Barbell Foods

Canberra's Barbell Foods is a thriving biltong business.

Transcript

00:00It's essentially just an air-dried steak, we've taken a big primer, cut into large steaks,

00:13marinated, spiced it, dried it over a whole week and then cut it into these bite-sized

00:18pieces.

00:19It's not jerky, a lot of people associate it with jerky and we've never really been

00:23fans of jerky ourselves.

00:25But yeah, essentially most people in Australia might not be familiar with mealtime, but we

00:32see it as a healthy, on-the-go meat snack, similar to like say a can of tuna, but obviously

00:39without the bread.

00:41And yeah, over the last few years the business has been growing a lot more because more and

00:49more Australians are demanding quality over quantity when it comes to meat and how it's

00:54made.

00:55We're making the healthiest meat snacks in Australia.

00:57Well, not when it was in our little carport, at that point we were just making mealtime

01:02for ourselves.

01:03Myself, my brother and my two best mates, we're all living together and we're going

01:10on these camping trips, so really we're solving the problem for ourselves.

01:15And as the business, well it wasn't even the business, as people started asking where to

01:20buy, where to get our built up, it slowly became a business and at that point we realised

01:27the potential was much bigger.

01:29So we raised capital, built this big factory and have had a bit of like a fairy tale the

01:37last few years.

01:38It wasn't easy at the start, but now the business is at a point where we sell over a million

01:44bags a year, we employ 24 people and it's been really fun and we don't actually think

01:51it stops here, we have plans to triple the size of this business in the next few years.

01:56So yeah, we have to pinch ourselves at times.

01:59It's been an incredible journey.