For almost 70 years a hot potato stall on Preston’s Flag Market has attracted hungry shoppers and people who work in the town centre.
In the last few months, they have served customers who have travelled from Oslo, Amsterdam and Colorado just to taste their potatoes.
Their remarkable global appeal is down to an incredible social media following two young brothers have built since they took the business on.
Jacob and Harley Nelson – better known to almost four million followers on TikTok and Instagram as the Spud Brothers – have transformed the traditional fast food outlet into a thoroughly modern sensation which has people across the word tuning in to watch them sell potatoes. And travelling thousands of miles to sample them.
Harley, 21, said: ‘We do get some people coming along who are unaware of the social media side of things – they're just here for good food. But we also get a lot of people who come because of the social media.
‘We have people coming here from all over the UK, but also from Canada, the US Singapore, Norway – some of them see us online and plan trips to the UK around us. We had someone here recently who had come to the UK from Colorado because of us, and another a week or two later who made the journey from Amsterdam. It’s just crazy, really.’
And older brother Jacob, 28, added: ‘We’re just two lads from Preston with a vision, a passion – and a lot of potatoes. We saw an opportunity with the way the world was going and the way more and more people were using social media and running their lives through a screen.
‘The potato business has always gone well in Preston but by going on social media I was confident we could attract a younger audience, if we made it fun and spoke the language they speak.
‘Now we have millions of views every week and thousands watching our live stream every day. We’re always looking for the next thing and we are surprised how fast we’ve grown.’
The business was founded in 1955 by Ernie Rhodes, whose brother Brian converted an old fire engine pump to be able to boil new potatoes. His nephew Keith Roberts Snr eventually took over before passing it on to his son, who was also called Keith.
‘Keith Junior was a friend of mine,’ said Tony Nelson, father of the Spud Brothers. ‘When he died, none of his family wanted to take the business on, so they called me and asked if I would be interested in keeping it going.
‘It had always been my plan to retire at 55 but I took this on and I’ve never worked as hard in my life.’
At the time Harley was studying at Newman College in Preston, while Jacob was working for a food importing business.
Tony and Harley’s first day selling potatoes coincided with the start of the second lockdown in late 2020, but as restrictions eased the town centre started to get busy again.
‘It hadn’t traded for nine months but we knew there was some potential. We’re not far from the college and the university and we’d see students walking past us every day and we’d wonder how we could engage with them,’ Tony added. ‘At first we moved a bit but they walked round us, so we did some promotions and deals but it still wasn’t really working.
‘Harley went and spoke to them and the message was that they didn’t see spuds as being sexy and they were getting food deals and information from TikTok and Instagram, so we put the tram on TikTok and got up to about 70,000 followers but we still weren’t attracting students to buy from us. We thought that if we could get them at the age of 16, we’d have them coming for life because those who did come, came back.
‘Jacob was working elsewhere and he told me quite bluntly: if you’re 18 you don’t want to see a 60-year-old man dancing about on TikTok. He could see there was real potential so he gave up his job and got involved. Within three months they had half a million followers on TikTok – they now have nearly four million followers on social media, they’re managed by a company in London and they have brand deals, collaborations and people knocking on the door all the time.
‘What really brought home to me how popular they are was when we had a call from Colombia Records and they were flown out to Portugal to deliver potatoes to American band The Jonas Brothers while they were on tour.
‘They get recognised when they go out – it happens in Preston, but they get asked for pictures by people in London too. The appeal is that they’re just down to earth lads with hearts of gold – and they are really savvy. It’s great for me as their dad to see them being successful.
‘We sometimes have people waiting on the Flag Market from 5am to be first in the queue. We don’t open until 11.30.’
At the front of the queue on the day of Lancashire Life’s visit were Indy, Kate and nine-year-old Elijah who were up at 6am to drive across from Dewsbury in West Yorkshire to stand in the Preston drizzle waiting to be served first.
‘There are places in Dewsbury that do potatoes but it won’t be like this. When we’ve had the potatoes we’ll just go home and we’ll probably watch the live stream. If it’s good, we’ll definitely come back.’
Behind them in the queue were families from Walkden, Chester, Wrexham and Manchester.
The brothers recently took delivery of a new tram-shaped van which has three ovens capable of churning out 450 potatoes an hour. The first and last customer each day gets their food free – and others during the day sometimes do as well.
The potatoes come from Tarleton, the cheese is from Karen Lodge at Inglewhite and toppings available include homemade chilli, curry, cheese, beans, tuna and the special recipe Tram Sauce.
The hatch opened at 11.30, accompanied by flashing lights and music – the Spud Van song, recorded by Jacob – and there is a noticeable frisson in the queue.
The brothers now employ Stan and Harvey, known as the Tater Twins, and Jacob added: ‘Our day starts at 6am. We get all the food stock, pick up the twins and get to the Flag Market, get the spuds on, they take about an hour and a half, make the chilli, get the beans on and get everything ready.
‘When we open there’s usually a queue across the Flag Market and it’s like that until we close at 3.30. We get home at about 7.30 and that’s when we do the social media and we finish about 10pm – serving is the easy bit, it’s all the behind the scenes work that’s the hardest.
‘We don’t eat potatoes all that much, we try to keep it as a treat – and we don’t usually have any left, anyway.’
The Spud Brothers are now working on the next – so far top secret – step of their career and Harley added: ‘We had a vision when we started this, but we didn’t really know it would be like this. We’re at the stage now where we need someone to drive the business day-to-day and give us the time to think and have ideas.’
* Follow the brothers on TikTok @thespudbrothers, on Instagram @therealspudbros and on Facebook @spudbrosltd.
