Insider Media Limited

The entrepreneur behind the East Midlands Orange Tree restaurant chain is preparing to launch his snack product in 300 Morrisons stores across the country. Managing director of Crips, Gareth Smith, has secured his first nationwide deal to stock his Crips 99Cals product in the supermarket. Smith told Insider the deal will be worth £250,000 every year to the Derbyshire-based company.

"We currently turn over about £300,000 a year, but we're aiming to make that £10m within five years," said Smith. "We're also in talks with two other major high street names to stock the Crips line, and we should know in the next month or so if we've been successful."

The contract win with Morrisons follows the launch of Crips 99Cals in 50 Tesco stores in the Midlands and 67 Waitrose stores across the country.

The fcompany, which is based at Ingleby, near Derby, was founded by Smith's father. Smith, who established the Leicester-based Orange Tree pub group, said he became involved in the Crips range when he decided to diversify from the pub chain. The company recieved funding from the Orange Tree Group and also received a £90,000 grant for research and development from East Midlands Development Agency.

The oven-baked wheat and potato snacks are said to have 70 per cent less fat than traditional fried potato crisps.

"After they became available in Tesco and Waitrose we were constantly being asked why they weren’t on sale more widely,” said Smith.

"The national deal with Morrisons should help us turn the corner from needing to be funded to being profitable enough to generate the income needed to fund marketing campaigns."

The company is also expanding internationally, and currently exports to Denmark, Switzerland and Germany.

"The Crips are sold in 70 stores across Switzerland, and we have a distributor which sends the products to coffee shops across Germany.

"In the future, we'll be looking at targeting the USA, Australia and continuing to expand across the Scandanavia – the fact that the product is a healthy snack is very appealing over there."

Smith said the company was now looking to create three new flavours to accompany the three already on offer - sea salt and balsamic vinegar, mature cheddar cheese and spring onion, and Thai sweet chilli – and sell the product in multi-packs.

As well as the supermarkets, Crips are also sold in Selfridges, Fortnum and Mason and Harvey Nichols.