LOCAL vegetable growers are the big winners from the fast food industry’s move to provide consumers with healthier menu choices.
LOCAL vegetable growers are the big winners from the fast food industry’s move to provide consumers with healthier menu choices.
Hungry Jack’s and Red Rooster are two fast food operators now offering salad options, following the launch of ‘Salads Plus’ by McDonald’s about two years ago.
According to recent research from McDonald’s, 15 per cent of all transactions at its Western Australian outlets are Deli Choice menu items, the range of sandwiches it launched in November last year.
As a result McDonald’s has significantly boosted its order of salad mixes.
Last year, national fruit and vegetable supplier GSF Australia provided McDonald’s in WA with 224,410 kilograms of shredded lettuce and 105,104kg of tatsoi salad mix.
While lovers of the regular McDonald’s menu may not champion the image and menu changes, local vegetable growers have found the strategy appealing.
Suppliers to the fast food chains are demanding increasing volumes of stock from vegetable producers such as The Loose Leaf Lettuce Company.
The Loose Leaf Lettuce Company supplies tatsoi and spinach to GSF Australia.
According to The Loose Leaf Lettuce Company owner Maureen Dobra, turnover has increased 37 per cent in the past 12 months.
She believes the increased revenue can be directly attributed to the surge in orders of tatsoi and spinach leaves by GSF, which supplies McDonalds.
“They approached us about two years ago about our tatsoi and we started out selling them a little bit, about 10 or 15 kilos, but that’s built up to 360 kilos a week,” Ms Dobra said.
“We’re now supplying them with English spinach leaves.”
Sales of spinach have grown from 9kg a week to 72kg kilograms a week.
The Loose Leaf Lettuce Company has sold six tonnes of tatsoi and 1.5t of spinach leaves to GSF in the two-year period.
Growth in grower market business and to cafes and hotels is also helping drive revenue upward, Ms Dobra said.
The demand by the fast food chains for vegetables is also being felt by tomato grower TLF Exports.
One of WA’s biggest tomato growers, TLF Exports sold more than one million 10kg cartons of its tomatoes last year and, according to TLF director Nhi Le, those figures will be dwarfed by results anticipated for this year.
Mr Le supplies tomatoes to a range of suppliers that have recently gained big chunks of business from the fast food chains.
He believes that more and more consumers will adopt healthier eating habits and, in turn, boost his sales.
“Sales have grown by at least 40 to 50 per cent,” Mr Le said.
He sells his product to the suppliers, whose business is also growing, but Mr Le said stringent quality controls from the fast food giants would restrict entry for a number of players.
“Now that the food chains have the quality assurance in place I think it will be a case of the big guys getting bigger,” Mr Le told WA Business News.
Perth fruit and vegetable supplier Freshcorp recently secured a contract to supply about 20 Subway restaurants and is looking to deal with a further 40 WA stores.
WA Business News understands the Subway deal will net the fruit and veg supplier $750,000 a year.
It has been supplying Dome Coffees Australia for 12 months.
According to Freshcorp regional services manager Dean Hathaway the sector is growing but there are very tough quality control procedures.
“To get Subway we had to go through US health audits to even come close to supplying them,” he said.
