Page 61 - Introduction & Preamble

Areas Covered

• Start-up,

• growth,

• entrepreneurship,

• finance,

• production,

• marketing,

• venture capitalism.

In 2000, after twenty
years in farming potatoes, William Chase was faced with

potential business failure. Chase loved farming but his

traumatic experiences, especially those associated with the

large supermarkets, which squeezed product margins and
spawned red-tape and meetings, persuaded him to look for

other avenues of activity which freed him from the drudgery

of a ‘captured supplier'.

With a strong desire to remain in farming he sought a
solution to his problem both, practical, psychological, and

ethological and hit upon the idea to turn his potatoes into

chips.

Production started in July 2002, with four flavours and were
an immediate success as customers bought into the

'pedigree' of his ‘heritage’ product.

Tyrrells' potatoes are home grown without pesticides using

the “old-fashioned” potato varieties. Chase controls the

whole process from seed to chip, a processing cycle of
twelve months, and from picked potato to packaged potato

chip within a day.