmhouse helped her launch a seasonal business, Mrs. Reser’s Salads, which supplied local meat markets before it moved to its first small factory and landed distribution in Safeway.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Reser’s Fine Foods. Grandma Mildred with her family.
Mildred’s son, Al, stepped in as president in 1960, and the company became Reser’s Fine Foods. Eager to transition operations to a larger facility but lacking the cash to do so, he took the company public and raised a little over $200,000. Those funds went toward opening Reser’s