As its products disappear from Woolworths shelves outside Victoria and Tasmania, a Donald biscuit manufacturer is making a new play for a slice of the online market.
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Just two weeks after Woolworths told Kooka’s Country Cookies their biscuits would no longer be stocked outside the two southern states, the regional Victorian company has signed up with online retailer MegaFresh.
The website matches shoppers directly with Australian farmers and manufacturers, circumventing supermarkets and returning more profit to the supplier.
Farmers and manufacturers deliver their produce to the MegaFresh warehouse, from which it is delivered to online shoppers.
Kooka’s sales manager Kerry Vogel said the movement online was “something a bit different” for the 23-year-old biscuit manufacturer and hoped it could patch the revenue gap left by Woolworths.
“I think a lot of people are going that way now, ordering online, and they're looking to buy Australian products,” she said.
“We have changed with the times, and we'll keep changing with the times.”
Read more: Cookie crumbles as Woolies drop Kooka’s
Kooka’s requested a review of the Woolworths decision but Ms Vogel said she was unable to change the minds of supermarket bosses.
“They were just going through their processes,” she said.
“This has been in the pipeline for a long time.”
MegaFresh founder Alex Stefan said food producers were bot being “given a fair go by the big companies who act as gate keepers between the producers and the consumers”.
“With the technology that we now have, it shouldn’t be necessary for producers to have to sell via antiquated methods,” Ms Stefan said.
The business model could also reduce the amount of food that never left the farm and only went to waste, he said.
Woolworths this month said cutting Kooka’s products was in response to customer behaviour, with 90 per cent of the its biscuit sales occurring in Tasmania and Victoria stores.
Ms Vogel said the Donald-based company was inundated with support since the supermarket announced the change.
“The support you have given us over the last couple of weeks has kept our spirits up and given us hope for the future,” a post on the Kooka’s Facebook page yesterday read.