FRIESLAND, WI — Alsum Farms & Produce, Inc., located in a sparkling new 200,000-square-foot office, packinghouse and warehousing facility here, has seen remarkable expansion into many parts of the produce industry.

Heidi Randall, marketing manager for the firm, is very proud to describe the company’s success, which has been led by her father, Larry Alsum. Also in the family business is Larry’s other daughter, Wendy Alsum, who is the firm’s financial analyst.

The company is a grower of as many as 1,800 acres of potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions and other fresh produce. The firm trains local farmers in food-safety practices and then markets their bounty.

The company offers its own line of value-added fresh fruits and vegetables, and its packaging was recently personalized by prominently adding Larry Alsum’s photograph. The art “shows consumers that there is a real person behind this company,” Randall stated. “The trust factor is really important.”

Furthermore, Alsum Farms & Produce is a wholesale produce distributor, offering 300 to 400 SKUs from its modern warehouse, which opened in May 2012. The firm makes a specialty of high-value niche products such as individually wrapped microwave “Russet Singles” and “Gold Grillers” for backyard chefs. The firm has created sophisticated, free-standing point-of-sale display bins to promote some of its value-added items.

Alsum Transport Co. delivers products such as Driscoll’s berries and Dole products to customers in cities like Milwaukee and Chicago, plus other cities in northern Illinois. Direct store deliveries are made possible by Alsum Transport’s 27 trucks and 60 trailers.

This year Alsum Farms & Produce invested $5 million in new, state-of-the-art robotics for its packingline.

Randall said Alsum Farms & Produce “is at the leading edge of food safety and traceability.”

The company’s motto is “Integrity from Field to Fork”.

Alsum uses its website — www.alsum.com — to communicate directly with consumers on recipes and other matters of interest.

The firm ships gold, russet and red potatoes 52 weeks a year. Alsum has collaborative potato-growing partners in California, Washington state, Nebraska, Kansas, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Arizona, Texas and Florida.

July 2013 marked Alsum’s 40th anniversary. The company started as a packer of five-pound potato bags. Larry Alsum’s best friend and second cousin, Glenn Alsum, started the company in 1973 in Stevens Point, WI. In 1981, Glenn Alsum was killed in an airplane accident. Glenn’s widow, Linda Alsum, asked Larry, who was an accountant in Whitewater, WI, to help run the company. In 1983, Larry bought the firm from Linda Alsum.

In 1987 Larry Alsum launched the trucking entity and in 1991 he started farming 200 acres of potatoes in Spring Green, WI.

“He took risks” to build the company, Randall, who was born in 1981, said of her father.

Before Larry Alsum was called into the produce business, he was tugged by another calling to help the poor in Africa. With help from a grant from the U.S. Potato Board, in recent years he has twice sent containers of seed potatoes and fertilizer to Ghana and Liberia — and traveled to those countries — to teach the art of potato farming. He follows up with monthly conference calls to Africa.