Idaho potato days
In September Idaho Potato Days 2025 was held at Kleiner Park in Meridian. Several thousand showed up for the three day event to enjoy food, games, music, and of course all things potato. Organizers were also trying to set two world records.
Thomas Watson was the event organizer for Idaho Potato Days.
“This is only our third year hosting potato days.
Insane, I guess is the only word I can think to use. The first year we were maybe hitting 10,000 then 30,000. This year looks to be the same, if not more. It's clear that people want to come out together as a family and eat potatoes.
Plain potato, baked potato, tater tot, French fries, Mashed potato, potato soup. And then you'll load it. I mean, pork belly, bacon, brisket, chili, green onion, cilantro, cheddar cheese sauce.
I think we just saw a need. We thought there should be a large potato festival where we celebrate farmers, producers, retailers, distributors of the potato. And I thought there should be a big party for potatoes and it needs to be in the city. It needs to have a lot of people and we need to serve every form of potato imaginable. And that was kind of the goal and the reason that we set out to do what we're doing.
Spud Daddy is the funny name that we thought of for our restaurant, if you want to call it a restaurant… for us cooking. We have exactly 20,000 baked potatoes in the ovens right behind me. In 2 1/2 days we will bake all of them. We've done almost 8000 lbs of mashed potatoes, 4000 lbs of French fries. I think in one day we served maybe 900 potatoes on a stick. So our goal was just how many potatoes can we sell? How many of them can be Idaho potatoes directly from the farmers and we're selling a lot of potatoes and we are just cooking, cooking, cooking.
How many potatoes can a group eat in a day? The record in the UK is 12,000 baked potatoes at a single event. We are going to smash that by about 8000 potatoes today. We already beat it. It's already done. We didn't bring Guinness out here, but about 1:00 we broke 12,000 potatoes. So now that I know we have the number, we will bring them out and they will actually come and do a ribbon cutting and a whole ceremony for it.
So, the second record is for the potato sack race, we are going to fail that one. We needed 5000 people to do a potato sack race all at the same time. They needed to be all at the same moment. We were broken up throughout the day. In order to break it, we have to line up a mile all at once. So next year we'll do the mile long line and go all at the same time.
So, we have I think 7 live bands performing. We have mechanical bulls, we have the potato snoot scoop, we have the potato slingshot launcher. There is a tater trampoline toss. It's kind of a funny little game where you toss the foam potato on a trampoline and into a target. The whole goal there is just to let kids play games for free and earn prizes for free. So we got a lot of prizes donated through the Idaho Potato Commission and we're just trying to put their swag into the kids hands.
There's some really cool chalk art where talented artists come out and it’s all potato themed and it's really, really good.
One thing everybody should know is that the games are all hosted by volunteers. A lot of them come from National Honor Society and then moms who want to help, people who just want to help and that's how they stay free. If we didn't have the volunteers, we would be like every other event and there would be tickets and we would be charging. The fact that families come together, they volunteer to put these games on, we get to keep them free and then we depend on organizations to donate their prizes. We really want kids going home with bags of potato themed prizes and thinking to themselves, well, we got to play like 12 games and they were all free and fun and happy volunteers. So we really appreciate the volunteers.
And then the vendors, we have over 120 vendors. And if you have not been a vendor, you have no idea how much work it is to have just one booth at one event. They put in an incredible amount of work and they're out here hanging out in the 90° weather, you know, talking to Idahoans, and we obviously appreciate the heck out of the vendors.
I think I want you to leave thinking I love Idaho potatoes. This is a new family tradition that we're going to come back to every single year. We love that we get to show up, enjoy a family gathering without a ticket. You know, a free way to come celebrate. We want you thinking about the farmers, the producers, the distributors and the retailers, not just the fun of the event. How did these potatoes get on to your table? That's part of the reason we're cooking right in front of you. The potatoes are all lined up on the warmers. We want people watching potatoes being baked so that they can sort of think and appreciate what went into that. Just to produce that potato.In September Idaho Potato Days 2025 was held at Kleiner Park in Meridian. Several thousand showed up for the three day event to enjoy food, games, music, and of course all things potato. Organizers were also trying to set two world records.”
