A $25 Bag of Crisps Became a $1.5M Contract

A single packet of Tayto crisps was auctioned at a Sydney pub fundraiser in 2002, and a homesick Kilkenny man paid A$25 for it 👀

Eamon Eastwood was in that pub, working construction, and took the price as proof of demand.

So in 2003 he imported one pallet of the same crisps, 50 boxes, and stacked it in his bedroom…

I was working from 6am to 6pm laying tunnels, then I would deliver Taytos to Irish pubs at night in my Suzuki soft top with no air conditioning.

His way in was Gaelic football.

He was raising money for his local club the night of that auction, and sold into the same Irish pubs where that crowd gathered.

Scaling up nearly finished him…

After that one pallet, I brought a full container of Tayto with my life savings… which was years of construction money.

The shipping line dropped that A$20,000 container at the wrong port, and the lot expired on a dock in Rotterdam 😱

Woolworths later offered him a A$1.5M contract, and the Coles deal that followed in 2014 pushed over €2M of Irish food through the tills in year one 🤑

Eamon still runs the business, with the range now in over 1,400 stores.

Pick an expat community in your city, find the food they miss from home, and import one pallet of it to sell into the pubs and shops where they already gather.

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