Bay Area man sprouts business idea using potatoes to send messages

Potatoes can be baked, mashed, whipped, fried, or dropped in the mail.

A Bay Area man has started a thriving business shipping spuds around the world.

Nicole Bekhit works in the family business, packing and shipping the company's sole product -- potatoes for just about every occasion.

"I was employee number one, yes," Bekhit said.

Her brother Riad Bekhit got the idea from the Internet.

"On Reddit, there was a picture of a potato with stamps on it," Riad said.

Just for fun, he started PotatoParcel.com.

"Someone said, 'that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Nicole Bekhit said.

But who's laughing now? "We're doing anywhere from $20,000 to 25,000 a month in sales," Riad Bekhit said.

What began as a joke has sprouted into a business, because why text when you can send up to 15 words on a potato? Pictures of potatoes have flooded Instagram, some of them are downright "pun-derful."

The Bekhits looked into automating their potato printing, but it would've been more expensive and slower. It turns out writing on potatoes is an art that robots still haven't mastered.

Every potato is written by hand. They've picked out a standard pen for their growing workforce, though they do have a high tech way to attach photos.

There's the spooky tater for Halloween and for Valentine's Day, a sweet potato. There's another holiday coming up, Mother's Day.

"This is something your mother's probably never received before," Riad Bekhit said.

After all, Potato Parcel wasn't around last Mother's Day.

"You'd probably receive a phone call from her saying why the heck did you send me a potato?" Riad Bekhit said.

"I mean a text is a text is a phone call, but this is something you'll remember forever," Nicole Bekhit said.