The Waste Not Want Not Shop

South Australia’s oldest organic wholesale business specialising in fresh local produce and the best from interstate growers. Also a wide range of bulk dry goods. Supplies to SA and interstate. Certification ACO5032A Company Profile South Australia’s oldest organic wholesale business specialising in fresh local produce and the best from interstate growers.

Also a wide range of bulk dry goods. Supplies to SA and interstate. Kevin Berry entered the organic scene as a grower, becoming certified by BFA (now ACO) in 1991. His produce was top quality but, being new to the game, found he had trouble marketing it.

Other beginning growers were having the same problem and, at that time also, a large portion of organic produce was coming from interstate. Kevin realized that, if organics was to prosper in South Australia, the local growers had to be nurtured and supported and a better quality of produce had to be offered. He set up as a merchant rather than a commission agent, which means buying the produce outright and guaranteeing the grower an agreed price. He started by representing a few local growers and has never looked back.

Pyramid was the first wholesaler to be certified in SA and now represents over 280 of the most brilliant and talented, hardworking and good hearted growers in Australia. Our aim is to get the produce to you as close as possible to fresh picked - still containing plenty of vitality. Kevin’s expertise at post harvest handling rapidly gave Pyramid the reputation for having the freshest and best quality produce..

All orders are packed in the coolroom - never allowed to sit out - a constant temperature is maintained from the time the grower delivers it to us until it is loaded into enclosed air conditioned vans for delivery. Kevin has now returned to his first love – growing - starting up the Bar-None Vegetable Ranch as a division of Pyramid. He supplies much of the delicate greens, like fancy lettuce, that won’t travel well. The wholesale side is now run by Ladye Montgomery, Janet Peers Struthers and Peter Iacopi, with the able assistance of Mark Lewis, Dave Cooley, Adam Iacopi, Sarah Cleman, Amy Peers, and Ed Berry.

Though Pyramid specialises in fresh produce, we also carry a large range of bulk dry goods: dried fruit and nuts, honey, rice, flour, pasta, bread, coffee, olive oil, sugar, milk and butter, juice and sparkling drinks, lollies such as chocolate macadamias and licorice - also a range of spelt products.

Ladye: “People are always asking me how I got into organics and, try as I might, I could never remember until just recently, when reading an article in the Green Lifestyle Magazine on the ‘eat locally’ movement in the 70s. The article mentioned ‘the Berkeley eaterie - Chez Panisse - Alice Waters’ benchmark restaurant that champions local California produce’ and I thought - of course! It was eating at Chez Panisse that started it - the wonder of eating natural unadorned food - a slice of melon or a bit of spinach - that tasted exactly like what it was and still tasted like heaven. And I noticed that you could not buy food in any of the supermarkets that tasted like the food at Chez Panisse and that no amount of sugar, salt , butter or sauces could make it taste like it either.

We knew that Alice Waters grew a lot of the food out in back of the restaurant and it started me thinking. And then I started a veggie garden. Of course, Berkley being Berkely, all the political agendas were there too but, for me, the initial “shock of awareness” was the taste. And taste is still a major consideration in the food we select because, at the end of the day, no matter how pure or healthy food is, if it doesn’t taste good, people, especially children, won’t eat it.”