Two small local businesses
"Healthy, delicious meals home-cooked and made from scratch" Blue Pear Pantry
Having had a rant yesterday about the supposed deleterious effect of supermarkets on small businesses I remembered that I had seen a brief article in the local paper recently about a local business called the Blue Pear Pantry. The owner had recently won a silver medal in the Great Australian Sausage Roll competition in Sydney, following on from an earlier silver medal at the Australian Food Awards. The winner incidentally of the Great Sausage Roll competition was Midland at Centrepoint in Melbourne, whose owners are originally from Vietnam.
Winning prizes in competitions is obviously good for business and I am sure that it has boosted the business of Blue Pear Pantry, even if they were not first prizes. The company's website certainly features the awards fairly heavily - as they should. And they do look good.
The owner and chief (maybe only) cook is one Deb Graham who worked in the construction industry before having children. Like many women who stay at home with their small children she found it difficult to break back in to the workforce and started her home cooking business. Frustratingly there is no explanation as to why cooking on her About page. Just that three years ago she had never cooked a sausage roll. So why would you choose cooking? Maybe whilst at home she found a joy in cooking. I don't know.
The real business of the company though is making meals that can be delivered to your door or picked up from various other places - like The Eltham Deli - the other business I am looking at today. Their claim is to:
"provide healthy and nutritious home cooked ready made meals, as an alternative to takeaway." Blue Pear Pantry
The meals cost $17.50 for two which is pretty reasonable and include things like curries, stews, lasagnes and stir fries. They are all those things like organic, free-range and gluten free with 100% recyclable packaging - and you can ask for specific things to be left out. You can also buy packs of meals for two, or for one. Whilst there might be a bit of variety there, if you were just eating from their range you would get a bit bored after a while wouldn't you? Maybe the menu changes every now and then. It wouldn't be too often though, because you would have to have new labels and packaging printed.
But if you want to know more about what they actually sell just go to their website. My main purpose in choosing them is to point out that there are small businesses out there who are presumably making a success of what they do, although admittedly I have no idea whether she is successful or not. She seems to have half a dozen or so retail outlets which sell her stuff or where you can pick up your order - and one of these is Eltham Deli. On her Facebook page there are references to various farmer's markets, so maybe she hawks her wares there too. It all sounds like a lot of hard work, but hopefully it demonstrates that you can make a success out of one simple idea. And if you are successful enough then you can expand, employ more people, extend your geographical range ...
Years ago - when we came back to Melbourne and I was finding it difficult to find a job, I briefly considered doing something with food. I thought a little shop at the bottom of an apartment block would be a good idea - providing meals for all those busy people with money and no time. I even had a name - The Quiche Niche. But I am not a person with drive and so did nothing about it. It is interesting though, and a bit of a pity really, that you can make a business out of providing 'home-made' meals. Why can't they do them themselves. Blue Pear Pantry makes a big thing about freezing the meals so that you have meals available at the weekend. But you can do that yourself surely? Still I guess people have been doing this for centuries - there have always been street hawkers selling things like pies and sausage rolls.
Back to small local business. Eltham Deli is different. It is a shop, not a home business - a Delicatessen in the small Eltham mall and is almost next to Coles. It has been there for many years now, so I suppose it must be making money. It doesn't have a website - doesn't every business in this day and age? It doesn't even have a Facebook page. Just a mention of contact details on the shopping centre website. But then I guess they rely on passing trade - all those people going to Coles - or, sadly, to Tatts. As I said, it has survived for many years, but I have always wondered why. I rarely shop there. I cannot believe that the cheese and deli items are very much better or different from those in Coles. They do have expensive breads from places like Phillipa's and Flinders Bakery - both snobby bread brands. And they do have some things that you can't get in Coles - more spices, more things like Amaretto - but not as many as you would think, and, of course, they are pricey. But they must know their market because they are still there.
There's a local greengrocer in this particular mall too. It also has been there for a long time - why? The takeaway Asian food stall I can understand, and the health food shop and the $2.00 shop. The Chemist has been sold to Chemist Warehouse, and the Travel Agent hangs in there. Everything else though is a moving feast - sorry - there is one dress shop that has been there forever. Even the specialist poultry shop seems to have morphed into a general butcher, and the butcher has changed hands a coupe of times - but then it is absolutely opposite Coles.
Not every small food business survives but some do. La Porchetta - the Italian pizza franchise, started with just one shop. Shannon Bennett, started with one small restaurant in Carlton. Domino's pizza also started very small and is now a major stockmarket player - even if it has been going through some downs rather than ups. And if you are successful enough the supermarkets might help out - las I described in my post on Australian Fresh Leaf Herbs - or stock your stuff - see Irrawarra Bread in Woolworths.
So I wish the Blue Pear Pantry well. They're in Warrandyte by the way - and source their ingredients locally there, in Eltham and Research. Including the meat. Maybe it comes from the butcher's opposite Coles.
