The South East Food Hub is connecting families hungry for fresh produce with farms on their doorstep. Operations manager Naomi Atkins showed CASEY NEILL around hub headquarters at Calfresco Organics in Kooweerup.
“I would love for everybody to know about it and to have the opportunity to get great fresh produce and keep farming sustainable for the smaller farmers.”
LOCAL is the key word for the South East Food Hub.
It was established as a pilot project for a food delivery model focused on local people receiving local produce.
The Casey-Cardinia-Yarra Ranges-Greater Dandenong region was chosen because it was under-represented in customer access to fresh food and easy access to market for producers.
“We try to help the smaller farmers in the local area to have an outlet for their produce and get a fair price for their food,” operations manager Naomi Atkins said.
“We will supply businesses or individuals.
“It’s very simple – they just hop online, order what there is available from the list and then we get it from the farmers directly.
“We get all the food in here, re-pack it and then it gets sent out on a Tuesday.
“We’ve got eight or 10 farmers that are on the go at the moment.
“I normally touch base with all our farmers first thing on the Wednesday, find out what they have, what pricing structure they want for it, and then set it all up behind the scenes on the online store.”
There are about 60 orders placed each week.
“They’re based in various buying groups from Pakenham, Officer, Dandenong even,” Naomi said.
“We’ve got one on this week from Albert Park.
“You can buy a kilo of broccoli – if that’s all you want, that’s all you order.
“You can order as much or as little as you want.
“Generally people will pick the buying group that’s closest to them and it gets delivered to a central point and then they would go and pick it up.
“It might be a community house. We deliver to Monash Health and it goes to a staff room there.”
The not-for-profit hub started about a year ago in a warehouse occupied by charity Avocare in Cheltenham Road, Dandenong.
“The room got too small, we couldn’t fit 62 boxes in there,” Naomi said.
“This is one of our biggest farmers – Calfresco Organics.
“They’re kind enough to let us use their packing room as well which is really, really good of them.
“In the future, who knows? At the moment we’re pretty privileged to be able to work here.
“They’ve put lighting in especially so we can work down the bottom end.
“Hopefully as we expand we’re going to need more staff and a bigger area. Watch this space.
“It’s a bit of catch 22 at the moment.
“We’ve got some farmers we want to bring on board, but until we get bigger it’s a bit tricky actually getting their produce in because they don’t want to deliver for nothing.
“If it were bigger quantities they would do so.
“We need to grow our customer base.
“At the moment we’ve got Kirsten (Larsen), Jodi (Clarke) and myself.
“Jodi is pretty much to sell the hub and bring on buying groups.
“I’m more operations and Kirsten is the decision-maker.
“We’ve got two packers down there. They’re Calfresco staff but they get billed out to us on a Tuesday morning.
“We’re hoping that with the hub fee that we charge it will cover at least the packing staff.
“Kirsten doesn’t draw a wage so it’s really just Jodi and I, and we’re on a casual basis so we can do as many or as few hours in a week as need be so all our costs are covered.
“Distribution’s a big one as well. Calfresco helps out.
“I think it just about breaks even. It would be nice to see a bit more profit so we can pour it back in.”
It’s not just fruit and veg on offer.
“We have apple juices, and there are preserves, jams – there’s a lemon cordial as well,” Naomi said.
“We’re looking at filling in the other areas so there’s more variety and less need to go out to the shops.
“Basically we try and cover as much as we can but it has to be seasonal because we’re getting it basically straight from the paddocks.
“The stuff from Calfresco would have been picked yesterday so it’s as fresh as you’re gonna get.”
Meat is on the cards.
“We did have meat on for a while but moving to here we don’t have use of the fridge so it’s a bit hard with meat – there’s a lot of regulations to do with sourcing meat,” she said.
“We do supply dairy, we’ve got cheese and butter and eggs.”
The cheese and eggs are from Elderslie Organics in Ellinbank, where hub fruit and veg supplier Hazeldean Forest Farm is also based.
In Pearcedale are Vegie Bunch and Jayup’s Garden, and Green Gully Organics is in Macclesfield.
There’s Jindivick Hydroponics in Labertouche, 2D’s Fresh Herbs at Cora Lynn, Summer Snow in Officer and Hardings Orchard in Pakenham.
“We try to keep everything as local as we can,” Naomi said.
“I’d love to see it grow Australia-wide.
“I would love for everybody to know about it and to have the opportunity to get great fresh produce and keep farming sustainable for the smaller farmers.
“For some of them I think their main outlet is going to be through farmers markets and you get a day like this (pouring with rain) on a Sunday morning and who wants to go to those?
“They’ve picked all their produce, they have to take a certain amount in case people do turn up …
“A day like this where people just don’t come out and it’s all wasted.
“It is important for them. It gives them an outlet for their produce.”
Calfresco shed manager Brian Edwards is a big fan of the food hub.
“We wanted to keep all our staff employed through winter and in summer we wanted to give hem extra to do,” he said.
“I think things like this are important, keeping local people employed with local product and people eating locally is a good thing. It can’t be a bad thing.”
Calfresco co-owner Maurie Cafra said quite a bit of packing already took place at the farm, so inviting the hub to also make use of the old spud shed seemed a natural progression.
“It’s a good idea to try to supply local people with local food,” he said.
“It’s local food, it’s supporting local industry, it’s fresh.
“More buyers would be good.
“The concept’s really good and hopefully it will grow and people will enjoy the fresh produce.”
For more information, email hello@southeastfoodhub.org or visit www.southeastfoodhub.org or www.facebook.com/sefoodhub.
