A LITTLE BIT of ingenuity, a little bit of spice and a little bit of help from friends is all it took to start Melissa and David Welsh's small business, The Bloody Good Biltong Co.
Since founding the company last year the York-based couple has struggled to keep up with demand, with neither of them anticipating their biltong would be so popular.
The business progressed from a hobby.
Mr Welsh started making small portions of beef jerky after being gifted a dehydrator for his birthday several years ago.
"On my third batch the dehydrator broke, so after a bit of research I sourced a few fans from Ebay and built two biltong boxes out of plywood for $33 - half the price of a bought one," Mr Welsh said.
"One of my brothers was here to share the engineering and design process, so we had a few beers and built a couple of boxes as I had plenty of plywood.
"I kept the most improved model and for years just made biltong for the family."
A boilermaker by trade, Mr Welsh said he found the process of making biltong therapeutic, having always wanted to be a butcher in his younger years.
The biltong comes in two flavours - Chilli and Original - and uses only two cuts of meat, silverside and topside.
The biltong soaks in a brine for 24 hours before being dried off, rubbed with spices and air dried in the dehydrator.
A quick and easy snack that doesn't require refrigeration, The Bloody Good Biltong Co fits the camping, hiking, "outdoorsy" road trip theme, with the brand based around a "simple food, simple life" premise.
"Our target market is middle to moderate income earners that appreciate good products and quality," Ms Welsh said.
The beef for the biltong is sourced from Avon Valley Butchers, but over the next six months the couple aims to form a direct relationship with a Western Australian producer to better align the business with the 'paddock to plate' concept.
"We would have liked to produce our own beef but seeing as we only use two cuts of meat we would have had the whole carcase to consider and there is only a certain amount of waste you can tolerate," Mr Welsh said.
"Now, more than ever, people really want to know where their food has come from, so we will be looking for producers who are achieving best practice with animal husbandry and animal welfare."
The majority of relationships with stockists have come about organically through the couple's existing connections and The Bloody Good Biltong Co's Instagram account.
"We've chosen to stock our product at shops that are quality, handmade type stores that support local products," Ms Welsh said.
"At the moment our products are sold in York, Goomalling, Dongara and we're also about to stock at Lake Towerrinning."
As their stockists are only able to service a certain amount of the market, the Welsh's hope to offer their biltong to wholesalers in the not-too-distant future and possibly even export their product.
"At the moment we're selling our biltong on collective type websites, a bit like Etsy, where you pay a certain amount a year to be visible and the profits are all yours," Ms Welsh said.
"We haven't built our own website yet because, for now, we're just trying to keep up with the demand from our existing stockists."
The couple recently invested in a second dehydrator to help drive their efficiencies.
"The new dehydrator has a heating element so the hanging time decreases to about 24 hours," Mr Welsh said.
Collectively they spend about 13 hours on The Bloody Good Biltong Co each week, with Melissa managing the marketing aspects of the business and David in charge of making and packaging the biltong.
With the assistance of the Wheatbelt Business Network (WBN), which Ms Welsh is a board member of, Mr Welsh was connected with a mentor to help develop their business plan.
"Some of the KPIs (key performance indicators) for the WBN is to help small businesses expand, so they put me onto a mentor who is South African, which is perfect as that's actually where biltong originated," Mr Welsh said.
"His advice has been priceless and he's helped us to develop a five-year business plan.
"We have already been sending this product to customers in Victoria and Queensland, but we would like to create a purpose-built manufacturing facility to make our processes quicker."
Coupled with the support of like-minded friends who have also set up their own small businesses in recent years, the Welshs say there is a good vibe in York these days.
"In the past two years a lot of entrepreneurs have come to town, and they all have great ideas and very different skill sets," Ms Welsh said.
"A lot of our friends are having a crack at the small business thing too, so I always feel like I can ring someone if I have a question as we all tend to help each other out."
With a background in agronomy and research, Ms Welsh said she was able to find her small business groove much quicker this time around, having already launched her own interior design business, Melissa Welsh Style and Design.
"I wanted more flexibility around our kids so I did it as a side hustle for a year while working for a field research company, but eventually made it my main job," Ms Welsh said.
"I had always worked for people before that, so I remember it was a massive thing even to register the business name but the second time around I was able to put all of those skills to use.
"Of course we've still had a few hiccups along the way and we are constantly learning, from researching and designing the packaging according to the packaging guidelines to getting our kitchen commercially certified - but that's all part of the experience."
