J.R. Simplot

By Karen Hutchinson-Talaski

The Hermiston Herald

Hermiston played a major role in the success of J.R. Simplot Company and McDonald’s restaurants. It was at Shari’s Restaurant in Hermiston where the owners of the two giant corporations met to make a happy deal about a meal.

Simplot, 99, the Idaho farmer who became one of the richest men in the nation because of his business savvy, died Sunday at his home in Boise, apparently of natural causes.

Simplot started his career at 14, when he quit school and went into business on his own in 1923, near Declo, Idaho. Rick Phillips, J.R. Simplot Co. director of corporate communications and public relations, said in the early years of World War II, his company had become one of the largest shippers of fresh potatoes in the country and was selling millions of pounds of dehydrated onions and potatoes to the military.

When Simplot hadn’t been paid for onions he had shipped to an onion dehydrating business during the war, he headed to California to collect his money. While he was waiting in the office, Phillips said, Simplot met a man who hadn’t been paid for his dehydrating equipment. The two men struck up deal Simplot would buy the dehydrating equipment from the supplier and dehydrate his own onions.

“It was driven by his military contracts for dried onions and potatoes,” Phillips said.

When World War II fertilizer shortages made it next to impossible to buy fertilizer, Simplot built a manufacturing plant in Pocatello, Idaho, and produced his own.

“He made a deal with a phosphate mine in Montana,” Phillips said. “When he contacted them to say he was ready for product, the company said they didn’t have enough for themselves. So he and a chemist got in a pickup and went exploring.” The pair found a rich vein of phosphate on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, just 20 miles from Pocatello. The mine was named for Simplot’s daughter, Gay.

“Simplot is the largest phosphate fertilizer company in the western United States,” Phillips added. The Simplot Company has another phosphate mine in Verlin, Utah, which ships to a fertilizer plant in Rock Springs, Wyo.

By the 1950s, the Simplot Company created and marketed the world’s first commercially practical frozen french fries. Simplot presented his frozen french idea to Ray Kroc of McDonald’s and persuaded him to buy Simplot spuds. As a result, Simplot became the major french fry supplier to McDonald’s and most other fast-food restaurants.

Jerry Reed, retired publisher of The Hermiston Herald, remembers Kroc and Simplot met at Shari’s. Reed also participated in the ground-breaking ceremony for Simplot’s french fry plant in Hermiston.

The J.R. Simplot Company opened its Hermiston potato processing plant in the mid-1970s. The company closed the plant in 2004, putting about 600 people out of work. Simplot Grower Solutions and the Western Stockman’s store in Umatilla are two Simplot businesses in the area. The telephone directory also lists the J.R. Simplot Co. and Simplot Land and Livestock in the Hermiston area.

Survivors include wife, Esther, sons Don and Scott, and daughter Gay. Simplot’s son Richard died in the 1990s. Phillips had no information about funeral arrangements by press time.