A jacket potato seller in Tamworth has taken the internet by storm clocking up millions of fans and loyal customers.
Ben Newman – aka Spudman – has customers travelling from across the globe to his pitch in St Editha’s Square thanks to his popularity on platforms such as TikTok.
He began pushing his social media presence in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and hit one million TikTok followers five weeks ago – but has almost doubled that already.
With 46.1 million likes on TikTok his videos regularly get millions of views. One of his videos, serving a free jacket potato with cheese and a Dr Pepper to his last customer of the day, has had 88.6 million views since being uploaded at the start of December last year.
One video features a pair who say they have visited from Malaysia for their first ever jacket potato.
Ben regularly has queues an hour and a half long, despite his speedy service which is often filmed and posted online. He has described his business in one of his videos as “making the whole town busy”.
And he manages his business despite suffering from kidney failure which means he will be on dialysis for the rest of his life.
He has just invested in a new trailer kitted out with second hand ovens, funded by selling off a “mega chunk” of his business to concentrate on potatoes.
He told his ‘Spud Army’ in a video about the “mega trailer”: “All-in-all, the grand total comes to just under £40,000.”
Ben adds: “On the right event, at a big festival, I reckon this trailer can do £10,000 a day. Takings not profit obviously. Just be aware though, jobs like that are few and far between.”
Ben, whose favourite jacket potato is stopped with chicken curry, cheese and crispy onions, has his own range of merchandise and regularly promotes other local businesses in his videos.
He was selling over 1,000 potatoes a day but hopes to hit 1,500 a day with the new trailer.
He said in a video last weekend: “I am so excited now you would not believe. So, first day in the new trailer. What are we going to do? Are we going to take it steady? Are we going to ease it in? Are we going to take baby steps? No! We’re going to go for it today.”
In a free giveaway with Bookers tomorrow, Saturday 27 January, Ben hopes to serve 1,500 potatoes.
He said: “That is 300 potatoes an hour. That is five potatoes a minute. That means a potato needs to go out of our hatch to a customer every 12 seconds for five hours for us to hit our target of 1,500 potatoes. That is insane.
“We will have four ovens on the go so hopefully we will have the cooking capacity.”
Another of his videos – which Ben says he was “gobsmacked to have to make” – has been made especially to give hotel recommendations to people who plan to travel to the free day, following a number of comments on his other posts.
Ben also talks about his personal life on social media and has spoken to his followers many times about life with dialysis following three failed kidney transplants. He often takes questions from followers about his condition and dialysis journey. His trademark pink mohawk came from a kidney research fundraising initiative.
To find Spudman on TikTok, click here.
