Sometimes a dire situation brings out some of the most creative and innovative ideas that can change a business’ fortunes almost overnight.
With tourism basically coming to a halt due to the recent bushfires and Covid-19, a gourmet cheese hamper business came up with the perfect gift for people stuck in lockdown.
Cheese Therapy, which is based on the Sunshine Coast, has sold three times more cheese in the lead-up to Father’s Day than it did for the whole of 2019 and has developed a cult following after coming to the rescue of a bushfire ravaged cheesemaker, seeing 3600 per cent growth in the last month alone.
Cheese Therapy’s co-founder, Sam Penny, says with borders locked and people unable to visit their dads for Father’s Day, thousands of Australians had gone online to find the perfect gift.
“What it tells us is that more people are shopping online than ever before,” he says.
“Unsurprisingly, the pandemic is driving rapid change within the ecommerce industry.”
Indeed, figures show a 31 per cent increase in the number of people now shopping online. Cheese Therapy, which was launched in 2016 by Penny and partner Helen Shadforth, is now selling up to 8,000kg of cheese each month. As a result, it has expanded its operations to include warehouses in Brisbane and Geelong.
“We are now delivering up to 1,500 parcels a day to some of the most remote towns in Australia including Katherine in the Northern Territory. In 2019, we would only deliver 200 in an entire month.
“Four and a half years ago, we were ordering, cutting, packaging and sending cheese ourselves. Now we have a growing team of 25 people across Queensland and Victoria and a model that allows us to run operations externally from our base on the Sunshine Coast.”
