Shopkeeper on a tiny Scottish island hatches a charitable solution to his chocolate Easter egg blunder

London — It was a pretty routine order for Dan ap Dafydd. The shopkeeper on Scotland’s remote Orkney Islands was just trying to get ahead of the looming Easter holiday rush by ordering chocolate eggs six months in advance. But when the order arrived, he faced a hare-raising dilemma.

“I thought just 80 individual eggs were coming, but in reality I ordered 80 cases, and that was 720 eggs,” ap Dafydd, owner of the Sinclair General Stores, told CBS News. “I certainly felt a little hot under the collar — a little bit embarrassed, maybe a little bit ashamed as well.”

He scrambled to try to correct his error, but the company he’d ordered the eggs from had a no-returns policy. So, Dan was stuck with his 720 eggs — and one on his face, as there are only about 500 people who live on his island.

The father of seven has become known as the Egg Man of Orkney. His family has been supportive.

“My wife was sympathetic. She was like, ‘It’s okay, we all make mistakes,'” he said. “I could see the glee in the kids’ eyes, that it was going to be a good Easter this year.”

The Orkneys sit off the northern tip of the Scottish mainland, in the Atlantic Ocean. To get to ap Dafydd’s island, you must first fly to the main island and then take a ferry.

He said people have asked how he failed to notice that he’d made the mistakenly large order in the first place. Once it was made, he didn’t have to pay until the eggs were delivered, he explained. By then it was too late to send them back.

So, ap Dafydd leaned into his mistake.

“I think you’ve just got to embrace it,” he told CBS News. “Nobody likes somebody who can’t take a joke.”

Now he has turned his delicious disaster into an egg-cellent opportunity: He’s raffling off 100 eggs to support the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The charity, which just celebrated its 200th birthday, provides a 24/7 coastal rescue service across the U.K. and Ireland.

With all the egg-citement and global attention, the Egg Man of Orkney said people from all over were helping out by buying some of his eggs.

“I think we’re down to our last 50 now,” he said. “I’m gonna have to sweet-talk the wholesalers to get a few more.”

Ian Lee

Ian Lee is a CBS News correspondent based in London, where he reports for CBS News, CBS Newspath and CBS News 24/7. Lee, is a multi-award-winning journalist, whose work covering major international stories has earned him some of journalism’s top honors, including an Emmy, Peabody and the Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Tom Renner award.