Victoria Cosford
It’s one of several missions Spice Palace’s Bex is currently on. The luscious dips, the zingy spice mixes, the salsas and the hummuses have uses well beyond their obvious ones, and Bex’s been encouraging her customers to think a bit laterally. ‘It’s not all about selling dried spices and dips, it’s suggesting simple meal ideas. More and more,’ she tells me, ‘I’m trying to encourage people to use these products as whole dishes, not just as dips.’
About nine months ago she and husband Tom took over the successful business, trading largely in vegan and gluten-free exotic spice blends and pastes. ‘Tom’s in the kitchen – he has two huge days’, Bex says, ‘and I sell at the markets.’
They haven’t made sweeping changes to an undoubtedly self-proven business, the odd tweak here and there, such as the Coriander and Lime Dip which they’ve made more punchy. ‘We zinged up the Coriander and Lime Pesto, turned it into a dip, and it’s been a hit!’ says Bex, ‘but there are also a few new products in the works,’ she adds, ‘[like] a carrot dip that we’re really excited about!’ They’re also currently playing around with a Chocolate Sumac, capitalising on the popularity of their Chocolate Dukkah. ‘The Chocolate Dukkah is quite neutral,’ Bex tells me, ‘so we’ll spice it up to become a sumac.’
Her other mission – and it’s clearly working – is to reduce waste. In the time I spend chatting to Bex there’s a steady stream of customers returning the glass jars Spice Palace products come in, mostly coming away with a new one. ‘We’re so invested in the reusability of our jars’, Bex says. ‘Bringing back the jars is a massive thing – just to reduce one more bit of waste. Anything we can remove we’re giving it a go…’ There’s a 50c rebate for clear-jar returns, another incentive.
Spice Palace is at New Brighton Farmers Market every Tuesday from 8am to 11am, and Mullumbimby Farmers Market every Friday from 7am to 11am.
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