Meet Our Makers: Lauren Allen of Poachers Pantry

Lauren Allen is the General Manager of Poachers Pantry, producers of award-winning small goods from Australia’s finest smokehouse. With a smokehouse, restaurant, vineyard, cellar door and weddings and events, this multifaceted business began back in 1991, when the founders - Susan and Robert Bruce and Mike Stride - saw a gap in the local Canberra market for fine small goods.

Poachers Pantry has been winning hearts for decades - include those of Qantas, the Sydney Olympics and top national restaurants. They do all the classics like bresaola and prosciutto plus modern twists on bacon and kangaroo. Poachers is the premium and established brand that makes any smallgoods section pop.

C&C: Hi Lauren! Can you tell us a bit about the early days of Poachers Pantry? Where did the idea come from and how did the business get started? 

Lauren: Poachers Pantry started back in 1991, founded by Susan and Robert Bruce, my in-laws, and Susan’s brother, Mike Stride. Mike has actually rejoined the business just this year, so has come full circle three decades on.

At the time, they noticed a gap in the market, particularly the local Canberra market, for fine small goods.

The business was established on the family’s property, which is a working farm (a sheep farm at the time) and the smokehouse was built out of a love of good food and a need to produce quality produce for the local market. 

C&C: Poachers Pantry is a really multifaceted business with its smokehouse, the restaurant, the vineyard, the cellar door and weddings and events. How did the business grow from the original smokehouse to the business that Poachers Pantry is today and how did this diversification come about? 

Lauren: The property was a farming property, but in terms of viable farming land, it’s not a huge arable property for large scale cropping. The smokehouse came about and then in 1998, the vineyard was planted through contract work with Hardys - they were contacting farmers in the local area who had good land for vineyards.  Then in 2002, the restaurant (which was a café back then) was established to showcase the meats and wines that we produce here on the property. Poachers became a tourism destination, certainly one of the first food and wine destinations in the wider Canberra region. 

In 2005, the weddings started organically. We had the space, the food, the wine - so we did our first small wedding. We’ve been doing weddings for almost twenty years now. The business has evolved over that time in terms of the meats being very local and foodservice focussed. More recently, in the last decade, there has been a bigger focus on the retail space as well. In the last ten years, with my partner Will (who is Sue and Rob’s son) we worked to really take over the vineyard and do more small batch style wines, where we have a good presence locally and great distribution into Sydney as well. The entire Poachers experience can be had right here on the property. 

C&C: What do you enjoy about offering many different parts of the business? 

Lauren: With such a multifaceted business, it’s very seasonal and good to have a range of business areas when the business ebbs and flows. COVID-19 was a prime example - had we not had the smokehouse, it would have been a really hard time. The smokehouse was producing food, which we were allowed to continue to make and sell, whereas the restaurant and the weddings had to stop. It was the same with the wine - people still buy wine during times like that. So, while it all fits together under one brand umbrella with premium products, premium wine, farming and weddings and events - having different parts of the business offers flexibility and the ability to pivot to one area or another given the climate or the economy, which is the benefit. And it also keeps things interesting!

C&C: What has the process of getting these products on the shelf been like? 

Lauren: Historically, Poachers Pantry has been very foodservice focussed, but with everyone taking to home cooking over time (the MasterChef influence), people wanted to have access to good produce from their retailer and their local grocer. We also knew that people are still quite time poor and increasingly more busy. So, our products lend themselves to retailers and supermarkets - it’s ready to eat, you don’t have to cook them, you can literally pick up a chicken breast, a pasta sauce and a really beautiful pasta and throw in some vegetables and you have a meal. Our products are high end, but they’re ready to eat and easy to use. In that era, when people started to become much more interested in making good food at home, the products grew over time.

C&C: Can you tell us a bit about the techniques used to create your products? 

Lauren: In terms of the traditional curing and smoking techniques that we use, this is an age old method of food preservation. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, before all of these nasty chemicals were readily available, you really just had salts, sugars, water and smoke to preserve these meats.

So when we say traditional, it’s very much a minimal intervention approach - it’s the meat product that we source from ethical and sustainable farms, so we’ve got a great product initially. We cure it in a brine to preserve it. The majority of our products are nitrite free as well, which we love. We do the smoking and we use a natural beechwood to get the smoke throughout the product subtly which is also another way of sterilisation and preservation without going down the path of all these nasty additives and meat glues that are getting a very bad rap in the media at the moment. 

C&C: How did you end up working with a distributor and why did you decide to work with Cartel & Co? 

Lauren: Using a distributor really helps our business to streamline the sales, systems and processes. I think, in terms of Cartel & Co in particular, working closely with dedicated reps who have been in the market for years and have a solid rapport with the retailers is hugely beneficial.

C&C: If I were brand new to the world of Poachers Pantry, what would be the introductory product that you’d recommend that I try? 

Lauren: The introductory product would have to be the Smoked Chicken - it’s really accessible and so versatile. I eat it with yummy sourdough bread, mayo, lettuce and sliced smoked chicken on a sandwich - so good. You can also have it on Friday night pizza - select a great quality base from your local supermarket, a yummy tomato sauce, olives, slice up the chicken and voila - you have a delicious pizza at home. It’s really versatile.

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