![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0_JS379949737.jpg\")
John the Spud with his van on London Road, where it has been for over two decades<\/p>\nJohn Dickson, also known as John The Spud, has been a familiar face on a Liverpool street since 1999John the Spud with his van on London Road, where it has been for over two decades<\/p>\n
Over the past 25 years, London Road has undergone significant change.<\/p>\n
The Islington road used to be central to the city’s textiles history and home to a wide range of shops, as well as 27 pubs and two cinemas. All but one of those pubs and both cinemas have gone and in 2023, TJ Hughes ended its 111-year association with London Road<\/a> when it moved to a new location on Church Street. But one thing that has stood the test of time is popular street trader, John Dickson.<\/p>\n Known more lovingly as John The Spud, the businessman, from West Derby<\/a>, has been found on the street since 1999.<\/p>\n The 62-year-old is based on Audley Street next to where TJ Hughes once stood – and while he serves breakfast items, hotdogs and burgers, it is his spuds which has gained him a huge reputation in the city – hence his nickname.<\/p>\n Speaking with the ECHO<\/a> about his secrets to success, he said: \u201cYou need to have good service, good fun and good prices. The people of Liverpool aren\u2019t stupid, you need to be affordable.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you come to me you can expect a good experience overall. That\u2019s what life is about, experiences and enjoying them experiences. That is what makes customers come back again.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been here 26 years and don\u2019t plan on going anywhere. It\u2019s always been a good business and lately its just gotten even busier with the craze. I\u2019ve come to realise recently that social media is so powerful, it\u2019s made me so busy.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the comments on my Instagram and TikTok, you see a lot of people appreciate what I do. A lot of people say to me that it just isn\u2019t the food they come here for, they come to see me and have a little chat.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m an affable person, easy to get along with and when others see that, it makes me feel good, very good.<\/p>\n John isn\u2019t naive to the ongoing TikTok craze surrounding jacket potatoes. Yesterday, Thursday, September 4, hundreds queued for hours, in one instance, almost a full day,<\/a> to be among the first to try Liverpool\u2019s inaugural SpudBros store.<\/a><\/p>\n The same happened in the middle of August when SpudMan Ben Newman brought his tram<\/a> to Crosby<\/a> Beach for one week only. In both instances, it was business as usual for John – who continued to serve the same customers he has been for the last decades.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cI think I’m in an advantageous position. My business isn\u2019t created on social media alone; I had a good business before the trend. When social media disappears, so can the business. But I\u2019ve built mine on interactions with people on an everyday level.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m doing a good job because customers keep coming back and back, they clearly enjoy it. It\u2019s so rewarding for me. You meet some really nice people, some interesting people and people from all over.<\/p>\n \u201cYou see, it\u2019s all about the potato. Out there, there are thousands of different types of potatoes. People will tell you, when you go to a supermarket, that is a baking potato, but it isn\u2019t at all. It\u2019s the potato you use that makes it.\u201d<\/p>\n When Ben came to Merseyside he made time to stop by with John and they filmed some content and, of course, whipped up some jacket potatoes together. Since then, John said he has been “busier than before” thanks to SpudMan publishing videos to his 4.2million followers.<\/p>\n John said: \u201cI\u2019m carrying on here on London Road. I\u2019m building the business up to the point where you can\u2019t move anymore. Right now, there is a little bit of movement still, but I\u2019m operating not far from my maximum. I\u2019m happy to be doing this as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Dickson, also known as John The Spud, has been a familiar face on a Liverpool street since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,786,4884,179,2349,8899,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-400619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-food-and-drink","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-liverpool","13":"tag-liverpool-city-centre","14":"tag-liverpool-restaurants","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115153070203900780","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0_JS379949733jpg-at-i.jpg\")
John the Spud says he loves where he is at in the city with his business<\/p>\n![\""I\u2019ve](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0_JS379949967jpg-ja.jpg\")
“I\u2019ve been here 26 years and don\u2019t plan on going anywhere”<\/p>\n