Cushendall

Glen's of Antrim Potatoes Limited was growing and packing produce for supermarkets and grocery chains across Ireland for more than 50 years.

The business, which was established in 1972, operates from sites in Cushendall and Ballymena.

It is a popular hand-cooked crisp brand of the same name and supplies crisps for supermarket chains, including Tesco.

Breakfast Business with Joe Lynham

But at that time, that was big news.

Today, it's just under 1,700 people, and the man running it is Stephen McKeown, 42 years old from Cushendall, a Queen's graduate who could just have easily have ended up working in his father's garage.

Now, the easy version of this story would be to tell you something about how a local boy does well, but that's not the story.

Listen to what actually changed throughout Northbrook and then Allstate's time here in Northern Ireland.

Passing Straidkale, a small fishing village but a short way from Glenarm, the widely extended valley of Glensile presents itself and not far from this the village of Kernlach.

Although the land along the entire line from Glenarm to Cushendall is poor and, with a few exceptions, badly cultivated, yet the poorer classes do not appear to be suffering under that extreme wretchedness which is visible in some more fertile districts of the country.

From Kernloch to Drumnaso and thence to Garron Point, nothing can exceed the romantic beauty and variety of the scenery.

On the one side of an elevated hill, in the midst of a beautiful and extensive plantation, the mansion house of Alexander Turnley, Esquire, attracts the notice of the traveler.