Grassroots Product Sampling and Events
By Leah Bramich. AMGA
Cambride Markets – Sydney
To continue to drive top of mind awareness, a levy-funded, AMGA-run Grassroots Product Demonstrations and Events Program is underway to support local growers by driving demand within communities in which they live and work.
The program has developed ‘hyper local’ product sampling events to drive the uptake of mushrooms in both regional and metro markets, providing delicious product samples and promoting “Add the Mighty Mushie” to position mushrooms as an essential ingredient for enhanced taste and health.
The AMGA have selected Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Perth and the Gold Coast for activations, along with 15 regional areas which align with grower locations. A total of 23 product sampling events are being activated around the nation.
To efficiently roll out the product demonstration and sampling events remotely, local radio stations were engaged to design their version of a ‘Hyper local event’ with preferences given to local foodie festivals, farmers markets, restaurants, or independent green grocers, with mushroom samples cooked by professional chefs. In Ballarat, a former MasterChef contestant will cook ‘Mushroom toasties', in Adelaide, well know chef, restaurateur and former MasterChef Callum Hann will cook live on stage at the Adelaide Markets, and in Perth, seaside café Odyssea will include a mushroom on toast item to their menu for the week, inviting listeners to try it.
Each regional event is accompanied with a live broadcast or street team event, and a hefty radio campaign to support it, with reach amplified via the station’s social media channels. Taking simple product sampling to the next level, all events include a product sampling element and mushroom giveaways, and the opportunity for mushroom growers to be personally involved in the grassroots promotion.
Metro events have been selected in premium markets with high traffic. The 3-day Melbourne event at Queen Victoria Market reported 1760 mushrooms on toast samples provided, with 2250 interactions. A huge impact!
Local Grower Involvement
Local growers will be invited to take part in their regions event, as many have a long history of being active in their local community, active with local media and have long-standing relationships with local businesses.
In regions where there are multiple growers, AMGA will need to manage relationships carefully to ensure each grower is represented equally, and no preferences are shown.
Managed by the AMGA, Local Growers will be invited to:
Be interviewed on-air about the mushroom growing process
Provide free mushrooms for product sampling and giveaways
Provide a display, showing the mushrooms growing process
Facilitate open days/ Farm tours
While local growers are invited to take part, all messaging will remain with the “Australian Mushrooms” brand and all promotional efforts will link back to the Australian Mushrooms channels.
While all activations were booked to deliver in FY22 (and some have indeed have been deployed), Hort Innovation and the AMGA made the decision to put the program on hold due to the supply shortage. The program is now booked for late July and August.
Regional Radio Events
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Star 106.3 – 4hr street team event 0730-1130 from Willows Sunday Markets. Chef cooking elevated mushrooms on toast. Inc. Advertising schedule
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Hit 100.7 – Toowoomba Farmers market, 3hr outside broadcast. Chef cooking mushrooms on toast. Inc. Advertising schedule
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Mix FM 97.3 – Erbachers independent greengrocer (46yrs), 3hr outside broadcast 1500-1800. Chef cooking mushrooms on toast. Inc. Advertising schedule
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Hot Tomato – HOTA Farmers Markets, 3hr outside broadcast 0800-1100. Chef cooking mushrooms on toast. Inc. Advertising schedule
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3BA – Tim Bones (Masterchef) at Ballarat Markets cooking mushroom toasties, 2hr outside broadcast 1000-1200. Inc. Advertising schedule
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Hit 91.9 – Heathcote on Show, 3hr outside broadcast 0900-1200. Chef cooking Mushroom Bruschetta. Inc. Advertising schedule
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Edge FM – 4hr live broadcast 0900-1300 from Fruits n Fare independent grocer. Chef cooked mushrooms on toast Inc. Advertising schedule
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Hit 104.9 – Albury Wodonga Farmers Markets. 4hr street team with live crosses 0800-1200 – Chef from Smart Hospitality Inc. Advertising schedule
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Hit 101.3 – Terrigal Beach Markets. 2hr pop up event with live crosses. Chef to cook mushrooms on toast. Inc. Advertising schedule
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Hit 106.9 – Newcastle Food and Flower Markets, Sandgate. 2hr outside broadcast 1000-1200 and chef. Inc. Advertising schedule
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Mix FM – 2hr roadside activation 1000-1200. Location TBC Inc. Advertising schedule
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Power 94.9 – Easts and Eats Event. 2hr pop up event, late afternoon. Chef cooking mushrooms on toast. Inc. Advertising schedule
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Nova – Callum Hann (Masterchef) 2hr cooking demonstration. Location TBC, likely the new food hall. Inc. Advertising schedule
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Nova – Odyssea restaurant featuring mushroom bruschetta on menu for a week. 2hr live cross event with chefs providing mushroom samples. Inc. Advertising schedule
METRO PRODUCT SAMPLING EVENTS
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Sampling events held at the Adelaide Central Markets for 3 consecutive Thursdays:
• 26 May 2022
• 2 June 2022
• 11 June 2022
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Sampling events held at the Queen Victoria Markets for 3 consecutive days. Each event is 9hrs.
