15 March 2024 , 10:16
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Two British siblings nicknamed the 'Spud Brothers' have become a global sensation with fans travelling from all over the world to buy their baked potatoes.
Jacob, 28, and Harley Nelson, 21, have seen customers queuing for hours to get their hands on their famous spuds in Preston, Lancashire, after they went viral on TikTok. Since they started posting, people have travelled from Australia, Turkey, Spain, Germany and Amsterdam to their 'tram' in Preston Flag Market, Lancs.
The siblings, whose username is @TheSpudBrothers, say 'it's hard' to say how many potatoes a day they make and serve but they often have to turn customers away. Jacob said: "We open at 11.30am and we always have around 30 people in the queue waiting for us to open. Then it's constant to 3pm so we have to turn people away because the jacket potatoes take around two hours to cook.
"We hate doing it and disappointing people, but we have to do it. We don't even know how many potatoes we can serve in a day, which is bizarre, because it's constantly busy from open to close. We've had people come from Germany, Amsterdam, Turkey, Spain and Australia come to visit.
"We love the support and we are so grateful for people trying our little potato van in Preston so we always try and make it special for them. We try and serve food and also give people that customer interaction." The business was founded in 1955 by Ernie Rhodes, who then passed it down to his nephew Keith Roberts in 1978.
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Jacob, 28, and Harley Nelson, 21, aka TheSpudBrothers (Jacob Nelson/SWNS)Exactly 30 years later, Keith passed the company to his son, who was also called Keith, but he passed away in 2020. Harley and Jacob's dad Anthony, 57, then took over the business, and the two brothers have served jacket potatoes five days a week. Now punters flock to pick up baked potato meals with a variety of toppings, which sell for around £5 a pop.
Jacob, who quit his job as a sales manager to join the business, said: "I actually worked with Keith and it was my first ever Saturday job 14 years ago. It was always a good business that did well and had a good reputation in Preston. Nobody in his family wanted to take it on so he spoke to my dad about it because they were good friends and I used to work there.
"We just decided to buy the business and made a go of it to keep the legacy going. It's just insane." The sibling duo serve all types of classic spud toppings including cheese and beans, tuna and coleslaw. They've now added 'Harley's Tram Chilli' as an option, which Jacob says has also gone viral on the social media platform.
Jacob said: "We're now trying to really focus on the food and make the best jacket potatoes. There's a TikToker called @Mr.Munchbox who went all around the UK to try all the jacket potato places and he ranked us number one. We're now trying out different butters - so we've got a garlic one, a chilli butter and we're looking at a lemon and pepper butter.
Customers can't get enough of their jacket potatoes (Jacob Nelson/SWNS)"We're also looking at spicy beans and homemade chilli con carne which has gone viral on TikTok as well. We call it 'Harley's Tram Chilli and everyone is going mad for it." The sibling duo decided to start posting on TikTok to market themselves to the thousands of students that live in Preston. Instead of highly-edited videos, they decided to want to bring 'a lot of northern humour' to their content.
Jacob, of Preston, said: "There's a lot of students in Preston and we just used to see them walking past the tram, going to McDonalds or Greggs. My dad started the TikTok and struggled with it - even though he did get us up to around 60,000 followers. But then me and Harley decided to take it up to the next level so we did a lot of research and decided we wanted to bring a lot of northern humour to it.
"We wanted banter and for it to be more raw and natural, so a lot of the videos that we do is just raw footage. It might be slightly edited but what you see, is what you get and a lot of people in the north west get it." Anthony originally used the TikTok account and managed to get a whopping 60,000 followers.
People queue for hours to get their hands on one of the TheSpudBrothers baked potatoes (Jacob Nelson/SWNS)But Jacob then quit his job as a sales manager to work at the company full time and they've now almost reached a million followers. He said: "There's no way I thought we would have this many followers. My dad had the TikTok account just five months ago and then we went from 60,000 followers to 100,000 in a couple of days after we posted a couple of videos.
"We are nearly at a million now and I never would have thought we would have got to this stage, just based on the humble jacket potato. We've got one video that's got 20 million views - it's just of me doing a POV, doing what we do, serving the spuds."