The archive · Small Business & Money · Product decision · 2015–2018
Potato Parcel mails a real potato with your message — a $10K/month joke business
Alex Craig writes your message on a real potato and mails it; 3,000+ spuds sold in four months, averaging $10,000 a month.
Potato Parcel
What it had to solve
Greeting cards felt interchangeable, while photos of absurd objects — like a potato with a note on it — made people laugh and got shared. The open question was whether anyone would pay for the gag.
How it works
In May 2015, Alex Craig, a 24-year-old University of North Texas graduate, launched Potato Parcel: a website that lets you send a real russet potato inscribed with a message. A medium potato fits 100 characters and costs $7.99; a large one fits a 140-character message for $8.99. The message is written on the skin in marker and the spud itself is mailed from Texas in a tiny envelope.
The idea treats the potato as the card: recipients shared photos of their spuds online — 'the absolute craziest thing I've received in the mail,' one wrote — and the novelty became the marketing. The Daily Mail covered the stunt in June 2015, and within four months Craig had sold more than 3,000 potatoes, averaging about $10,000 a month in sales.
The business was not the first in the niche — competitor Mail A Spud had been shipping potatoes with the address written on the skin since 2014 — but Potato Parcel's personalized message made it the one that went viral.
Years later Craig and partner Riad Bekhit pitched the company on Shark Tank in potato costumes, asking $50,000 for a 10% stake, and left with an unexpected deal; by then the company was also donating one potato to food shelters for every potato sold.
Why it lands
- The product is its own advertisement: recipients photograph the absurd gift and share it, so reach costs nothing.
- Pricing is legible — two sizes, two prices, and the character limit printed on the product itself.
- A $9 potato undercuts a greeting card's price while being far more memorable, so it sells on novelty, not budget.
- Anonymous delivery adds pranks and revenge to the same product line as birthdays and congratulations.
What it did
In its first four months Potato Parcel sold more than 3,000 potatoes and averaged about $10,000 a month in sales; recipients posted the spuds on social media and the stunt drew national coverage.
What you can take
You don't need a big market — a cheap, absurd, shareable artifact with a clear price becomes a business because people pay to make someone laugh and then tell everyone.
Since then
Viral coverage kept orders coming and the company grew past Craig's one-man operation. By September 2018, Craig and partner Riad Bekhit — self-styled 'chief potato officer' — had added printed photos of a recipient's face for $4 extra, were donating one potato to food shelters for every potato sold, and pitched the business on Shark Tank in potato costumes, asking $50,000 for 10% and landing an unexpected deal that drove a wave of orders.
Sources
- You've got spud! Bizarre website lets you mail personalized POTATOES
- This guy makes $10,000 a month shipping potatoes
- Potato Parcel is the message sending service you didn't know you needed
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