North Carolina SweetPotato Commission basks in celebration of 60 years

The North Carolina SweetPotato Commission is celebrating 60 years, and a big part of that celebration has come from RFD-TV Network's new TV series called “Where the Food Comes From.” 

Hosted by Chip Carter, the video series has a 16-week season, and North Carolina sweet potatoes have been featured in two of those episodes, said Michelle Grainger, executive director of the North Carolina SweetPotato Commission, Benson, N.C.

“And we have a commercial that runs every episode, regardless of what the focus is for that episode,” she said. The second episode highlighting North Carolina sweet potatoes recently aired, she said in early March.

“That has been a ton of fun promoting and getting feedback from folks across the country as they see it and learn all about North Carolina sweet potatoes," Grainger said. 

North Carolina sweet potato growers are actively selling the 2021 crop, which Grainger described as high-quality and ample for the market.

“We will be able to cover needs (and), from a quality standpoint, it's fantastic,” she said. While the COVID-19 pandemic created challenges for growers in the 2020-21 season, the restrictions on the foodservice sector are easing and some of the “kinks and surprises” have diminished compared with the first year of the pandemic.

“We've got plenty of beautiful product available for anyone who wants premium North Carolina varieties,” she said.

The commission has been promoting the crop and the commission’s 60-year anniversary, raising consumer awareness of growers in the state.

With February being National Sweet Potato Month, the commission celebrated the 60th anniversary of the commission last month with an in-state billboard campaign along major highways, Grainger said. 

There were several versions of the billboards, all of them emphasizing the state’s outsized importance in U.S. sweet potato production.

One read: "North Carolina is the #1 sweetpotato state," with the tagline including the commission’s website, ncsweetpotatoes.com.

The commission deliberately combines "sweet" and "potato" into one word in its name and in all marketing efforts, to help differentiate the vegetable from the white or Irish potato, according to the group.

Sweet potatoes as medicine

Once recent marketing pilot, Grainger said, is the commission’s partnership with a retail grocery store’s pharmacy department. The store, located in the Raleigh-Durham region, agreed to use messages touting the immunity-boosting factors of the sweet potato on its prescriptions bags.

“The pharmacy has been very enthusiastic,” she said. “They have been very supportive and enthusiastic and thought it was so cool that a superfood was being featured on the prescription bag.” The language on the commission’s ad recommended that a consumer go to the produce aisle to pick up a sweet potato. What’s more, the prescription bag also contains a QR code that encourages consumers to look up the recipes section on the commission’s website.

The website features more than 200 recipes that fully explain dietary benefits and nutrients, as well as calories, according to the group.

“It has been really fun to see the feedback from the pilot and to kind of tie the natural medicine, personalized medicine and food as medicine concepts together for the consumer while they are in the grocery store," Grainger said.

It is too soon to fully evaluate the success of the pilot, but she said the “food as medicine” trend seems bound to increase in the years ahead.

Another promotion, Grainger said, was a partnership with the Johnson County Bourbon Society in North Carolina to do a special batch of bourbon with bottles labeled with the North Carolina SweetPotato Commission logo and recognition of the group’s 60th anniversary.

“While there's no sweet potato flavoring in the bourbon, the labeling is very much North Carolina SweetPotato-focused and is another celebration of the commission’s 60th anniversary,” she said.

Down the road

Last fall, Grainger said the commission promoted a statewide Restaurant Week, which went over big with both consumers and restaurants.

“It was a tremendous hit,” she said, noting a partnership with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, which had some COVID relief money to spend on the program.

“We wanted to give back to the independently owned restaurants that got hit so hard with all of the (COVID) restrictions,” she said.

The 10-day Restaurant Week saw 37 restaurants across the state participate, with varying cuisines and price points.

“They were challenged with coming up with totally different ways to use sweet potatoes on their menu, from their coffee menu to their cocktail menu and everything in between,” she said. 

During the event, a social media campaign was tied to restaurants with the most tags and most posts about sweet potatoes helping operators win substantial prizes from commercial kitchen suppliers and others.

Consumers or patrons who participated in the promotion also were eligible to win some prizes, Grainger said.  “It was such a hit and so fantastic that we plan to do that again.”

The timing of the next Restaurant Week may not be this fall, but rather the spring of 2023, she said.

One reason for the spring timing of the next Restaurant Week promotion, she said, is the desire to send the message of how great sweet potatoes can be in the warmer months. Consumers can enjoy sweet potatoes in totally diverse ways in comparison with how they commonly consume them at winter and fall holiday gatherings, Grainger said.

The domestic fresh market and export demand are big parts of the success of North Carolina sweet potatoes, but Grainger said there is room for more processing use and capacity in the state.

Another market that is growing for sweet potatoes, she said, is use of the vegetable in pet foods.

“Our pets can benefit from sweet potatoes just as much as we do, and I think there's a real opportunity for additional growth there,” Grainger said.