Why do people get so excited over a jacket potato cart?

[Soubriquet]

I see a lot of viral videos on fb and one of them is from the spud man. Now I like a jacket potato sometimes, but that still doesn’t mean I would camp out over night, or start queuing from 5.30 for a damn potato!! Even if the first order is free.

Why????

Binley mega chip shop.

People from everywhere. It's a thing. Probably like Tulip mania and cabbage patch dolls of the past.

That was funny. It made its way onto the news. Bet they made 50% of their annual turnover in one day.

Binley shut down.

People just like something to say they’ve done I guess. At least Spudman makes his own curry and chilli now rather than the tins of slop he used to use

I don’t know where the hype has come from . I used to love having a jacket potato from the stall in town but it was never a craze , just something you would have for dinner .

The one guy went to do a festival type thing and he was having to charge £12 for a jacket potato with the toppings due to their costs… but they still sold 8000 of them in the 3 days !

Some of these burger stands now are charging £8/9 for a box of cheesy chips .
Yet people are queuing for them .

What’s going on in the world 🤯

People are idiots if they’re spending £12 for a jacket potato.

Just viral contagion? I know last time I was in central London with my teenager, he was quite familiar from TikTok/Instagram with some of the names of the food brands that had lengthy queues. We bought pancakes at one of those Chinese street food places on the edge of Chinatown, and the women behind the counter just kept saying 'Not the faces, not the faces' to the legion of people filming them making the pancakes for their SM.

People get particularly over-excited about places with a big SM presence and which open late and sell until the food is sold out, like the mysteriously popular SpudBros in Soho, which is basically expensive baked potatoes with a huge queue.

There is 1 opening where I live ,the guy "has put feelers out" it is strange its just a potato ! I wonder if these viral places start their own hype?

Fuck knows. Who is ever desperate to eat a potato 🤣

I mean I like a baked potato but I would never queue for 1 and definitely wouldn't pay £12 for 1.

Because people are sheep.

I wonder if we're in the same area, I saw one of these posts too!

Oh maybe! He hasn't even got a pitch yet just come up with a name, which escapes me so it's not so memorable😀

I've wondered the same thing about spudman. Apart from the crazy hair there isn't anything particularly unique or unusual about him or his business. I'm sure he does fine jacket potatoes but I don't understand why he's in the news so much.

The BBC seems to cover him more than any other news outlet. I wonder if he has connections to someone who works there? Or maybe one of the reporters is crashing out on Atkins and desperately craving carbs all the time.

Honestly if there’s anything worth getting excited over, it’s a decent jacket potato.

Spudman was at a festival I were at last year which I was grateful for-some festival food isn't appropriately priced according to how long it keeps you full for.

A few people said he was a bit of a dick for putting up fences to avoid a huge surge-so people had to queue within a boundary. My ex was very excited to get a spud from him, and they were nice, and not too expensive given how much other, less filling festival food was. I was grateful that he had vegan cheese and beans as an option but the 2nd time I went, he'd ran out! Nice fella.

But as for wetting myself over a baked potato?Nope.

Absolutely yes, and i get more excited of fun small things more than big ones, or so I tell dh

I used to get a jacket potato over a sandwich but now that so expensive on my local stall I just get a sandwich meal deal from tesco. Pity as prefer the jacket potato. Hope the craze cools down soon

It is odd isn’t it. It seems to be a hype for people to queue for hours just to get a potato.

Jason’s Jackets by Primark are better anyway!

Whenever a new crap food large chain eatery is opening in my city the amount of excitement and tags on the local rag Facebook page is unbelievable. I still don't get why people queue to get into Nandos for chicken and chips either.

Lots of the food influencers review it and it becomes a thing. If you look up Borough Market on YouTube, so many videos of the same stalls being reviewed by loads of different people.

Because people are morons. Get anything hyped up on social media and people will queue for it. 🐑🐑🐑

I'm really surprised that a few other people in his town haven't tried to capitalise on it and do a rival business 'spudbloke' 'potato princess' etc. if people really are travelling for miles for such a basic dish?

I reckon he must be money laundering or something and he's bribing the council to stop competition?!

Spud Brother or some such opened in my town - the van was only there for a month and I rarely saw anyone buy from it. A very tiny minority get viral and I bet countless other people trying to jump on the trend have lost £s.

It's ruining Edinburgh. Small bakeries having to beg their queuing customers to let locals get to their front doors. How good can a pastry be?

I have a theory. People think that calories don't count at viral food places. So they're free to serve whipped cream with melted mars bar flavoured doughnuts topped with salted caramel etc etc etc and otherwise health conscious young women will lose their minds over it.

If calories are irrelevant then we could just heap our own favourite indulgent treats on a plate and save the queuing, the hype and the price tag.