The Client

Tasteful Selections LLC is a specialty potato brand that prides itself on modernizing the potato for the modern lifestyle. The brand has family growers from California, Nevada, and Arizona, and it is also a joint venture of Wisconsin’s RPE, CSS Farms, and Plover River Farms Alliance Inc.

Since 2010, Tasteful Selections has sought to make cooking easier and faster with pre-washed and pre-peeled potatoes. The company markets itself around the concept of “rescued moments,” which has its own Twitter hashtag and celebrates time saved in the kitchen that can be better spent with family.

The Challenge

In 2015, Tasteful Selections was building a new facility and sought to improve their operations. Nathan Bender, the Vice President of Plant Operations, knew it was time for a change. Said Bender, “Tasteful Selections had started in a smaller facility in 2010, and we originally were using a certain type of checkweigher. We just always struggled with those, both with speed and accuracy. We had Yamato scales feeding the bagger, and those were great, but this other brand of checkweigher downstream from the bagger just wasn’t doing the job.”

How Yamato Checkweighers Helped

Bender had observed Yamato checkweighers in Europe on different packing lines and was impressed. When the new Alvin, California facility was being built, Tasteful Selections turned to Yamato once more.

According to Bender, “We bought seven more checkweighers, and we had them running in our new facility in 2015. Over the years, we’ve bought more, and as of a new installation just this month, we now have 13 Yamato I-Series checkweighers here at the Alvin facility.”

Said Bender, “What we like about them is the speed and the accuracy. Yamato’s always been known to have highly accurate scales. That has always been our challenge — to find a highly accurate checkweigher to make sure that the product that got put in the bag is of the weight that the customer requires, or that we’re posting on the bag.”

Bender and his team trusted Yamato’s checkweighers to be accurate and uphold Tasteful Selections’ integrity as a brand. They trusted Yamato so much, in fact, that over the years the company has transitioned to a checkweigher operation that consists almost entirely of Yamato machines. In that time Bender has found himself impressed with the durability of the checkweighers. Said Bender, “We’ve needed a few repairs, mainly wear items like belts. The brand we had prior, we were burning up a lot of motors — not so anymore. I would say the overall use and wear and tear on these has been surprisingly good, but I think that’s also in part because Yamato has always been really good to work with on maintenance.”

Tasteful Selections has never regretted turning to Yamato when they were looking for quality and efficiency. The checkweighers have allowed the company to continue producing convenient and delicious potatoes for the everyday person.

Learn More

With customizable components and durable, compact design, Yamato checkweighers offer food producers like Tasteful Selections high-quality food packing solutions to meet their ever-changing needs. To learn more about this and our many other automatic weighing solutions, visit the Yamato Americas website or contact us for more information.

(Quote Source – Packaging World)