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July 26, 1999
By RITA-LYN SANDERS
The Mid-Valley Sunday
CORVALLIS, Ore. -- It seemed logical to the Oregon State University student who dabbled in dips.
His mother's potato salad had been a smash for years. The gelatin salads had set with customers almost immediately. So why not dips? As the '60s approached, some moms looked for easy alternatives to cooking in the kitchen all day.
And Al Reser, a business major at OSU, looked for more ways to expand his mother's refrigerated foods business. So he developed a line of dips.
In an OSU food technology laboratory, the young entrepreneur dived into a world of stabilizers and preservatives. With the help of his professors, Reser created recipes for onion, clam and garlic dips that would withstand time -- both on the shelf and in the company product line.
Today, those dips are still on the menu at Reser's Fine Foods Inc., and eaten by people across the country, along with the company's tortillas, burritos, smoked meats, salsas and fresh potatoes.
After he graduated from OSU in 1960, Reser continued to build his mother's salad business into a national company that has distribution centers on both coasts and $250 million in annual sales. He credits the university with giving him the savvy necessary to lead the successful business venture.
Reser and his wife Pat showed their gratitude to OSU last month by donating $5 million to the athletic department. In exchange, the school renamed the football stadium from Parker Stadium to Reser Stadium. For another $7.5 million, Reser can keep his name on the stadium through 2024.
"Pat and I decided to do something while we are here to see it and enjoy it," Reser said.
But they didn't want anyone to see too much evidence of his largesse. In fact, after Reser saw the new logo for the stadium, he asked the athletic department to reduce the size so it wouldn't be so obvious.
"I didn't want to make it so commercial," Reser said. "It was directed at athletics, but it should help the whole university. Students like to go to a university that has a winning program. Everyone likes to be winners."
Such is the success story of Reser's mother, Mildred Reser.
She sold her first potato salad to a restaurant while the family lived in Kansas. After the family moved to Oregon in 1950, Earl Reser started a logging company and Mildred Reser began selling her potato salad to restaurants and local grocery stores. Soon she added macaroni salad.
A year later, her kitchen wasn't large enough to serve all of her customers, and Mildred Reser rented a building in which she made her goods. And soon after Safeway executives tasted her products, she began supplying salads to the chain's Oregon stores.
Before he left for college, Al Reser drove a delivery truck. But he wanted to get more involved in his mother's company, so he attended OSU, where he could get a business degree and minor in food technology.
"I got the ability to be creative and solve problems, and that background helped me," Reser said.
After graduation, Al Reser almost took a job with another company, but his mother convinced him to return home, and he became president of the company. He built a 40,000-square-foot building for Reser's Fine Foods in Beaverton and began exploring refrigerated food products.
Expansion has been key to his success. The company has since moved to a larger salad plant in Beaverton and opened a sausage and pasta facility, and 10 years ago began buying distribution centers across the country.
Reser has even tested the waters in the public sector. But that ended abruptly when a Chicago man snapped up 40 percent of the company's stock for himself. The Resers bought back all the public stock and turned private again.
"It was a very uncomfortable position," Reser said. "When someone owns that much they like to make sure things are going according to them."
Reser's experimenting hasn't ended, and Reser continues to explore food products.
On any given Friday, company employees might taste new recipes for lemon mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese. Workers in research and development are always on the lookout for foods they can translate into a commercial product and welcome phone calls and letters.
Reser has moved from dip development to a roomy and comfortable office overlooking the parking lot of his company's headquarters in Beaverton.
And instead of one building there are a dozen spread across the country from Hawaii to Maryland. Reser's employs about 1,850 people nationwide.
But Reser's hasn't lost the family feeling. Just like calling mom to ask for her potato salad recipe, all it takes is a phone to reach Al Reser.
"Maybe because we started so small, we're still very open with people," Reser said.