From Dairy Cows to Potato Rows
There's a stretch of land in central Wisconsin — Bancroft, population roughly "you can count everyone at the gas station" — where the soil is sandy, the winters are brutal, and the potatoes are phenomenal.
This is where RPE lives. Officially, that stands for Russet Potato Exchange, but to the families who built it, it's just home.
The story starts in the late 1950s, when three brothers — Louis, Francis, and Greg Wysocki — looked at their father's small dairy farm and made a decision that would change the trajectory of their family for generations. They were going to grow potatoes.
The Wysocki Way
Now, converting a dairy operation to a potato farm isn't exactly a "just flip a switch" kind of move. Dairy means cows, milking schedules, hay bales. Potatoes mean entirely different equipment, different knowledge, different rhythms. But the Wysocki brothers saw something in that central Wisconsin soil — a sandy, well-drained composition that happens to be exactly what potatoes love — and they bet everything on it.
What started as Wysocki Farms became something bigger. The brothers started driving shipments to market in Chicago, learning storage techniques, experimenting with packing innovations. They weren't just growing potatoes. They were building an operation.
Over the decades, they partnered with neighboring farmers. Nick Somers of Plover River Farms came on board. Jeff Sommers joined the crew. What had been one family's gamble became a network of Wisconsin farm families working together, pooling knowledge, sharing the load.
Thirty years in, they'd grown from a single farm into a premier potato and onion producer. Today, RPE operates five plants, grows across multiple regions throughout the country, and the second and third generations of Wysockis and Sommers are running the show.
What's in a Name?
RPE — Russet Potato Exchange — is the kind of name that tells you exactly what a company does without any marketing fluff. They exchange russet potatoes. They're really, really good at it.
But the company has grown well beyond russets. Their product lineup today includes bite-size potatoes (through their Tasteful Selections® brand), reds, yellows, sweet potatoes, and onions. They've become what the industry calls "category experts" — the people retailers call when they need someone who actually understands potatoes from dirt to dinner table.
The Brands You Might Know
RPE operates under two consumer-facing brands that you've probably walked past in the produce aisle without realizing they're connected.
Tasteful Selections® is their bite-size potato line — those perfectly uniform little potatoes that all cook at the same rate because they're sized within five-millimeter increments of each other. That's not a typo. Five millimeters. These folks are precise about their small potatoes, and there's something deeply admirable about that level of care applied to something the size of a golf ball.
Farmer's Promise is their broader brand, connecting consumers to the actual farm families who grow the food. Their website doesn't hide behind stock photography — they feature the Wysocki family, the Hi-Land Potato folks in Colorado, the Plover River crew. Real faces behind real food. It's refreshingly honest for a produce brand.
Central Sands: The Terroir of Potatoes
Wine people talk about terroir — the way soil, climate, and geography shape flavor. Potato people should talk about it too, and central Wisconsin's Central Sands region deserves the conversation.
The area sits on a glacial outwash plain. Translation: when the glaciers retreated thousands of years ago, they left behind deep deposits of sand and gravel with excellent drainage. For potatoes, this is paradise. The sandy soil means tubers develop smooth skins without the scarring you get in heavy clay. The water table is accessible but not too high. And Wisconsin's growing season — hot summers followed by crisp falls — gives potatoes time to develop complex starches and full flavor.
RPE's home address, 8550 Central Sands Road, literally has the terroir in the street name.
The Quiet Giant
RPE isn't flashy. They don't have a podcast. They're not doing TikTok dances with potatoes (though honestly, we'd watch that). Their website is clean, straightforward, and focused on what matters: the product, the people, the story.
That's kind of the point. In an era where every brand wants to be your lifestyle guru, RPE just wants to grow really good potatoes and get them to your table. They've been doing it for over 60 years. Three generations of a family decided that central Wisconsin was the place, potatoes were the thing, and quality was the only acceptable standard.
Their core values — Integrity, Responsibility, Innovation, Commitment, and Fairness — read like something your grandfather would have said while shaking your hand firmly at the door. And from a company that's been family-run since the Eisenhower administration, they feel earned rather than workshopped.
Why This Matters
We cover a lot of potato businesses in The Tater Times, and they come in all shapes: artisan chip makers, vodka distillers, potato hotel experiences. RPE represents something different — the backbone. These are the people who actually grow the potatoes that everyone else turns into something fancy.
Without operations like RPE, there are no chips, no fries, no loaded baked potatoes at your favorite steakhouse. They're the foundation of the whole spud economy, and they've been quietly excellent at it for six decades.
Next time you're in the produce aisle and you spot a bag of Tasteful Selections or Farmer's Promise potatoes, you're holding something that started with three Wisconsin brothers and a crazy idea about converting a dairy farm. That's a pretty good origin story.
RPE is headquartered at 8550 Central Sands Road, Bancroft, WI 54921. Learn more at rpespud.com.