Pub group launches snack brand

Pubs that brew their own beer are fairly common, but there can't be too many which have launched their own range of crisps.

Crips, an oven-baked wheat and potato snack in five flavours, has been created by the Orange Tree Group, which runs five pubs in the East Midlands.

Launched in April, Crips have already been bought by pubs and off-licences in the UK, as well as being shipped out to customers in Japan, Sweden and Spain.

Among the company's UK customers are Selfridges, Tate Modern and Fenwicks in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

"To say we are delighted with the response we've had to our Crips is the under-statement of the year," said Crips MD Gareth Smith, who runs the Orange Tree Group with business partner Ben Hings.

"When we trialled the product in our pubs and elsewhere last year, we thought we'd hit on something quite special, and a product that's unique in the market. The reception we've received in the last few weeks seems to confirm this."

The idea for Crips came from Gareth's father Brian Smith, a food technologist. As a publican for ten years, Gareth believed the snack, which has around a quarter of the fat of standard crisps, would go down well with customers.

"Crips are much lower in fat than traditional fried potato crisps, yet they taste even better, so we feel we're really onto a winner here," said Gareth. "The customers in our pubs were a great indicator of how the product would be received, and helped us tremendously with feedback.

"Running pubs, we were in the perfect position to see how well Crips would go down with 'the man in the street'. It was a great help with market research."