Dreamfarm: Everyday inventors talk life-changing gadgets

In a nondescript warehouse opposite one of the city’s most famous pubs, a group of Brisbane masters of invention are creating gadgets you didn’t know you needed, and they’re going global thanks to some big-name connections.

In a corner of a nondescript warehouse opposite the Breakfast Creek Hotel sits a dream maker. It’s an odd looking thing, basically a silver rubbish bin with a perspex window revealing ping-pong balls inside. An orange witches hat, like you see at roadworks, sits on top. But when Alex Gransbury turns it on, coloured lights flash and ping-pong balls fly.

He pulls a rope, the hat lifts up and out comes one of the small white orbs.

His colleague, engineer Tom Schuster, catches it. Alex repeats the process and another ball is flung in the air. Tom catches that one, too.

The balls have something written on them.

“Right, so what does a ‘pastry brush mop’ look like?” Tom asks.

Tom Schuster, Alex Gransbury, Philip Howieson are the other creative brains at Dreamfarm. Picture: AAP/Russell Shakespeare

We are in the factory that is Dreamfarm, in Albion, where Alex, Tom and the team invent and perfect kitchen gadgets.

Its colourful range of game-changing goods include Red Dot award-winning Clongs (click-lock tongs that sit up, so you don’t get cooking mess on the bench); Scizza pizza scissors (who knew cutting pizza slices with scissors could be so easy?) and the Smood spiral masher (one-push for smooth mash and it’s also a scraper for easy serving).

Dreamfarm’s Scizza pizza scissors.

The company’s stockist list stretches across Australia to the UK and US, and reads like a who’s-who of retail — Myer, Bloomingdale’s, John Lewis.

Alex, 37, founded the company 22 years ago in Canberra, with just one product, the Grindenstein, a compact knock-box for coffee grinds, selling it at farmers’ markets and online. Now, working alongside him is a dedicated crew including Tom, design manager Phil Howieson and Alex’s sister Cate McDermott.

Their product shelves bristle with more than 30 offerings, including the Ortwo spice mill, released a few weeks ago.

The Ortwo pepper mill.

“It’s been three years in the making and has taken over all of our lives for the past 18 months. There’s a bunch of different materials in it, glass, nylon, diecast zinc, timber, ceramic, so there was so much to learn. The biggest relief, and I nearly cried, was when Tom and I were at trade shows in Chicago and Philadelphia, and we found out it had won a Red Dot award.

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“I mean, that’s like the Oscars of the design industry. It was like getting a big stamp of approval, the world saying, ‘Hey, it’s all been worth it’. But what is really important is to get it into stores and to see how it sells.”

The Ortwo is a spice mill that can be used with one hand or two, depending on the speed and size of the grind required. Did the world need another spice mill? It seems the public vote is “yes”.

Dreamfarm founder Alex Gransbury stands with the ping pong launching machine that spits out invention ideas. Picture: Russell Shakespeare

The company ran a kickstarter campaign to fund its initial production costs. It raised half its funding goal in a day, and more than $30,000 from 445 backers in a week.

That’s because it’s not just another mill. It looks different, with two handles jutting out the top and a squat glass jar holding the ingredient to be ground.

It’s one of those gadgets that makes you wonder why no one thought of it before.

Alex says the company’s culture doesn’t allow their products to be anything less than great. It’s “all killer, no filler” with this family business — Mum Carole first helped Alex assemble their products back in Canberra, and Dad Roger did the books on the weekends.

Alex moved to Brisbane in 2007, and Cate, 34, joined soon after. Their brother, John, 39, lives in Brisbane too, but is a scuba diving instructor.

Alex says working with family is “awesome”, because of the unique working environment it creates.

“Especially with Dad passing away at the end of last year, we appreciate it more and more,” Alex says.

“Mum even does the cleaning here.”

It came about because she would run her finger across everything.

“Cate and I — we have our moments, but you know what it’s like with family. If you have got to have it out, you have to have it out. We have been doing it for a long time, and we are pretty good at it. We enjoy it.”

Alex and Cate McDermott keep Dreamfarm in the family.

Cate, Dreamfarm’s special projects manager, agrees.

“It’s actually really special,” she says. “If we have a barney, we always manage to hug it out. And it’s never because of anything else but that we care so much about what we are doing.

“We have got to a place where we genuinely respect each other for what we know and what we bring to the business. It’s really cool to go to work every day and sit next to someone you love and create something you love together.”

Back in the workshop, we are discussing if the world would use a “pastry brush mop bucket”. Maybe they would — after all, who hasn’t had to pick stray pastry brush hairs off the top of a freshly glazed pie or glossy roast chicken skin?

After all, isn’t a pastry brush just a tiny mop, but for basting?

Alex lets me down gently, saying the company has moved away from using the “invention lotto machine” as a basis for business decisions.

“We’ve gone very corporate,” Alex jokes. “We just have bills to pay and kids to feed. If you want to be stocked at places like Myer, the only way you can do that is if you have a complete range. They say, ‘We can’t dump someone else and let you guys in there until you can offer some key things. You need a whisk and a peeler and a spoon and a spatula and a potato masher and a can opener’ … There are holes in our range that we need to fill.”

That’s how they came up with the Fledge — the flip-edge, non-slip cutting board with a juice groove to catch run-off.

“The hope is that we can create things that are so awesome they become the standard and are still the go-to for our kids’ (generation). There are items that are like that in our lives now, that there has never been anything better. They are so simple yet they are the purest form they could possibly be — they do the job, they are reliable, they are cheap to manufacture. Everyone’s gold.”