Narrawong farmer Zac Jeffries says door-to-door delivery of produce making a comeback

Business is booming for the Narrawong farmer who says the door-to-door delivery of fresh, local produce is making a comeback across the south-west.

"There's definitely a trend," he said.

"We're in a small community and everyone follows everyone else's businesses. For a lot of people in this region, it didn't occur to them that our towns aren't that big and it's not that hard to deliver to everyone's houses.

"We thought we could do it and now we're seeing other people are doing similar things.

"We're trying to transition people from viewing it as novel to normal."

Now in his eighth week of operations, the beef and poultry farmer said he made up to 50 deliveries around the Portland area each Saturday and had just added a Port Fairy, Koroit and Yambuk loop.

He said he hoped to work up to 100 deliveries but was at capacity being just a husband-wife team.

"We have a lot of things going on and in the making," Mr Jeffries said.

"As we diversify, we want to become a little bit of a one-stop-shop for people. We currently deliver Piccolo's coffee beans, bacon and eggs, but we want to add locally-produced preserves, bread, newspapers and juices.

"We're also looking at things like sourcing cooking flours or wheat.

"We're reflecting and pondering what we would have to do to become a normal part of people's lives, where normal is buying direct from the farmer and getting it delivered direct to them.

"Getting the delivery van and making our route really effective was a good start so people could bank on us being there at certain times.

"The second thing was adding more things to the mix and becoming the main spot to get their meat and eggs; you become part of their normal thinking so every week they know to get their order in."

But Mr Jeffries said the key to his new venture was connecting with the community.

"People really love the story behind it all - people really invest in that and when they see me rock up on their door step, they see the business owner doing the deliveries, and people really seem to appreciate and enjoy that connection," he said.

"People love those personal connections - we're getting a lot of positive feedback about it."

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