Real crisp success underlines consumer shift to hand-cooked crisps

Spotting a market opportunity ten years ago, John Mudd set out to create an alternative to mass-produced crisps, building a business that today sees 2.5 million packs of Real hand-cooked crisps sold each week in the UK.

"My objective was to design a crisp that tasted of potato, and my selling concept was 'why pay 40p for ordinary crisps when you can eat hand-cooked for the same price?"said Mudd, now a consultant to the firm he created after selling the business to Irish food firm Tayto.

Price was key to tackling the fiercely competitive crisp market: Real crisps entered the marketplace with its prices on a par with the mass-produced versions.

Mudd hit the trend for thicker, hand-cooked crisps at the beginning of the curve: moving from £1.3 million is sales in 2003 to about £13 million in 2008.

Today Real crisps has won a considerable slice of this competitive market, and is now the number two hand-cooked crisp product in the UK behind the market leader, Kettle Chips.