Yahoo Finance Young Aussies turn uni task into $200,000 Dan Murphy's deal: 'So wild'
Max, Bridget and Gabriel found a solution to a huge problem in Australia and now have a booming business.
Three young Aussies have managed to turn a university assignment into a booming business that also tackles a huge problem in the country. Gabriel Tucker, Max Moolman and Bridget Lansell were thrown together during the Monash Fastrack Accelerator program and were tasked with trying to find a solution to any issue that took their fancy.
They hadn't met each other before entering the highly competitive program, which attracted more than 500 applicants in their year and was whittled down to just 30 people. Moolman told Yahoo Finance the trio spent ages trying to determine which issue to tackle, then came across costing the Aussie economy around $36.6 billion per year.
"There's a lot of food waste in Australia even though we have amazing produce," he said.
"If you narrow that down even further, there's a lot of farm-based food waste, where about a quarter of all produce doesn't leave the farm, even though it's perfectly edible.
"We were just like, 'That is got to be the most ridiculous thing that we've heard'."
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Then Tucker came across a lawn bowling club that was using the proceeds of beer sales to save other bowlos that were going under.
He took that idea of alcohol being a force for good back to the team and they married the two together.
The trio decided to make an alcohol brand that relied on farm produce that would have otherwise gone to waste.
"We started diving into the market in Australia, and we just could not find a single alcoholic product that was using imperfect or misshapen fruit," Moolman told Yahoo Finance.
"It just seemed weird because you've got juice, you've got jam, you got kimchi, you've got preservatives... There are so many things that get made with second and third-grade food, but alcohol just didn't have it.
"That was just so wild to us."
And thus, Wonki was born.
How they turned their idea into a product
The trio looked into the Australian alcohol market, which Moolman admitted is an already massively oversaturated industry, to see what they were up against.
They went around Melbourne asking what Aussies thought of pre-mixed drinks, whether they were too sugary, the flavours already on offer, if they were too bubbly or bland - anything to perfect their product.
They partnered with Farmers Pick to help them find the produce, Market Juice for juicing, and Gypsy Hub to manufacture the drinks.
A crowdfunding initiative raised $30,000 for the trio and they used that to make their first batch of Wonki vodka soda drinks.
"After that, we just started peddling it ourselves, like literally hitting the streets, getting into bars and bottle shops, like local independent shops," he explained to Yahoo Finance.
"Within a few months, we worked our way up the Dan Murphy's chain."
The major Aussie alcohol retailer was a tough cookie to crack, with Moolman claiming it receives 400 applications to stock different pre-mix drinks every year.
It wasn't long before they were having a meeting with the people who make the big decisions.
"Before the call was even done, they sort of looked at each other and said, 'This is perfect'," Moolman recalled. "They're like, 'Here's the paperwork... we'd love to start stocking Wonkis."
They're now stocked in 33 Dan Murphy's stores across Victoria as well as 35 BWS locations and 30 independent stores.
Keep in mind, Moolman, Tucker and Lansell only met at the end of 2021.
They spent all of 2022 getting their idea together, officially launched in mid-2023 and had a Dan Murphy's deal before 2024 arrived. Their total revenue for the last financial year was $205,000.
Not bad for a trio of 23 and 25-year-olds.
Wonki tackles a problem that's hard to ignore in Australia
Every year, around 7.6 million tonnes of food gets wasted in Australia.
That's enough to fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground 10 times over and, sadly, 70 per cent of this food is perfectly edible.
Wonki has set its sights on bringing that number down as much as possible.
"Every case saves about two and a half to three kilos of produce, but we've just clocked over 10 tonnes of produce saved from farms since the middle of last year," Moolman said.
"We reckon we can save a hell of a lot more. The ultimate goal is to be able to eliminate an entire farm's second or third-grade waste every season."
He said the only way they were able to get into this industry was because they had an idea worth fighting for.
The young Aussie hit out at alcohol brands boasting their imported fruit made them more premium.
"Like lemons from Sicily or like blood oranges from Amalfi Coast... that's all well and good [but] that doesn't make any sense. The reality is, there's a lot of misshapen fruit that's growing in Australia that's not being used," he said.
What's next for Wonki?
The trio is hoping to expand into stores across the country over the coming months and find farmers in other parts of Australia with great seasonal produce that they can include in their drinks.
At the moment, their two flavours on offer are Watermelon and Lemon, and Cucumber and Lime.
They're about to re-release their Blood Orange and Mandarin flavour as those fruits are about to come back in season.
They sourced that fruit from a farm in New South Wales that had their oranges and mandarins rejected by supermarkets because they were too small for sale or had some superficial blemishes and spots.
"We're just going to use the fruit that's available at the time," Moolman said.
"We want to try and use our food systems a little bit better and lean into the produce when it's growing and needs to be saved the most."
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