Josh's Rainbow Eggs | Celebrating Australian Food and Agribusiness Innovations 2021
When Josh Murray was nine, he struck a deal with his mum. If he looked after the hens on the family farm and did all the work, he could have the takings from egg sales. He started at farmers’ markets before cold-calling retail stores, eventually landing at Coles and Woolworths. Twelve years later, Josh’s Rainbow Eggs is still going strong.
Entry into the egg industry is low because capital and infrastructure costs are high. The nature of retail sales in Australia means literally putting all your eggs in very few baskets, so the team at Josh’s decided to develop new product ideas to open up additional avenues for growth.
Giving customers a new reason to buy meant thinking beyond ‘egg-as-an-ingredient’. Travel to the US had shown a market for ‘eggs-as-a-snack’, so that became the basis of one idea to enter the ‘grab-and-go’ sector, servicing customers through new channels. R&D efforts have gone into producing a snackable boiled egg using high pressure processing (HPP), keeping it fresh for longer and meeting safety standards. The second new direction is a partnership with an ice cream manufacturer and a local Victorian dairy, combining Josh’s free-range eggs with local milk to create delicious gourmet ice cream.
Josh’s CEO, Dr Tamsyn Murray, said the road to development was not a smooth one but working with FIAL was a partnership from the very beginning.
“Before we settled on our new products, we looked at a couple of other alternatives, only to have them fall just before the finish line. We have an excellent grasp on our customer and our existing products, but there’s a lot to learn when you go into a new category.
“Working with FIAL is exciting. As a medium- sized business producing tens of thousands of eggs each week, we knew we were too vulnerable in our current position. FIAL’s support has allowed us to mature and innovate and to diversify and reduce risk,” Tamsyn said.
