When dining in at restaurants, cafes and bars was outlawed on March 23, Australia’s food industry was hit hard, from farm to table.
“A lot of suppliers lost 95 per cent of their business overnight … and they needed a way to survive,” says James Andronis, co-founder of online food-ordering platform Fresho, which connects hospitality venues with farmers, distributors and wholesalers.
Fresho’s Melbourne-based team quickly hatched a plan. In early April, they shook up the business-to-business model, and the online platform now allows anyone – not just restaurants – to buy produce from wholesalers in their area and have it delivered.
That includes fruit and veg, dairy, meat, seafood and more from suppliers such as Sher Wagyu, Clamms Seafood and Scicluna’s in Melbourne; Good Fish, Poulos Bros and Fruitique in Sydney; fruit and veg wholesaler AMJ in Adelaide; and Fins Seafood in Perth.
Andronis says around 25,000 businesses across Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US use Fresho to source or supply produce. In Australia, that includes chef Neil Perry’s Rockpool Group venues, which source around 90 per cent of their produce through Fresho’s channels, according to Perry. Other venues using the platform include Melbourne’s Coda, Tonka and Movida.
Ordering through Fresho cuts out “one to three steps in the supply chain before it gets to a retailer,” Andronis says, which means you’re getting restaurant quality without paying restaurant prices, particularly for produce such as oysters, Wagyu, and king and tiger prawns.
Another upshot: you can get your hands on produce usually reserved for fine diners. “It’s incredible what people are ordering that you’d never normally buy for home,” Andronis says. Scarlet prawns, for example, are only available from a few producers in each state, “and you’re not likely to find [them] in a market setting”.
Other less-common produce available through Fresho includes Moreton Bay bugs, fresh Fremantle sardines and flat iron steaks. Andronis says his team has also seen a spike in sales of vegetables such as snow-pea tendrils and rainbow Dutch carrots.
Sign up to Fresho here. Prices and delivery options vary depending on suppliers in your area.
