Mornington Peninsula Shire Council

Historically, food on the Mornington Peninsula has played a vital role in various aspects of cultural, social and economic prosperity. This relationship has many different components ranging from growing, manufacturing, purchasing and tourism visitation.

Vision & Strategy

The Mornington Peninsula Food Strategy has been undertaken in partnership with Mornington Peninsula Shire and Mornington Peninsula Gourmet to develop an awareness, industry connections and branding strategy to promote Mornington Peninsula Food within the industry and to the general public.

The strategy determines pathways to raise awareness and ensure that food across the Mornington Peninsula is:

● Recognised for its quality, freshness and accessibility;
● Highly valued by locals and visitors for its provenance and seasonality,
● Identified through a ‘trust mark’ that is valued and respected by the industry and consumers to reflect the integrity of locality, product or service.

Challenges

The Mornington Peninsula is renowned worldwide as a wine region; however, there is a lack of awareness of the range of local food and experiences on offer. From a consumer perspective there is a growing demand to better understand and appreciate what is produced close to home. This trend is resonating with a variety of demographic segments.

Food has never received strategic acknowledgement for the multi-faceted role it contributes to the local economy. It has always been aligned with other sectors as a secondary feature; somewhat overshadowed and undervalued

Aims

Dig Marketing Group was engaged to undertake consultation with businesses as part of this strategy. This consultation identified four key focus areas for action to enhance the identity of the food sector on the Mornington Peninsula.

1. Recognizing the unique Mornington Peninsula location, ‘maritime’ cool climate and natural attributes, ensures productive capacity results in high quality produce.
2. Address the highly fragmented industry networks due to an increasing proportion of micro-businesses and a number of associations representing the niche interests of the sector;
3. Reduce the ad hoc awareness of Mornington Peninsula food amongst the industry and consumers; and
4. Ensure the provenance of Mornington Peninsula food is protected, enhanced and promoted.

Key Action Areas

Taking into consideration the key findings determined through industry consultation this Strategy proposes 4 key priority areas:

Fragmentation
1. Establishment of a Food Industry Advisory Body to assist in addressing issues of industry fragmentation;
- Fragmented sectors need to develop a more cohesive mode of operation
- Awareness campaign of Mornington Peninsula Food Skill audit – capacity / employment map of gaps and needs, ongoing actions as determined

Awareness
2. Development of an industry and consumer driven awareness campaign to build the profile of Mornington Peninsula food
- Development of Mornington Peninsula Food story based around key themes
- Print and social media articles prepared around narratives that profile the region in terms of scale and quality of food availability
- Drive yourself agri-food trail map
- Industry events x 3 / pa
- Showcase events x 2 / pa

Capacity
3. Facilitate food industry capacity and connectivity activities to ensure local businesses are working together to grow the region’s food economy
- Local Food industry directory
- Local Farmgates and fresh produce map produced
- Food on Offer Seasonality chart
- Implement trade day tours of food businesses Farmgate app
- Capacity building workshops held on topics such as compliance, financial management and business planning, marketing, distribution and market access.

Provenance
4. Implementation of a Provenance program i.e. ‘trust mark’ to enable businesses to identify themselves as Mornington Peninsula.
- Industry agreed ‘Trust Mark’ criteria established
- Process of ongoing management developed
- Promotion Plan developed and implemented
- Production of support materials

Strategy Link

https://www.mornpen.vic.gov.au/files/assets/public/new-website-documents/about-us/strategies-amp-plans/docs/local_food_strategy_final_2013.pdf