In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Bianca Tarrant, Co founder of Our Cow
Our Cow is an online butchers supporting a network of producers and delivering premium grass fed and organic meat to the dinner tables of families all across the country. Now valued at over $60m and with more than 6000 subscribers, Our Cow is currently expanding to offer next day delivery to Sydney customers. And they just ran a promotion offering free bacon for life. Stick that one in your ideas box. Bianca shares how they are disrupting the cattle industry with their paddock to plate model, why they decided to acquire a grocery database and the phone call that gave them the best sense of their success.
“We are supporting hundreds of farmers, which is the main driver for me and for Dave, to see the impact that we’re actually having.”
Bianca Tarrant
Emerging from debt and drought
“So we bought the property and probably for the first two years we were just selling our weaners, we were just trading on the market, we were happy with what we were doing. But in 2018 actually, we had a series of bushfires come through our farm and it also was the start of the drought.
So not only had we absolutely mortgaged ourselves to the hilt, for the farm. When you go onto a farm you need livestock, you need tractors, you need machinery. You go further and further in debt to be able to make money out of what you’ve just invested in. We had the mortgage, we had livestock on finance, we had machinery on finance and we went into a horrific bushfire and one of the worst droughts Australia has ever faced.
But if it wasn’t for the bushfires and the drought and everything that we’d faced, we probably would never have been put in that situation to think outside the box. So, I guess from every hard situation, there is something good that comes out of it.”
Experience on board
“It really feels like we’ve got this A-star team working for us. You know, those couple of State of Origins where Queensland won every year? It was Cooper Cronk, Kevin Smith and Billy Slater. That’s kind of what it feels like our executive team is.
We’ve got Rob Quarry, he’s come from Archistar, he’s in the tech space and he’s been unbelievable. He’s the chairman of our board and really opening our eyes into the possibilities in Sydney. We’ve introduced Liana Laborde. So she’s from David Jones and she’s been fantastic for procurement for us. We’ve got Phil, he’s come from Koala for marketing and we also have Nick and he’s come from Woolies Mergers and Acquisitions. So it’s a star-studded team. I’m really excited to have those guys on board.”
Acquiring a database to grow
“We heard the news at the end of last year that Voly was closing up and we really liked what they’d done with the business. We liked the way that they looked after their customers and what their vision was and their mission. So, we wanted to take the opportunity to continue to look after their customers and to introduce them to Our Cow.
I guess what we’re planning to do with the database is, we’ve started talking to the guys over there at Voly and the people that were within the database, but we’re moving into a faster delivery service. So we’ve just opened up our first Sydney warehouse, Sydney DC. Within the next couple of weeks, we’ll be offering same day delivery and next day delivery into Sydney. That’s kind of where we see the Voly customers being a little bit more interested in our offering and really expanding our range into some more grocery and fresher food products.”
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