• Thurs 30 June 2022
• Fri 1 July 2022
• Sat 2 July 2022
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Two Sampling events held Cambridge Markets events. Each event is 6hrs
• 12 June 2022
• 28 August 2022 “Christmas in July” (Postponed event)
Mushrooms on Toast set to Infiltrate Café Culture
By Leah Bramich. AMGA
An excellent opportunity exists for mushrooms to leverage current vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian, meat-reducing, plant-forward, superfood and sustainability diet trends, and to become the next hero ingredient on breakfast, brunch, and lunch café menus.
It’s safe to say that you can walk into almost any café in Australia and order smashed avocado on toast.
Smashed avo’s rise to fame is tied to the wellness movement. This global sensation began more than two decades ago and was driven by consumer demand for less processed, and more fresh, healthy, and plant-forward meals; reasons which are still relevant today.
The AMGA are leading a new Foodservice Program to “infiltrate café culture” to influence cafés to replace smashed avo on their menu - with Mushrooms on Toast.
Mushrooms on Toast is similar to the smashed avo in its simplicity, while allowing cafes to get creative. It’s a quick and easy meat-free menu option for diners, with great ‘value add’ options for cafés to increase their profit margins.
Yet while smashed avo is served raw, mushrooms require cooking; typically in one of two ways - either sautéed or roasted.
A successful and desirable mushroom dish depends on how well the mushrooms are cared for during the cooking processes. Mushrooms have a high-water content, which can easily become ‘mooshie’ - therefore it’s imperative that café kitchen staff learn how to cook the mighty mushroom properly.
A key element in the Australian Mushrooms Café Culture Foodservice program is the educational tool kit. We are on a mission to ‘ban the mooshie mushie’ by teaching café kitchen staff mushroom 101 – how to choose, prep, store and cook a great mushroom dish, while enticing café owners and staff to add mushrooms to menus with a huge prize incentive.
Through this Foodservice Program, the AMGA will influence café culture by:
Scope the Foodservice industry –Food Industry Foresight have been engaged to offer detailed insight into the café sector through hard data and qualitative and quantitative industry surveys. These reports are invaluable to understanding the sector, how to educate, and how to influence menus.
Engage industry to co-design and collaborate – A Project Reference Group of café owners and food industry experts was engaged to ensure the program and educational materials have relevance.
Cooking Education – Educational videos, a ‘My Mushroom Toast’ educational booklet and café recipes with detailed profit projections were produced. These resources are housed on the new food service section of the Australian Mushrooms website and will be used in remarketing to teach and inspire cafés.
Health Education – Educating café staff of the unique health benefits of mushrooms, and to instil mushrooms as the hero ingredient for meat-free/vegan/vegetarian/flexitarian/plant-forward menu options.
Inspire menu change – Directly engage cafés through a social media competition, open to both consumers and café owners. The café major prize incentive is $10,000 for Australia’s best Mushrooms on Toast. The competition is designed to build hype as well as creating a community for mushroom menu inspiration.
