Ed O’Donnell’s family have farmed potatoes for centuries, so diversifying into crisp making was a radical departure for the post-boom entrepreneur
ED O’DONNELL, a 28-year-old crisp maker, bursts into a Dublin pub with a box of O’Donnells crisps under one arm. He offers a crippling handshake, glowing with the same enthusiasm that saw his business overcome the scepticism of friends, family and bank managers.
After spending five years studying agriculture in the UK, O’Donnell came home to Kilsheelan, Co Tipperary, in 2006 with a plan to tackle the challenges of farming.
“We were coming towards the tail-end of the boom and farming looked bleak. Prices were low. Young people were drifting towards building sites but I saw how people in the UK were building on their commodities.
“I firmly believed there was a niche market for a gourmet, hand-cooked crisp made from my own potatoes.” Given that O’Donnell’s family has been farming since the 1700s, the idea of making their own crisps posed a radical departure. “My parents would be all about the lie of the land. Their initial thought was, ‘you’re mad. We have a farm. Let’s chip away at that.’ They felt [crisp making] was something you couldn’t do. Everyone did.”
Rather than give up on the idea, O’Donnell would quietly slip away to do market research: visiting over 200 shops and pubs around Ireland, quizzing shop managers and scanning their shelves to compare the prices, flavours and bag sizes. “I had no bags, no samples, nothing,” he explains, before going through his pitch from memory. “At the time I thought I was wasting my money but it was probably the best thing I could have done.”
With his resolve boosted, all he needed was to learn how to make crisps. He found what he wanted online: a crisp-making course at Ohio State University. For two weeks, from 8am to 8pm, O’Donnell sat alongside representatives from multi-million-dollar snack manufacturers in the US, most of whom were there to refresh their understanding of a particular technical aspect. The lone foreigner constantly raised his hand, enquiring about every aspect in the process, from ground to bag: the technical issues, the nutritional analysis, the processing, the oil temperatures.
“They got a great laugh out of it,” he says. “But I was passionate. I had it in my head I was going to build a factory and I was coming home to do it.”
Those in Ireland were less enthusiastic. O’Donnell’s family had been supportive and were warming to his commitment but, still, a factory was a tough sell. “We’re modest farmers,” he says. “To invest that much would have been asking a lot of them. I couldn’t put them under that pressure.” He turned to banks and potential investors, seeking €1.7 million to set up production and storage facilities at home on Seskin Farm. The response was blunt. “No chance,” he recalls, laughing heartily.
There is a touch of the Taoiseach about O’Donnell. Hunkered over a table in a blue and white striped shirt, his answers come in bursts, typically punctuated with a one-word affirmation drummed for positivity. But there is one phrase he consistently calls on like a mantra no one can disrupt: “I had to keep going; I had it in my head it would work.” He approached Largo Foods, the same manufacturer in Meath that makes Ireland’s main commercial brands and asked whether they could make crisps to O’Donnell’s specification: his own Lady Rosetta potatoes, his own flavours, his own packaging, his own brand. They said yes, which galvanised his family’s support.
“People started saying, ‘Jesus, I hear you’re making Taytos’.” O’Donnell’s smile flickers for a moment. “No,” he says firmly, planting a fist on the table. “They’re O’Donnells. It’s totally different. They’re kettle cooked; batch fried in sunflower oil and with flavours we’ve locally sourced.” After six months of developing the look of the bags (with the help of Dublin design company Dynamo) and holding focus groups in Cork and London, O’Donnells crisps launched in June 2010 with two flavours (cheese and onion, salt and vinegar) in 50g bags, gradually expanding to 125g bags with a hot chilli flavour launching soon.
Employing a team of six, O’Donnells claims 1.5 per cent of the crisp market, shifting 27,000 bags a week to Irish outlets such as Centra and Londis as well as stockists in London and Vienna. So far the business has covered its costs and loans, and is aiming for a profit in its third year.
O’Donnell still spends half of his time farming and the other half talking to clients and customers.
“You have to get out past the farm gates and listen to what people want,” he says. “Over three years, that gave me the time to think about whether I was doing the right thing. I just kept picking at it and picking at it, not talking about it much, not rushing in. It was hard to get going but all it took was work.”
