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.
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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.