Make mushrooms famous – Through a media launch and hefty PR campaign, to garner both paid and earned media to increase reach.
Monitor and evaluate – Survey the industry pre and post program, to show the effectiveness of the campaign.
The program has been researched, designed and is ready to go, however, Hort Innovation and the AMGA made the decision to put the program on hold until the current shortage is resolved. The program aims to deploy in late August through to October 2022.
Linking growers to the food industry
- By Paulette Baumgartl
PROJECT MU20003 : Educating the food industry about Australian mushrooms
The Australian food Industry loves mushrooms. With their characteristic umami and meaty taste profile, mushrooms are a unique nutrient rich plant-based food. Yet, all too often mushroom- dishes are hidden amid the vegetarian and plant-based options.
While common on menus around Australia, mushrooms are rarely the main act, seldom featured and celebrated.
To elevate mushrooms in the minds of industry insiders, highlighting their benefits through impactful education and engagement could bring them out of the shadows and into the culinary and nutritional limelight.
Barriers to cooking with mushrooms, and how these barriers may be overcome, is the central aim of the Educating the Food Industry on Mushrooms project. This research and education program led by Leah Bramich (General Manager at Australian Mushroom Grower’s Association) in collaboration with CEO of Nutrition Research Australia Dr Flavia Fayet-Moore and industry insider Chef Adam Moore, has entered its second phase with some clear results.
In Phase 2, key stakeholders identified during Phase 1 were interviewed. Questions were devised to understand existing barriers, and extract further insights into how an education project could be designed and delivered for maximum effectiveness.
Specific questions in these one-on-one interviews delved into opportunities to expand/feature mushrooms in catering and to include mushrooms in hospitality training curriculums. The researchers also explored which health and nutrition messages would resonate with food service professionals, and what are the most effective and efficient ways to reach organisations and industry professionals.
Interview subjects included a director of nutrition and food services at a leading hospital, an instrumental player in innovation within foodservice delivery at hospitals, an executive chef at a leading hotel chain, and a prominent food industry educator.
The findings emphasised that while mushrooms were a much-loved ingredient, there was little knowledge among industry practitioners on the nutritional, culinary, and health benefits. However, when properly informed of these benefits, interest increased dramatically.
With the global surge in plant-based diets, there is capacity for mushrooms to be incorporated more across multiple food industries. This is particularly relevant for hospitals and other institutions, where demand for plant-forward meals is high, and lower sodium and saturated fat options are deciding factors when creating menus.
There was further evidence that greater awareness and knowledge could propel mushrooms as a culinary force in the commercial sector, although taste and texture, more than nutritional value, were the more important factors.
So, filling a knowledge gap helps reduce barriers, but how can this best be applied?
Findings from this study point to practical and simple engagement at the workplace. The train the trainer method was an approach identified as being useful in this context; train the executive chefs and sales teams who can deliver informal educational sessions on mushrooms with the staff at their workplace. On site education and engagement is likely to get more traction than classroom learning or webinars, and furthermore supports executive chefs in their roles as teachers.
Communication materials were also identified as an approach that could inspire creativity and connect and engage food industry staff. Chefs reported that they would love to see posters in their work environment that could educate and inspire with preparation techniques and recipes.
Tapping into the provenance story of mushroom was also identified as another great opportunity to drive a greater desire for mushrooms on menus. As diners become more discerning and environmentally aware, provenance is having a greater impact on choice than ever before. The provenance narrative of this mushroom from that place provides another avenue to promote mushrooms as a showcase ingredient.
This research project provides a unique opportunity to mutually benefit growers, the food industry, and their shared stakeholders, bringing together resources that will have a legacy and help growers work with the food industry.
MU20003 Educating the Food Industry is led by the Australian Mushroom Growers Association together with Nutrition Research Australia and chef Adam Moore. The project aims to develop ways to educate food industry professionals, uncovering ways that the mighty Aussie mushroom can solve some of the nation’s biggest nutrition problems.