About Us

For my wife Linda and I, Willow Vale Gourmet Food Co. was born out of the desire to spend more quality time with our three young children.

After living abroad for five years and enjoying successful careers in the retail and marketing sectors, we decided the time was right to move back home and start a family.

And while Linda became a full time mum and I re-started my career in Australia, it soon became clear to us that the only way to have the flexibility to do those things we wanted to as parents was to take back control of our own time.

So we started casting around for ways to become our own boss. We looked at a variety of franchises and other options, but in the end – as so often happens – we simply stumbled across what we thought was a great business opportunity.

We were enjoying Christmas with some relatives up north when they served up some home-made mango chutney and tomato sauce.

We couldn’t believe how fantastic they tasted, and by the end of the meal we had decided that when we got home we would start playing around with our own recipes.

Fast forward six months and we had converted a granny flat on our property into a commercial kitchen and we were selling a range of Willow Vale Gourmet Food Co. chutneys and sauces through local markets. These were instantly well received and we soon built up a regular customer base.

We are entering our sixth year now, and the business is continually growing and evolving. Our range has expanded to include specialty infused olive oils, dressings, balsamic reductions, premium dukkahs and a variety of gift packs. We have also developed our Pickle Hopper range which currently consists of 100 percent Australian smoked salts.

As well as attending regular local markets and gourmet food events, our products are also found in specialty stores on the East coast of Australia via our distributors.

We now have an awesome production team including Julz, Tracey, Kathleen and myself. We are the engine of the business.  My wife Linda deals with the day to day running of the business and focuses on sales.

And while it takes up a lot of our time to service and grow the business, we now have a much more flexible balance of work and family time and that was the whole reason we did this in the first place!