This Scottsdale company is working to disrupt a surprising market: French fries

French fries are nearly ubiquitous on menus, across the state and around the country. But, a Valley-based company is working to break into the market, to get its spuds on your plate in a restaurant.

Mignon Gould, associate editor at the Phoenix Business Journal, has written about Frites Street, which is aiming to be a disruptor in this space, and joined The Show to discuss.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Frites Street had a successful operation as a food truck, then decided they were going to move to something else. What led to that change?

MIGNON GOULD: You know, after talking to Flip [Isard], who is one of the co-founders of the original food truck, he made it clear that they were a successful food truck business, but he realized that most of the revenue that they were getting was coming from chefs who were actually coming buying their potatoes in bulk and repurposing them in their own restaurants and adding their own making their using them to make their own recipes. So it was something in the ballpark of 500 to 750 pounds of potatoes that they were actually selling through that avenue.

Mignon Gould

BRODIE: So, basically they went from selling their own french fries, their own, you know, sort of creations, to just selling the, for lack of a better word, the raw material, the chefs who were then doing their own thing with them.

GOULD: Exactly, he basically went from being a food truck chef to being a wholesale, wholesaler to other chefs, restaurants, or resorts, etc.

BRODIE: Was that something that he had aspired to do?

GOULD: No, actually it was an aha moment. The, the, the passion was to make these great french fry concoctions. He'd make his, his own type of french fry, and then they had toppings on top of them. So there was not in that moment the idea to evolve into a wholesaler, but the opportunity presented itself when he saw that his customer base was more heavily restaurateurs.

BRODIE: Was there any hesitation to doing that? I can just imagine if you are somebody who has all these creative ideas for what to do with food, and then all of a sudden you go from that to just selling, and I hate to, I'm using air quotes, just selling the raw material to being a wholesaler, then I feel like sort of you're you're losing a part of what you're trying to do.

GOULD: Well, he, from my understanding, Flip actually, when he saw that he was having such a great response from chefs, he looked into the industry and saw that there were four major players in the industry who were pretty much monopolizing the industry.

So he saw an opportunity, which is what all brilliant small business owners do, for his raw potato to enter that market because he kind of had a unique process as to how he developed his.

BRODIE: How big is the french fry industry?

GOULD: It is a billion dollar industry, I believe something like $24.6 billion. And the four companies that right now pretty much monopolize it are Lamb Weston, J.R. Simplot, McCain Foods and Cavendish Farms. And they've allegedly been embroiled in kind of behavior where they're trying to monopolize the industry.

And so this is why Flip and his team saw that this was a great opportunity for them to enter because they did have a product that was somewhat different than what was already on the market.

BRODIE: So what did he say about how he tried to break in? I mean, these companies have been around for a while and you know, do most, if not all of the business in the french fry world. So how do you go about trying to become a new company that's trying to enter that market?

GOULD: Well, especially with small businesses, the key is really starting local, and that is what he did. He really started local, started with a food truck. And as you can imagine, when you have a food truck, if your food is good, you get a local reputation. And as you, as, as, as I kind of learned from interviewing him, that really grew in the restaurant industry.

And so he started making a name for himself where chefs are like, this is an amazing french fry were able to create an amazing dish from it. And so his name grew there. And he's in over 200 different restaurants, resorts, cafes here in, here just in Arizona, and over 400 across the country. So that kind of gives you an idea how he kind of crept into the space of these other four big players.

BRODIE: Was it mostly like a word of mouth kind of thing for him to spread beyond just the Phoenix area, beyond Arizona?

GOULD: Yes, definitely, from my understanding with how they started with the food truck, it became a word of mouth, but he also, from some information I gathered from the company, he built relationships with people like Chris Bianco, and you probably know him from Pizzeria Bianco, who was an investor and, actually their french fries called the cowboy chips are actually carried in Bar Bianco. So building those type of relationships with, you know, someone who really has a, a presence, locally and nationally, definitely, I'm sure aided in him to be able to grow his brand.

BRODIE: So what's next? Like what, what kind of aspirations does Frites Street have beyond what they're doing now?

GOULD: Well, what's next for them, as I, as I discussed in our article that came out on Friday, is, they want to enter the retail market, and they've actually working on a deal with DotFoods, which is a national redistributor, and so what that means is that those french fries, street fries could soon be coming to grocery stores near us so that we can, you know, use our little air fryers and make our own little french fry concoctions.