Kate Frost: Agritourism Opportunities
Hosted by the Southern Forests Food Council.
With nearly three decades in the Travel Industry, Kate’s learned the value of customer relations and teamwork. When the pandemic struck, her family pivoted to their true passion - chocolate! They swiftly transformed a building on their property into a shop, embracing the mantra of saying "YES!". Their commitment to sourcing the finest local ingredients from the region and their garden, ensures quality and support for local producers. Join Kate and explore building an Agri-tourism brand, harnessing local products, and optimising local distribution.
Kate Frost, Southern Forests Chocolate Company: I worked in various areas of the Travel Industry for nearly 30 years, including training, airlines, travel and contracting. During this time, I learnt the importance of customer relations, being true to your brand and how having a great team with you makes long hours more manageable.
When the pandemic hit the Travel and Tourism industry, I found myself having to diversify quickly and to find my true passion, which was for working the art of chocolate.
My partner, Chris, and I found ourselves in an enviable position of having a property with an existing, vacant shop that we quickly converted to the Southern Forests Chocolate Company.
We established our business based on the belief that we would use the best ingredients, sourced from around us in the Southern Forests region and we would take on the motto “Say YES !” . This meant opening when our customers wanted us to (7 days) and helping tour operators make us a dependable stop for their groups.
Our passion for using local produce extends to using our garden – fresh lime, lemon, mint and ginger, all found on our doorstep. Using contacts from around the area, such as the Southern Forests Food Council, to help source macadamias and honey, just to name a few.
In the three years we have been opened, we have stayed true to our ethos, and are very proud of our journey so far.