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MEDIA REVIEWS...
taste of VICTORIA Magazine
November 2006
"Simply Tomatoes has won the 2006 Premier’s
Food Victoria Award for Innovation by using a
combination of canny business development
and outstanding packaging design for its
Simply Green Tomatoes antipasto.."
Premier of Victoria
August 2006
"I would like to congratulate Simply Tomatoes for winning the 2006 Premier's Food Victoria Award for Innovation."
MyBusiness Magazine
July 2006
"Just five years ago Marilyn Lanyon’s farm was facing a disastrous future, but with some inspired lateral thinking, she was able to convert a problem into an opportunity”
EPICURE- The Age
July 18th 2006
"Flavoursome and nutritious, Simply Tomatoes business has grown from being a local success to being sold in over 20 countries.”
ABC RURAL COUNTRY HOUR Radio Program
June 2006
"A humble tomato producer from Boort in central Victoria has value-added her tomatoes into a antipasto product and is selling it to 22 countries around the world.”
BUSH TELEGRAPH Radio Interview
June 2006
"Have you ever had a fantastic idea but weren't quite sure how to market it?"
TASTE OF VICTORIA Magazine
Issue 34 – Summer 2005 / 2006
"I had in mind something noticeably different from a jar, I wanted something that would really stand out on a shelf.”
ONE LOCAL PRODUCT, TWO NATIONAL AWARDS
by Hayley Moriellon - The Loddon Times, November 16, 2005
"Success has continued with her antipasto product winning two national awards".
FOOD FRENZY
The NewsLink’s Travel Magazine,
Sept / Oct 2005
" A new range of gourmet food products have landed at NewsLink’s Discover stores ".
SIMPLY GREEN TOMATOES
by Adeline Teoh - Dynamic Small Business, August 2005
" Selling Simply Green Tomatoes to Italians is like selling ice to Eskimos ".
BOORT FEEDS ROYAL WEDDING
by Shaun Makepeace - The Advertiser, May 14, 2004
"Simply Green Tomatoes on Menu in Denmark"
MARILYN LANYON TOMATO GROWER, BOORT, VICTORIA
by Susan Duncan - Australian Women's Weekly May 2004
Three years ago, faced with financial disaster, Marilyn Lanyon 56, came up with a bottler of an ide - to turn her surplus tomato crop into pickled tomato slices.
Marilyn and her husband Ian realised the costs of growing tomatoes on their 970 hectare irrigation farm in north central Victoria were escalating at the same time as crop prices from factories were dropping. Then when one of the two canneries they supplied withdrew their contract, their income was almost halved.
When she sat down with the family one night and told them she'd like to turn a traditional recipe for preserving green tomatoes into a commercial product, she wasn't sure how Ian, 58, and her five children, Kim, 33, Damien, 32, Shelley, 31, Hamish, 16 and Gretta, 15, would react to the plan.
"They didn't hesitate," Marilyn says. "The kids just said 'go on mum, have a go'.
Ian went out and bought a vacuum packing machine and a slicer and said 'right, we're going to value add'."
Marilyn, an enthusiastic and competent cook, had experimented with tomato based recipes from the time she and her husband bought the tomato farm in 1978, in partnership with Ian's brother, Murray and his wife Betty. Until then, they'd farmed sheep and wheat on the long, flat, loamy plains of the central west.
"The area has changed significantly in the last few decades. Now there's an enormous diversity of crops grown here - including the biggest olive grove in the southern hemisphere!" Marilyn points out.
Marilyn had already published a book of recipes which she "sold from the back door, 750 copies in one season".
From the start, the Lanyon family encouraged locals and tourists to pick their own tomatoes, which in turn, set up an exchange of recipes and led to Marilyn publishing a little book of recipes which she "sold from the back door: "Seven hundred and fifty copies in one season!"
For a long time, though, she couldn't figure out how to make the best use of what she called the "green stuff". One day, a dear Italian friend told her how his mother used the unripe fruit."That was the beginning, really, and I've been making preserved green tomatoes for family and friends ever since."
Yet it wasn't until times turned tough in their tomato business that Marilyn began to see the potential for a value-added product. She perfected the recipe. "Thinly sliced green tomatoes are preserved in brine for two days, then packed in extra virgin olive oil and seasoned with garlic and oregano," she explains."The end result is a firm, almost crunchy slice of lightly pickled tomato that's delicious as an antipasto ingredient but also tastes great with just about everything - except dessert!"
Marilyn called her product "Simply Green Tomatoes."
She began taste testing the product taking it around the Victorian countryside to farmer's markets and asked the local coffee shop at Boort to serve it. "I wanted to know whether people ate it or pushed it aside," she says.
When the strong but simple logo (which won a bronze medal in the 2002 Australian Packaging Awards) was created, she exhibited at food shows in Melbourne, Sydney and in Singapore. "The more I searched, the more I realised this product had a perfect niche market. The only other producers I've found are in Italy!"
Today, her bright green tomatoes which are prepared in a new, commercial kitchen on the family property, Terralea Farms, can be bought nationally and they are sold in Singapore and Hong Kong. Without family and government support, however, it would have been a much harder, longer, struggle," she admits.
She now plans to use her Rural Women's Award bursary to find new markets in South-East Asia and Europe and hopes to pass on the skills she's learned to other women.
GREEN REDS ADD FLAVOUR
by Margaret Johnson - The West Australian FRESH, February 12, 2004
"A NEW and delicious product has become available on the local market, called Simply Green Tomatoes".
PROCESSING TOMATO INDUSTRY SUCCESS STORIES
by Liz Mann - Tomato Topics, March 2004, Volume 13, No 1
"Congratulations must go to both Geraldine and Marilyn for helping raise the profile of the Australian Processing Tomato Industry".
GREEN DREAM FINALLY ON THE GRAPEVINE
by Susan Parsons - The Canberra Times, March 24, 2004 (Food and Wine)
"When an Italian friend hinted at the benefits of cooking with unripened field tomatoes, Marilyn Lanyon took notice. The clever marketing project has won her a Rural Women's Award".
WOMEN AWARDED
by Melinda Browning - The Advertiser, March 15, 2004
"Marilyn Lanyon runs a growing business in antipasto green tomatoes in Boort, and was recognized as the statewide winner of the rural women's award."
SIMPLY A WINNING PROJECT
by Ken Jenkins - The Loddon Times, March 17, 2004-04
"The green tomatoes developed into an antipasto type product are proving a tasty treat not only nationally but are also being exported overseas."
Tomato idea makes Marilyn the …….QUEEN OF GREEN
by Sandra Godwin - The Weekly Times, March 17, 2004 CountryLIVING
"The World is relishing a taste of Italy being spread from Boort."
SIMPLY GREEN TOMATO MAKING ITS WAY FROM AUSTRALIA TO ASIA
Retail Asia - December 2002 The Retail Business Magazine
"The green tomatoes are carefully hand-selected and, within the hour, begin their three-day process."
GREEN LIGHT
by Miranda Sharp - The Age, October 1, 2002
"Check out the purity of the ingredients list : tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, oregano, vinegar and salt."
WATCH THIS GREEN SPACE
by Donna Coutts - Hearald Sun, September 3, 2002
"It's an oft-told tale in Australian agriculture : through adversity to diversity."
LAND OF PLENTY - Epicure Escape
by Melinda Houston - The Age, August 13, 2002
"These little flavour bombs are like a hybrid between a really good olive and your favourite relish."
FAMILY TURNS ANGER INTO EXPORTS
by Katie Fisher - The Weekly Times, June 5, 2002
"Marilyn said the biggest challenge was the expense of producing the product because it is very labour intensive."
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