Chase’s plan was to launch Tyrrells Potato Chips into a market dominated by Walkers, Golden Wonder and other mass producers of flavoured potato-based snacks. Walkers and its ilk charge between 30 and 40p for a bag of crisps; Chase was planning to charge 85p.
He had spent six months preparing for this moment, coming up with the idea in late 2001 after a supermarket chain rejected a batch of his potatoes. At the time he was supplying the large chains and was aware of what they wanted. ‘Pretty-looking potatoes – and it didn’t matter what they tasted like.’
It was a good business in the 1990s, he says. But then the chains had started squeezing suppliers, demanding lower prices and sourcing cheaper potatoes from Eastern Europe. Chase sent the rejects – mainly old varieties grown specifically for their flavour – to a manufacturer of upmarket crisps that didn’t care if they were a bit dark and irregularly shaped. Though Chase was pleased to have found a market for his knobbly spuds, he was underwhelmed by the end product and thought he could do better.
He made his first faltering step toward the Tyrrells Potato Chips empire with a second-hand fryer bought from a local chippy. He sliced some potatoes, heated the oil and fried them. He thought they were delicious.
Inspired, Chase spent the next few months in Spain and, later, in the United States, researching the business and sourcing supplies of potato fryers. He calls his product a potato chip, not to lend it some sort of spurious trans-Atlantic glamour, but to differentiate it from what we are accustomed to in this country – the crisp.
Crisps are made in a mechanical continuous frying process, enabling manufacturers to turn out millions of bags from factories running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To get the process to work, the potatoes are cut very thinly, then dumped into a water bath to leach out all the starch. Starch creates huge problems for the continuous frying process; it can cause the potato slices to stick together and can burn and discolour the crisp. Getting rid of the starch eliminates these problems.
Unfortunately, it also eliminates the taste of the potato. The result is a very thin, flavourless potato-based snack, with all the calories retained and all the goodness processed out. To create flavour, manufacturers coat the crisps in a witches’ brew of chemicals and fragrances, which is why your favourite prawn cocktail crisps taste of
sour beer and smell like malt vinegar!
Surprised by success
A potato chip, on the other hand, is cut thickly and retains its starch. For that reason, it can’t be continuously fried and must instead be made up in batches. To ensure that the slices don’t stick together or burn, a cook must stir the chips as they’re frying, ensuring they achieve the correct standard. Unlike continuous frying, the process can’t be mechanised. It costs money to hire potato chefs, hence the premium for Tyrrells Potato Chips.
On that day in April 2002, when Chase momentarily considered the possibility that the whole thing might not work, he and a handful of employees had just cooked their first commercial batch of potato chips and had begun bagging them. His hope at the time was that the nascent potato chip business would subsidise his 800-acre Tyrrell Court farm. The success of the brand almost took him by surprise.
In that first year, he set aside five per cent of his crop for potato chips, selling the rest to the big supermarket chains. Last year, the farm’s entire crop – it has now grown to 1000 acres, in addition to a number of rented allotments – was devoted to Tyrrells Potato Chips. He currently has six batch cookers, producing between them some 400,000 packets of potato chips a week. Turnover has grown to £15 million a year and the firm employs nearly 100 people. Growth – after spurting exponentially in the early years – is now steady at about 58 per cent per annum.
Clearly, Chase’s original hunch was right: there is a market in the UK for upmarket potato snacks. More to the point, accidentally or otherwise, Chase tapped into the zeitgeist – a small but increasing number of people who take a great deal of interest in the provenance of their food and how it is grown. That they are also the sort of people who are willing to pay 85p for a bag of crisps is a happy coincidence.
At Tyrrells, the potatoes go from the field to the fryer in the same day, and the company was the first to ‘cook them on the farm’, as Chase puts it. The potatoes are grown, fried and bagged there, making the food chain a mere two links – Tyrrells and the retailer – in length. Additives and pesticides are banned, the slices are fried in vegetable oil for an all-natural potato chip and, of course, no GM ingredients are used.
As far as possible, Chase tries to source everything on the farm, to make the operation ‘totally self-sufficient’, as he puts it. He has begun growing rapeseed for oil. Leftover potato peelings are fed to the cows. The oil used in frying is cleaned, then re-used. If you suggest this is all admirably green and conscientious, he’s having none of it. ‘It’s just common sense,’ Chase says gruffly. ‘It saves a lot of money.’
