A popular breakfast savoury will be landing in Australia in the near future, thanks to the active campaigning of one Mullingar man.
Living in Australia for over five years, Brian Nooney, like most Irish diaspora, has cravings for home comforts. With the likes of Tayto crisps and Club Orange among the chief brands missed by Irish while living away from home, for Brian, Birds Eye Potato waffles is top of his list.
So much is his longing for the popular breakfast savoury that Brian recently took it upon himself to launch a campaign to bring the food to the masses down under.
He contacted Birdseye Australia earlier in the year to inquire if they would consider bringing the much sought after snack to Oz.
His brother, John, founder of local website, Mullingar newsandviews, told Topic how the campaign began. “Brian was missing his waffles, like any other Irish person abroad, and he wrote to Birdseye, asking them if would they consider adding waffles to their line of products, but they weren’t interested. So he set up a Facebook page called, ‘Please Bring Birdseye Waffles to Australia’. I featured the page on my own page, ‘Mullingar’s newsandviews’ but I didn’t use his name because I wasn’t sure if Brian wanted to go public at that point. I just referred to him as a ‘Mullingar man’.
Former Topic reporter, Mary Maguire, who now works for online entertainment magazine, Her.ie, spotted the story and contacted Patrick to find out who the man in question was and was surprised to discover it was a good friends of hers. After contacting Brian, Mary wrote an article about the campaign, which was shared over 3,500 times.
Last week, Birdseye finally bowed to public pressure and announced that they would be adding the product to their line in Australia for all the waffle-loving Irish who have so far had to go without.
“There were loads of people on the page saying how thrilled they were that the waffles were coming to Australia!” Patrick told Topic.
Patrick spoke on the Anton Savage show on TodayFM on Tuesday to discuss his heroic story of how one man can make a difference – even if it’s just for the love of waffles.
