A lack of support has forced Yalandra Fine Foods’ founder to close the business after seven years.
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The Albury butchery providing locally-grown produce and gourmet products, an offshoot of the Yalandra Pastoral Company, will shut on Thursday.
Owner Scott Giltrap said the business couldn’t continue “if it’s not profitable” and thanked his staff and loyal customers.
“We had to make a business decision – we’ve tried to provide really good quality food to the area and I think we succeeded in that, but the area probably doesn’t have a large enough population base for a business like it to survive and compete with supermarkets,” he said.
“The business would have done much better in a larger city … if we had more of a support-base, we would be open.
“It’s a sad day for us and the staff.”
It’s not yet been decided what will happen to the Borella Road store and Mr Giltrap said the Pastoral Company would continue on.
“We’ll continue as a farming business … we’ve got other external markets but we won’t be doing the butcher shop market,” he said.
“Yalandra has been around in one form or another as a farming business since 1986 and that’s expanded now mainly through full-blood Wagyu.
“We started off concentrating on Wagyu grass and grain fed beef, and over the last 12 months we also moved to Angus.
“One of the differences in our supply was that we used all our own beef from our own farm and all the meat was dry-aged.
“Meat in supermarkets and most butchers now is vacuum-sealed beef that comes in boxes whereas we had individual whole carcasses and were able to sell the whole animal.
“We tried to provide some good quality food and a lot of people appreciated that, but not enough for it to be a viable business.”
Mr Giltrap said he and his team were still working through whether they could keep on staff in different capacities.
Calum McBain, who has worked closely with Mr Giltrap and will continue on with the Yalandra Pastoral Company, said they had tried hard to make the shopfront and associated operations work.
“We have had a lot of calls from people who are pretty sad about it and it’s a sad day for us,” he said.
“If we were in Melbourne or Sydney it would have been a raging success, but there’s just not enough people around here for what we’re doing.”
The Yalandra Fine Foods store will be featured in The BBQ when it is showcased in cinemas across the country from February.