Tayto Cheese & Onion Chips

The chips with the laughing Potato Man mascot are as closely associated with Ireland as Guinness. We are talking about the delicious Tayto Chips, which no holidaymaker in Ireland can miss. The company Tayto Ireland has been in existence since 1954. Today it exports to no less than 43 countries. Behind this success story is a lot of sweat and a brilliant idea. We will tell you the fascinating story of Tayto Chips and tell you what this ingenious idea has to do with the different types of chips. Watch out! Reading the following lines could lead to acute chip cravings!

One man, one idea and lots of potatoes
In Ireland chips were imported from Great Britain for a long time. The chips from that time cannot be compared with those we can buy today in any supermarket: They were not available in different flavors, they weren't even salted. The coarse-grained salt was enclosed in each chip package as a small extra packet. A condition that the Irishman Joe "Spud" Murphy in 1954 no longer wanted to accept. He founded his first factory "Tayto Ireland" with only 500 pounds starting capital and eight employees in Dublin's Moore Street north of Liffey. There the chips were made from Irish potatoes and wrapped by hand in a kind of baking paper. They were then delivered to retailers in airtight tins.

One night Joe is said to have had an intuition: why not add a special flavour to potato chips; with more than just salt? Joe wanted to offer chip lovers more taste and invented ... the "Cheese and Onion" chips. This ingenious idea still delights chip lovers all over the world today. Together with an employee, he developed the technical equipment to season the potato chips. In addition to the "Cheese and Onion" chips, other flavours were soon available from Tayto. Among them "Salt and Vinegar" and "Smokey Bacon".

The worldwide interest in the production of spiced chips was enormous. Joe was inundated with inquiries. The chips were also very popular and already in the 60s a new, larger Tayto factory became necessary. This was opened shortly afterwards north of Dublin.

Where does the name "Tayto" come from?
With the success of the company, in many regions of Ireland there were no more chips, there were Taytos. So present were the Tayto Chips with the Potato Man, Mr. Tayto. By the way, the potato man was named after Joe's little son, Joseph. He could not yet pronounce the English word for "potato", "potato" correctly and so "potato" became "Tayto".

Mr. Tayto, has been the company's loyal mascot since its foundation in 1954. In his previous years of life he has had several adventures. In 2007 he took part in the Irish parliamentary elections, a few years later he was looking for a companion and in 2009 he even published his own biography: "The Man Inside the Jacket".