Fast food restaurants key to success for lettuce growers in southeast Queensland

Queensland lettuce growers Geoffrey and Ann Storey stopped selling their produce to supermarkets 30 years ago, tired of the roller coaster ride and price dictation.

“I didn’t like putting a lot of production into the ground, spending a lot of money on hiring people, and you didn’t really know if you were going to make money this week or next week,” Mr. Storey said.

“It’s gotten to the point where you can go a whole year and not make any money—that’s not a position I ever want to be in again.”

Today the couple inspect every lettuce plant on their four farms near Toowoomba in south-east Queensland and know where it goes and how much they will be paid for it.

As Stories looked for new customers, fast food franchising began to develop abroad, as did the demand for pre-cooked, freshly cut vegetables.

They opened a new market in Australia by washing, sanitizing, coring, slicing and packaging lettuce for fast food restaurants.

The value-added business started modestly with basic slicing equipment and knives for staff.

Currently, 50 employees work on modern equipment.

The couple’s son Nathan works in the family business, having trained as a mechatronics engineer with skills in mechanical, software and electrical engineering, as well as robotics.

Nathan Storey said his family now has stable demand, with supply contracts and prices awarded annually.

“It helps us plan and invest so we can do our jobs better and more efficiently, and it absolutely works better in a long-term relationship as opposed to having a client today and not tomorrow.” “, he said.

Harvest goals

The Storey family delivers bags of fresh, ready-to-eat salad 52 weeks a year, and McDonald’s has been a customer for five years.

“Making sure it shows up and that we get supply is critical, and that’s not easy in production, come rain or hail,” said McDonald’s senior director of supply chain Tom Mahoney.

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“There’s always something left over, but the Storey family has done a good job of making sure we have supplies.”

The 70 employees at Storey Family Farms plant half a million iceberg lettuce every week.

“We process about 18 million icebergs a year,” Jeffrey Storey said.

“In all areas, we plant every day, transplant seedlings every day and harvest every day.

“If we plant 100,000 heads a day, we harvest 100,000.”

Four years ago, The Stories opened a new processing plant run by Nathan Story.

“Most machines have their own brain that monitors what they are doing, and then we have other controllers that make sure everything happens correctly in the group,” he said.

Global brands such as Subway, McDonald’s, Hungry Jacks and KFC have high safety standards, which is why the plant has three different machines to detect and remove tagged lettuce and foreign objects such as rocks.

The family thought the plant wouldn’t need to expand for ten years, but just four years after opening, they plan to spend millions to increase capacity.

“The next phase will give us about a 50 percent increase in productivity, but will also increase our flexibility so we have the ability to produce more complex products and improve our ability to handle short runs,” said Nathan Storey.

Growing demand

Anne and Jeffrey Storey are in their 60s, but they have no plans to slow down.

They have just bought a new business producing fresh fruit, vegetables, salads and food solutions in Brisbane.

“This is a huge opportunity and we’re just getting close to it at the moment,” Ms Storey said.

She was shocked by how big the market for diced, sliced, minced, shredded and peeled fruits and vegetables had become.

Ms Storey said the world of catering had changed radically, with more cafes, restaurants, care homes and small supermarkets outsourcing food preparation due to staff and space shortages.

“What we’re seeing is that a lot of (food service businesses) are quite willing to buy a processed product so they don’t have to perform that particular function themselves,” she said.

“They may do the final cooking or plating, but the actual preparation is done off-site by businesses like ours.

“It’s exciting—we’re now moving to the next step.”

All three family members agree on one thing: they will never go back to planting crops and are crossing their fingers someone will pay them enough to make a living.

“All the business we do in the future will be some sort of negotiated supply and price,” Jeffrey Storey said.

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