From bust to boom
How Chase got where he is today is a story of perseverance and resilience. Born in rural Herefordshire, he left school at 14 to work on his father’s potato farm. In 1984, when he was 20, he borrowed £200,000 to buy it (his father had decided to get out of farming), then struggled for years to pay off the debt. When interest rates soared in the 1990s he was paying 28 per cent compound interest and by 1992 he was bankrupt. People can make money out of farming, he says now, but only if they inherit it. Borrowing too much money doesn’t work.
Depressed, he set out to Australia for three months. On his return he rented part of his farm back from the auditors and started trading potatoes, acting as a middleman between the local farmers and the supermarket chains. When he came up with his idea for upmarket potato chips in 2001, there was only one other person in the country engaged in batch frying. Mass production had transformed the British crisp industry, so he travelled to Spain and America to see how smaller, artisan producers handled the manufacturing process. ‘No one invents anything,’ he muses.
‘What you do is take something and make it better. You have to keep being innovative.’
Risky business
And so Chase keeps coming up with new ideas. In 2003, a year after introducing Tyrrells Potato Chips, he launched Parsnip Chips, followed shortly by Mixed Root Vegetable Chips (parsnip, beetroot and carrot). He shuns expert advice. When he decided he didn’t like what design agencies had come up with for the Tyrrells packets – they just copied what everyone else was doing, he complains – he designed his own distinctive see-through bags himself. ‘It looks like what I want it to be,’ he says. ‘Not artificial.’
His design flair continued with the launch of an unflavoured variety of Tyrrells, which he called Naked Chips. He emblazoned the bag with a picture of naked ladies, which created something of a stir (in rural Herefordshire, at least), but ensured the launch was a success. ‘They sell very well in pubs,’ Chase enthuses, before explaining that the picture – an image from the 1930s – is in the best possible taste.
The episode underlines Chase’s inclination to take risks. Any marketing consultant worth his fee would have pointed out that using a picture of naked ladies on a Tyrrells packet could cheapen the brand, threatening its image among its target market. But Chase is a man who likes to follow his own whims. He describes himself as ‘headstrong’, and in common with many entrepreneurs he is driven, ambitious and, by his own admission, ‘can be difficult to work with’.
He can also be stubborn. In 2006, when Tesco started selling Tyrrells Potato Chips, he threatened to sue. The giant retailer’s decision to source cheaper products from overseas had contributed to Chase abandoning his original business, and he accused them of ‘devious behaviour’ in sourcing the chips from a wholesaler after he had expressly asked them not to stock his brand. Instead, he preferred to deal with his network of 6000 independent retailers and Waitrose, the John Lewis-owned chain that promotes fair trade for farmers and develops relationships with local producers.
It had all the makings of a classic David and Goliath mismatch, with in one corner Tyrrells (turnover at the time, £10 million) and in the other, Tesco (turnover in 2005, £39.5 billion). The UK’s largest supermarket, however, quickly crumbled and agreed to stop selling the product.
A focus on premium products
With the success of Tyrrells assured, Chase seems to be hankering after new opportunities. ‘I’m a serial entrepreneur,’ he explains. ‘I like setting up a business rather than running it.’ He has a plethora of ideas, but the one that is ready to take off is Tyrrells vodka – made from potatoes rather than the usual rye – available from April. He describes the taste as unlike any other vodka most of us will have tasted: ‘smooth and velvety with a taste of buttery mashed potatoes in the background’.
It will be unabashedly upmarket, retailing at something like £30 a bottle. ‘We’re looking for sippers, not guzzlers,’ he explains, perhaps unnecessarily.
His next idea is to create a premium apple juice, partly to go with the vodka. (Vodka and apple juice is a great combination, he maintains.) It will be made from apples grown on the farm and will, naturally, be a premium brand. ‘People will pay for quality,’ he insists. ‘We’re lifting standards, making products that are better than average. And it’s always better to be at the top end of the market.’ There is a string of other potential projects on the cards too, from upmarket food halls selling local produce to oat-based snacks and even a rural hotel. ‘I have lots of ideas,’ he admits. ‘But I think having the idea is just the first step. The second is turning it into reality.’
Tyrrells’ success has come, he says, because the company ‘has remained true to our roots’. He means it, bad pun and all. ‘Our USP is here. Tyrrells is actually doing it on the farm. We’re growing without discounting the brand or prostituting ourselves to the big chains. That’s what gives us our edge.’
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