Spud Brothers take over Preston Hot Potato Tram and gain nearly 600,000 followers on TikTok

Lancashire Post

Jake Nelson, 28, and Harley Nelson, 21, aka The Spud Brothers, have taken over The Hot Potato Tram on Flag Market and launched a TikTok account to boot which has gained nearly 600,000 followers in the space of 12 weeks.

Transcript

00:00 Hi I'm Jake from the Spud Brothers. I'm Larry from the Spud Brothers. We took over the

00:05 Hot Potatoes around 12 weeks ago and we rebranded to the Spud Brothers from

00:11 Tony who's had the business for three and a half years. The business itself has

00:16 been going since 1955 and it's probably one of the first SpudCorp companies in the UK.

00:22 So talk me through, you've set up a TikTok account is that correct? Yes that's

00:27 correct. And what's the name? It's called the Spud Brothers. And when did you set it up?

00:32 We set it up again, well three and a half years ago Tony set it up because

00:38 social media is such a big thing in today's economy. So when we took over 12

00:45 weeks ago we decided to make a good go at it and just to put content out there

00:53 and how businesses work. One of the main reasons why we actually did it is because

00:58 press in itself has got a good footfall of students from UCLan and

01:04 Newnham College and it was difficult for us to get the footfall into the

01:08 trend. So when we did the social media we got a few videos that went viral and now we get a lot of students here.

01:18 So how many followers then would you say you have on TikTok? Have you done it already?

01:21 So we have got in 12 weeks we have reached 615,000 I think to date now.

01:28 But in total across our social medias we're nearly up to like 900,000. And so

01:33 what if people were to have a look at the TikToks what would they expect to

01:36 see? So we do stuff like behind the scenes of like costume videos, we do a

01:42 bit of humour with like Harley, I'm the more serious person, Harley's like the

01:46 one-liner. We really bounce off each other and we do a lot of customer POVs as well when people come up to the tram.

01:55 And we use TikTok and we've got a following on TikTok and we usually

02:00 average about 2,000 followers and people on TikTok actually gif us and then

02:05 they want to give it out as a free meal as well. So we always get that customer

02:08 reactions and a lot of people follow us from that. And so you get obviously up

02:14 and today is at around half 11, 12? Yes we open up at half 11 and depending on

02:20 how busy it is we might finish at half 2 or 3 o'clock but we try and aim for 4 o'clock

02:26 and that is Monday to Saturday. And do you find I believe that you have a large

02:30 amount of people queuing up before it opens just to get their potato bags? Yes

02:35 so on some particular days, Friday, Saturday, some people queuing up at like

02:41 half 10 in the morning and when we open up, which you can see on the videos as well, people are waiting to get their spuds.

02:50 And is there a favourite spud or a favourite filler for the spud? It is, so our most popular spud is obviously the

02:57 cheese and beans with garlic butter but it seems to be taking over is Tony's

03:02 Sram Chilli which is made by Tony. It's gone quite viral on the TikTok and a lot of people now are coming for that.

03:11 Right guys you've heard it here first, try Tony's Chilli the next time you're here.

03:16 One of our most popular spuds is the Tony's Sram Chilli so we always start with one of our spuds and we have got the

03:24 homemade garlic butter on there and we start with two cheeses, file that up and then we move over to the chilli here.

03:40 And then we always give the option either crispy onions and sour cream on top and that's that.

03:53 And then close it down with a fork, wrap it in a bag.

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