Eleanor Meade has always had her eye on the bigger picture.

“It sounds mad now,” she laughs, “but when I made my Confirmation, I remember doing a deal with my dad that I’d use the money I made to buy a calf, sell it in a couple of years and see what I could do. And that bought me my first little Starlet car.”

Considering that her father, Philip Meade Sr, started his potato business over 30 years ago with little more than five acres – recently recording a turnover of €60m – it’s clear that Eleanor is, quite literally, a chip off the old block, as she steers the company’s latest venture, selling the only homegrown frozen chips on the market.

We meet on a sunny Monday morning, at Meade Potato Company’s headquarters in Lobinstown, Co Meath, though in actual fact the business supplies retailers with everything from exotic fruit to flowers, in addition to spuds, with 240 staff employed.

For somebody who has been up since 7am with her two-year-old twins Jamie and Sophie, Eleanor is full of energy, explaining that she comes to work each day “with fire in my belly”.

As an only daughter with three brothers, work has always been part of family life. At 13, Eleanor was answering phones at the business, at 15 she got her first job with Ulster Bank and while studying accountancy and finance in Dundalk, she had three part-time jobs: working in an accountancy firm at weekends, a bar on Friday and Saturday nights, and doing student mentoring four evenings a week. (Fear not, it wasn’t all work and no play. The bar was where Eleanor met future husband Paul Bradley.)

Rather than joining the family business directly from college, however, Eleanor spent 10 years between a private accountancy practice and a HSE funded-project, before handing in her notice to join her father and brothers last February as business operations manager.

“I thought about it long and hard,” she says, “but I felt I was ready and that I could add a lot to the business.”

With her financial experience, Eleanor oversees many areas of the business, but in recent months she has been the driving force behind Meade Irish rooster chips – the only frozen chips made from Irish potatoes on the market.

Despite Ireland’s reputation as a nation of potato producers, we still import approximately 120,000t of foreign frozen potato products a year – or 22 articulated lorry loads a week. This is actually equivalent to Ireland’s entire current potato output, as 240,000t of foreign potatoes are used to make up that amount of frozen product.

Following a feasibility study in 2011 and extensive research, the first bags of Meade chips hit supermarket freezers in May, using an original run of 3,000t of potatoes from their own farm and 15 other growers.

At present, the potatoes are sent to be “chipped” in Europe as Meade’s tests the market, but work has started on a production facility on the farm, where Eleanor says they hope to employ 60 people directly and up to 100 indirectly in the next three to five years, with a total spend of €13m projected. Of course, Eleanor is aware of the challenges. After spending 30 years supplying supermarket own labels, the Meade name is not widely known and they are up against global heavyweights.

That said, the chips, which are naturally gluten-free and made from 96% Rooster and 4% sunflower oil, are now stocked in SuperValu, Tesco, Dunnes Stores, Spar and Mace, while there has already been interest from the US, Britain and even the United Arab Emirates.

“The consumers themselves, since we’ve gone to market, they’ve said: ‘I can’t believe there were no frozen Irish chips before this’,” says Eleanor.

While it has been a positive year for the business, it has not been without its sadness for Eleanor and her family.

In January, her beloved mother Emily passed away following a brave battle with cancer, and it’s clear that her presence is greatly missed.

“She was the backbone behind every decision and every future growth,” says Eleanor. “Business was talked at breakfast, dinner and tea and I think that’s where we all got that work ethic from.”

Which, even as business operations manager, has meant manning a chip van from time to time.

“And I couldn’t have been happier,” smiles Eleanor.

For further information, visit www.meadepotato.com