When the price of their goats plummeted, the Robinson family opened a 24/7 self-service butcher shop
Small businesses in regional and rural Australia are facing unprecedented challenged. Despite this, one north Queensland family is jumping into the deep end, opening a 24/7 butcher.
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00:00 When the Robinsons bought a block of land at Mudaburra, they decided to try something
00:06 different.
00:07 The goat prices was really good and you could run them on pretty ordinary country.
00:13 We thought that would be the best enterprise to go into.
00:17 Never ate it.
00:18 No, no, not until we had goat we thought, oh we better start eating it.
00:21 So we know what it's like.
00:23 Over 12 months ago, goat meat prices plummeted, leaving Australian producers with limited
00:29 options to make a profit from their livestock.
00:32 For Cale and Karen, it meant exploring other market opportunities.
00:37 Inspired by social media, the couple opened a 24/7 self-service locally sourced butcher
00:43 shop.
00:44 We have our members sign up, they get a pin that's unique to them and they enter that
00:49 pin to enter the shop.
00:50 Located in Townsville, they describe the store as a modern day honesty box.
00:55 And they just scan this barcode here and they pay through the app and then they just, yeah,
01:00 they'll go on their way.
01:01 They're done.
01:02 That's it.
01:03 We've been pretty lucky with our community so far.
01:06 They just want to do the right thing.
01:08 In just seven months, it has over 900 members.
01:12 It's grown exponentially though.
01:13 When we first started it, it was very slow.
01:16 But starting a new business has presented plenty of learning curves.
01:20 We've sort of been in the industry most of our life, well all your life and most of my
01:25 life and we've never been in retail so it was a whole different ballgame.
01:29 It's a very scalable business because you don't need staff and it's not labour intensive.
01:34 It's a good model.
01:36 Time will tell if the Robinson Scamble will pay off.
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