Breakfast brand Farmer Jo makes almost $8 million from muesli and granola range

When Scott and his wife Sally started their business it was largely funded by credit cards and they had just three months to make it work.

When Scott Tulloch left his full time job to work on the business he had set up with his wife Sally, he made 18 applications for credit cards to inject some funds into it.

“I got black-listed for seven years as that is frowned upon, but Bankwest gave me a $11,000 credit card and I borrowed $6000 to buy a delivery van and by then we had two kids,” he told news.com.au.

“We had three months of coverage based on the credit card and I thought I’ve got three months to get out the door at 6am and sell the muesli.”

A decade later, Farmer Jo makes about 10 tonnes of muesli and granola per week and last year came close to a turnover of $8 million.

“We want to have a major influence in the breakfast choices nationally in Australia,” declared Mr Tulloch.

The idea for Farmer Jo came about when Mr Tulloch was working for high-end artisan coffee brands, but he couldn’t see this quality reflected in breakfast offerings in cafe, describing the options as bland.

Together with his wife, who is an interior designer and was also bored with the muesli options out there, the couple set about making new breakfasts in their kitchen, borrowing from the coffee ethos. They focused on high quality ingredients and roasting each one individually to create lots of different flavours.

“The ingredients we source is more for a discerning customer as it offers higher nutritious value and an experiential breakfast,” noted Mr Tulloch.

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The have a range of 16 granolas and muesli. Picture: Supplied

The couple, who have been together for 21 years after meeting in a nightclub, started selling their products at markets like Eveleigh and got their products into cafes, but Mr Tulloch admits it was a slow burn for the first five years and a hard slog working six to seven days a week for 16 hours

There were days that Mrs Tulloch would be delivering their product with one baby strapped to her, another child holding her hand and a pouch of muesli in the other one. Mr Tulloch admits he is the big dreamer, while his wife is the “nuts and bolts” of the business.

Later, Qantas and Virgin took on their products for flights and they are now stocked in Woolworths and Coles.

The brand has a range granolas, originally starting out with five flavours and building it up to 16, with three limited edition flavours in the pipeline.

Current combinations include hazelnut, chocolate and orange; honey with quinoa, whole almonds and pistachios; and maple with almonds and sea salt. There’s also muesli with ingredients like pear, pecan and ginger; burnt fig, almond, honey and cinnamon; salted maple and cashew; cranberry and fig; and cocoa and hemp. The paleo honey baked granola is the bestseller.

Ingredients like the pecans and macadamia nuts are sourced from Byron Bay, while fruit and nuts come from Adelaide, India and Sri Lanka.

Their box formats sell for between $8 and $10 in Coles and Woolworths.

When their twin daughters came along, they decided to move out of Sydney and up to Byron Bay to have more space for the family of six. This meant also moving the company’s kitchen as well and hiring staff to handmake their goods.

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A Farmer Jo's granola. Picture: Supplied

But when the pandemic hit, things looked a little wobbly, and the couple have recently partnered with a Sydney manufacturer to start making their products.

“COVID was a bendy one for us. We thought we were going down the gurgler as no one came to work. There was a lot of support for employees and not a lot of support for the employers and I couldn’t say we were losing money but we didn’t have the workforce to come and work and make the muesli,” he explained.

“But what came out is better then probably anticipated ... as we never really enjoyed the manufacturing part of the business and being in a remote area is a challenge with stocks and ingredients.

“We’ve now got a small kitchen in Bryon Bay that does test runs and collaborations with (restaurants) Three Blue Ducks and Blue Bean Coffee and allows us to be experimental.”

Creating their muesli and granolas isn’t based on data though, said Mr Tulloch. Instead they mix up ingredients they like to eat, with the aim of being the influencer in the market.

“We never look at spreadsheets. We make stuff for people like us and that’s how we have done it from day one. It’s been great in Byron Bay as food is a big discussion point and we are always talking about food and ingredients,” he said.

“We are able to source macadamia oil, which is 10 times the price but 100 times more nutritious than sunflower oil. We learned there is a shortage of honey, so we are slowly moving the business away from honey to coconut and nectars and becoming a plant-based vegan product.

“As we move forward, we are pushing out to Coles and Woolies and trying to influence there with an offering of high quality wholefood nutrition in the cereal market of aisles.”

But one experimental disaster was a pineapple and quinoa crunch breakfast, where they had customer complaints that it tasted sour.

“What we found is when you leave pineapple, which is acidic, in milk it turns the milk sour and makes it taste off, so people think something is wrong with muesli. So we had to pull the product because of impact the pineapple was having with milk,” he revealed.

Farmer Jo has been in the major supermarkets like Coles since last year and Mr Tulloch admits they are still trying to figure out how shoppers there think as they come in at a higher price point than most cereals.

“If people go to Harris Farm and IGA, they go as a grazing shopper, so they go with their eyes wide open and that’s how we get discovered as they have a bit more time,” he said. “But with a Coles and Woolies shop, most people come there and have pre-chosen what they are going to buy, and just grab it, so its been a challenge on how to stand out.”

Farmer Jo's have also extended into a range of spreads. Picture: Supplied

Farmer Jo’s is branching out into breakfast snacks and a kid’s range, which were obviously tested on their four daughters. Mr Tulloch said they have created a “healthy” version of Coco Pops with whole grains, organic ingredients, no preservatives and very low sugar.

“The poor things have been eating muesli since they were born, but its also very cute as they can sit at the table and say no more porridge and granola, but then they are jumping up and down with excitement when they find Farmer Jo in the supermarket,” added Mrs Tulloch.

Granola spreads and nut butters have also been added to their range, and are expected to be quite a “strong player” for the brand, such as a cashew and coconut butter and a chocolate spread.

“You can put it on muesli, spread it on toast, drizzle it in a smoothie and it’s not just a cashew or peanut butter. We are looking at how to get breakfast spreadable from our products and extract those flavours ... but we are not making just another peanut butter as we want to do a bit of value adding for some of the categories,” he explained.

Breakfast on the move is also on the schedule, with a healthy version of drinks that has “four ingredients rather than the 25 ingredients that you can’t read”, added Mr Tulloch, as well as breakfast biscuits.

There's granola butter spreads in two flavours. Picture: Supplied

Originally the brand started out as gluten-free but they couldn’t sell it, so they turned to the paleo tag, but Mr Tulloch says they are looking to go back into the space as it’s a much bigger player these days.

The 43-year-old wants to see companies reinvest some of their profits to make healthier and more nutritious breakfast options for Aussies.

“For us as a business it’s product and then profit. I don’t give a s**t about profit and I’m in no rush to get profit ... I’m not anti-commercial, I want to make money, but not to the detriment of my products and customers and if other businesses did that they could have so much impact,” he said.