Dinner is served

Bass Coast Local connects customers with
local food businesses.

By Catherine Watson
 
IT’S business, but not as usual, for our local cafes and restaurants. Now a home-grown website is doing its best to keep the customers coming while times are tough for so many.

Peta Wittig set up Bass Coast Local to bring together local food businesses and the people who want to support them during the COVID crisis. 

Confined to home by the lockdown, she decided she needed to do something useful to keep herself away from daytime television. It seemed to her that while many people were keen to support local businesses it was difficult to find out what shops were open, when they were open, and what services and products they were offering.

So she set up Bass Coast Local, a website listing food businesses from Inverloch to Cowes, from Wonthaggi to Coronet Bay, and all parts in between.

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Judging by the very elegant site, you would think Peta was an IT pro. In fact, it’s the first website she’s designed. With no IT department to call for help, she used the Wix platform – “super easy and, for newbies like me, very user friendly". The businesses are listed with their websites, Facebook pages, hours, whether they are open for take away or deliveries, and their menus, services and products.

Early on she decided not to approach the cafes and restaurants but to get the site up and running first. 

“I thought people were too stressed by what had happened. The last thing they’re thinking about is something like this. I decided just to get it up and running first.”

​She says many of the local cafes and restaurants have pivoted from “business as usual” to supplying alternative goods and services. And local people are doing their best to support them. 

“There are some fantastic stories. Bay Side Lady in Inverloch started doing deliveries. There’s not much margin in a pie and coffee but then they had someone volunteer to do their deliveries. 

“Fork and Waffle, a breakfast/brunch place on Phillip Island, is doing budget dinners, with free food for anyone who lost their jobs in hospitality.”

The Rusty Water Brewery Restaurant and Bar had to close its restaurant and bar but is still selling takeaway food and local products including honey, fruit and vegetables, eggs, olive oil, meat, wine and beer.

“There has been amazing community support for the businesses,” Peta says. “There has been a lot of ugly that has come out in this pandemic but this community has really stepped up to support those around them."

Peta is now back at work a couple of days a week, which makes it more challenging to try and keep up with the changes in hours and services of cafes and restaurants. But the site is more widely known now, having been promoted by Destination Phillip Island, and many of the businesses are now sending updates.

She says the next few months will be critical for local businesses. “There will be ups and downs. They’ve got to find their feet. But it will be a long time before we go back to where we were.

""In a place like Bass Coast, small business owners are our friends. They’re the friends you’ve grown up with or your kids’ friends’ parents.  We just have to hope they can get through this time and do our best to support them."
 
To list your food business on Bass Coast Local contact Peta at [email protected]. Listing on the website is free. 

Postscript

Peta Wittig insists this story is about the businesses, not her, but her own story is too interesting to ignore altogether.
  Peta has worked in what’s broadly known as “the tourism industry” for many years. developing tourist attractions, including zoos and aquariums, in the US and Middle East (hence the uniform in the photo above).
  She returned to Australia last July, and moved to Phillip Island when her partner got a job in the Bass Coast region.
  Peta was working with Park Treks, an Inverloch business that takes walking tours around Australia and internationally, when the travel industry virtually collapsed overnight. She was stood down from her job in late March as the lockdowns began.
  With the help of the JobKeeper allowance, she is now back at work a couple of days a week.
  Peta knew little about Bass Coast before her arrival but she does have ancestral roots here: her father grew up in Wonthaggi and her grandparents are buried in the Wonthaggi cemetery.
  She says she’s been blown away by the natural beauty of this region. “It is very under rated. People are torn between talking about it and wanting to keep it to themselves!”

Peta recommends several other Facebook resources including:

• Phillip Island and San Remo Takeaway and Delivery,Venues, news and reviews
• Inverloch Community Voice
• The Kindness Pandemic 3996 includes video interviews with shop owners in Inverloch