After more than 8 years, it is time for Warndu to take on their next step and move on to becoming a fully owned Indigenous business.

I became a director and founder of Warndu in 2016, with Rebecca Sullivan & Damien Coulthard. We bootstrapped the company into one of Australia’s leading Native Food business. In February, I stepped down as a director and between Rebecca Damien and myself we agreed for the sale of my shares to Damien Coulthard making Warndu 100% Indigenous owned.

Marcel Kwantes (Siobhan O'Toole's husband), Rebecca Sullivan, Siobhan O'Toole and Damien Coulthard together in Clare Valley

Looking back I am super proud of what we have achieved in those 8 years and also for what I have learnt. A mini MBA in action.

We have put back more than $250,000 into Indigenous owned businesses and community growers.
We developed a direct marketing function that increased our return rate of customers from 10% to 30% using Klaviyo with thanks to Matt Malcolm from Gallantway and Samara Vercoe for her excellent digital marketing and design skills.
For Search Engine Marketing, we developed a self sustaining marketing investment this took us a while to get right and is all about the right partnership with thanks to Matt Malcolm from Gallantway
We got all our keywords on page 1 of Google thanks to the Magical Xavier Murtagh from McGregor Murtagh
I developed a no code app using Glide during lockdown to highlight the fabulous Native foods available that inspired Rebecca’s next book the next book First Nations Food Companion.
Through a mentoring relationship with Nick Armstrong and Ross Kemp, Nick managed to get our book into the hands of Sir Richard Branson. Their support and strategic insight into the growth and the global interest in First Nations Food helped shaped our direction for 2023 and beyond.

We have developed a range of products including a corporate gifting option with collaborations with ING Dream Starter, Meta, Mel from Mettle Women, Sam at Made In a Box , SG Fleet and a lot of support from Global Sisters, helping get many more natives into Australians hands.
We expanded our wholesale distribution across Australia with more than 80 wholesale customers thanks to the amazing Ali Irvine and a magical Shopify Plugin.
We automated as much as we could so we could focus on customers and products, we started lean and mean on squarespace and have evolved into shopify and the world of plugins galore.
A huge highlight was attending Gamma Festival in 2022 with Meta on behalf of Warndu. Memories that will last me a lifetime.

Garma Festival 2022 With Meta — The meta Team and Guests around the campfire at Garma 2022

I have filled in more paperwork than I care to remember with grants for this and so many of them being no answer - looking at you City of Sydney and never managed to submit our BCorp assessment but it did help us improve our operations to be B Corp Ready.

The native food industry was totally unknown to me prior to joining Warndu. In fact, cooking isn’t a hobby of mine. I have never in my adult life bought a cookbook or spent an afternoon trying a new recipe. But I wasn’t in Warndu because of my passion for Food, it was because I believe in championing local food and that we have forgotten ancient wisdom in these modern times.

I studied Commerce and Information Systems at Melbourne University. For most of my career I have leant on my IT degree more than my Commerce until Warndu. Stewardship is custodianship. A company purpose is stewardship which resonated with the custodianship I have learnt from our nation's first inhabitants.

We got a lot of support and fundraising from the amazing support of our crowd funding in 2016, thanks to all those (especially the team at Qantas) who supported us. Groundswell support from those that believed in us and in nourishing people, whilst nourishing the land.

So in signing off, you don’t do these things by yourself, a huge thanks goes to

Samara Vercoe for being amazing at resolving problems, attention to detail, design and all the things you are a gem of a human.
The team in Clare Valley