The crisps that went on to make a packet

MANY years ago, when i was living in otley, on the borders of North and West Yorkshire — a small town that became famous as Hotton in the television show Emmerdale, then Emerdale Farm — i regularly shopped in Bradford, ten miles or so away. i always started by having a meal at a small cafe and fish shop in little Horton lane, not far from the city centre. on one occasion, when paying at the counter, i was asked if i would like to take a bag of potato crisps with me. The person who was serving pointed to a small basket at the end of the counter holding a number of plain sweetie bags containing the crisps — so i bought one. on my next visit, a month or so later, the bags were now printed ‘Seabrook crisps’, so i bought one of those, too. Puzzled, i asked the shopkeeper what his idea was. He explained that, each day, they often had an hour or so to spare before the first customers arrived, so they filled in the time experimenting with the crisps. over time, i followed their progress and, before long, they began dedicating more time to frying the crisps, eventually putting a salesman on the road to supply local shops. Then came the big decision: they took over a disused factory and set it up to fry the crisps. it didn’t take too long to get them into supermarkets — becoming a national product. it was about this time that i left the country to live abroad, so i lost touch with the project — until now, when i came across a crisp packet here in Spain, where i now live. So Mr Brook’s crisps had not only covered the UK but, within a few years, were in continental Europe, too. Big things from small beginnings — the point being that any company that has a small sideline within its main business could do worse than take a leaf out of his book by developing it separately. Who knows how big it could become?

Derek arnold, Los cristianos, spain.