BRYCE Scott is not exactly taking to the barricades, but he is leading a small band of rebels with a cause – and in the last place you would expect to find them.
The paddocks of fruit and vegetable growers who are taking the price war to the streets.
And they’re doing it because their properties at Beverford have become the breeding ground for a retail rebellion in an industry where increasing numbers of smaller players have had enough.
Enough of working hard, taking all the risks, and then being offered a fraction of what their year’s blood, sweat and tears is really worth.
Scott has a classic example of how both ends of the food chain are being ripped off.
He says in 2021 the butternut pumpkins grown at his property were receiving 30 cents a kilogram in the Melbourne markets, where the supermarkets shop.
“Those same butternuts were selling in the supermarkets for between $4 and $5,” he explained.
“We started selling them on the roadside for $1.50 and we win as growers and our customers win as consumers – it is the perfect way for the food chain to work, by cutting out all the takers in between.
“I would say across all products, across a year, our customers would, on average, pay less than half what this would cost them in a supermarket.
“Under the current system, this is what could – and does – happen. Stone fruit is grown at Beverford, we pick it, pack it, shed it, truck it to market in Melbourne, it’s bought out of the market by a supermarket chain, trucked, repacked, stored, loaded up and trucked again and two or three weeks later it’s on the shelves of a Swan Hill supermarket.
“That fruit has been in transit since the second we picked it and by the time it gets back here it has been off the tree, or out of the ground, for a very long time – and that doesn’t take into account ours might have gone into cold storage and what comes back up the highway is something months away from harvest.
“In what world does that make sense, and once the fruit leaves the farm, at every stage it is handled between us and the customer, the price goes up as all the middlemen charge for their part in the story.”
It was that ridiculous scenario that would prove the final straw.
And PTP Produce (paddock to plate) was born.
Scott said the stone fruit side of the two farm businesses had been using roadside stalls as an alternative cashflow for more than a decade, but the vegies/citrus/melon side of the partnership has only been ‘on the road’ for 12 months.
Incredibly, beyond the wildest dreams of the partners, PTP has been going gangbusters – local produce at fair and reasonable prices being embraced (and purchased) by locals supporting locals.
Today PTP has a network of 24/7 roadside stalls, run on honesty boxes, stretching ever further across the state – from their Beverford stomping grounds to Huntly, Bendigo, Nyah, Balranald, Bridgewater, Axedale and beyond – and new ones are appearing every week or two.
Along with PTP’s pop-up stalls, where they set up in people’s driveways and on the premises of other businesses, to minimise conversations with local councils and their bylaw officers. A recent visit saw them arrive in Heathcote by popular demand – the same reason they have a permanent setup in nearby Axedale.
The rural and regional jungle drums were doing their job and the brand’s growth is riding a wave of word-of-mouth recommendation as it continues to expand.
They will be adding Kerang to their network shortly and won’t be stopping there.
“The logic behind the business was irrefutable,” Scott said.
“Farmers don’t get what they deserve, and consumers don’t get enough value for the money they spend – you just need to hold that thought when you think this isn’t worth all the trouble.
“We could have half of everything we put in our roadside stalls stolen and you know what, we’d still be doing better than when we were sending produce to Melbourne.
“Plus our customers get access to quality fresh fruit barely 24 hours old – none of this came out of chilled storage where it could have been sitting for weeks or months.”
With the expansion of PTP the workload has been spread a little further to balance a little better.
Scott now lives in Bendigo while the Mudges remain in Beverford. As well as PTP the trio all have off-farm jobs as well.
He has a licenced cool room for overnight storage before he heads off to restock roadside stalls at the southern end of the PTP network.
The whole business is built on the belief you treat others as you would have them treat you – it’s raison d’être is honesty.
“To keep the stalls going around the clock, seven days a week, each one has an honesty box and sadly, we did lose a couple early on, so as much as we trust 99.9 per cent of our customers you know there is always the odd proverbial bad apple who thinks it is their right to take what’s not theirs,” Scott said.
PTP is also starting to attract fans amongst fellow growers, and they are doing a little consignment selling on behalf of neighbouring growers – particularly with products they don’t have on their own farms, such as avocados – who want access to the same success story.
Scott reckons at the moment about 90 per cent of what they sell is their own and the rest is coming from those neighbours.
In the post-Covid world, he is also starting to open more avenues of business, targeting pubs and clubs and small towns shops for direct sales of their diverse, seasonal and uber fresh fruit and vegies.
Bryce still gets a kick out of the planning meeting to launch PTP.
“When Tony said roadside sales, with stalls, I just started laughing,” Bryce admitted.
“Now we can sell more product off just the stall in Bridgewater in one day than we would to supermarkets in a whole week – and for a lot bigger return.”
So who’s laughing now?
