What gift do you get for someone who has everything? You want it to be personal and unique and maybe a little unusual, so we'd like to point you to the Potato Parcel. It's like a greeting card, except it's a real potato with a personalized message or even a picture on it. And yes, this unusual gift has been pretty popular. The story of the Potato Parcel starts with a Reddit post and runs through the ABC show Shark Tank.
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In 2015, Potato Parcel founder Alex Craig noticed that the top post on Reddit was a potato that someone mailed with stamps on it. The post received over 2 million views in less than four hours, and Alex had an idea. People would pay to have a potato with a customized, anonymous message mailed to someone. He quickly built a website and had over $2,000 in orders in the first two days after launching the site.
Although he applied for Shark Tank right after the company was created, Potato Parcel didn't make it on the show until 2016. Alex had sold the company to Riad Bekhit by then, but he appeared on the show with Riad to convince the Sharks to invest in the company. The two men showed up in potato costumes and gave a presentation filled with potato puns.
Three of the Sharks - Lori Greiner, Mark Cuban, and Daymond John - all decided that the idea was a little too quirky for them. But Kevin O'Leary, known as Mr. Wonderful, offered a deal of $50,000 for 10 percent equity in the company along with $1 royalty per potato sold after 60 days. Alex and Riad accepted.
After sending NBA player Dirk Nowitzki a potato parcel for reaching 30,000 career points and Nowitzki posting about it on his social media, the company got even more attention.
You can order a spud with a message on it, or you can order a Potato Pal that has a face printed on it (to be clear, it's a picture of a face you give them, not some random face). You can even get a tater with your pet's face on it. They also have gift bundles, including the Potato Birthday Bundle and Potato Holiday Bundle for a festive potato in a gift box. It's a fun gift, especially for the person who already has everything. And the company is aware that they're shipping food as a gag gift, so they work with local food banks to donate one potato for every one they sell, and they encourage you to plant your potato when the gift finally gets old and wrinkly.
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