Sunnyside up for WesEggs

LIKE most businesses the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has had an affect on Maude based WesEggs, but the business has been able to find new opportunities during the shutdown.

Before the pandemic about 60 per cent of the farm’s pasture raised free range eggs were going directly to the wholesale market but that stream disappeared overnight.

However, co-owner Wes Humpage said because the farm already had a value-added brand that offered home delivery things started to look up.

“I don’t think many businesses have come out unscathed in some way, shape or form,” he said. “60 per cent of our business was wholesale orders and that disappeared over a week, or most of it did.

“That’s pretty confronting for any business.

“We had the home delivery side of things already running and we had done so since we started and because everyone one was getting locked down, that side of it sort of took off, which shifted our sales profile.

“That was one of the primary reasons we started, so we could home deliver eggs. It’s a big part of who we are and what we do.”

WesEggs had a presence at a couple of regional Farmers Markets, notably Golden Plains and South Geelong.

For Mr Humpage having stalls at those locations was as much about getting his brand out in the mind of consumers as much as it was about selling eggs, but there were also other positives to the retail opportunities.

“The farmer’s markets are important,” he said. “One of the reasons why we worked really hard to get into the Golden Plains Farmers’ Market was that we were supporting our own local area. We get to talk to our customers and all that sort of stuff.

“Even people who get our home delivery service quite often come and buy more eggs.

“From my perspective, if we can support the Farmers’ Markets alongside them supporting us, there’s other businesses that benefit from that too.

“There’s all sorts of little businesses that work from the Golden Plains Farmers market that rely on that event as a source of income. If we can be a part of that it all goes hand-in-hand in creating that local economy.”

With the shutdown of farmers’ markets across the region, Mr Humpage fears that it’s going to be hard for them to come back.

Yet he’s also full of praise for initiatives like Golden Plains Shire’s online farmers’ market.

“Good on them for having a go,” Mr Humpage said. “It’s really hard to get online stuff off the ground, but if you don’t have a go, you don’t push it, it’s never going to happen.

“When you stop a farmers’ market and then you start them back up again, they really struggle for a long period of time. By doing stuff like this I think it’s beneficial for all the businesses involved. It gets people thinking about the farmer and the market and what they can do in the interim. It has a lot of indirect impacts.”

As a way of supporting other businesses WesEggs has taken on expanding its offering and delivering produce from other farmers.

“We’ve brought on other products to try and help some businesses,” he said. “Obviously it supports as well but I know a lot of businesses are struggling.”

Back on the farm WesEggs currently has between 5000 to 6000 highline ISA layers as their primary breed.

Even with seven staff the extra work has seen Mr Humpage and his wife Mandy pulling big hours.

“I think around mark March 16th mark Coles and Woolies ran out of eggs and then everything sort of took off and we were well prepared to scale that side of our business,” he said.

“We had to get another person and another van in as our operation is a bit more labour intensive. We just had to adapt the business.

“Mandy and I, since March the 16th, for three, four weeks there we were lucky to get four to five hours sleep a night.”