Mildura Farms ends Eighth Street store experiment

MILDURA Farms has permanently shut its Eighth Street store despite a successful six-month trial.

The popular speciality food store took on an existing lease last year but owner Craig Urand said when the lease finished at the end of January he decided it would be best to focus on his original store in Red Cliffs.

“We did expand the range for the Mildura store and now everything we had in there will be available at Red Cliffs,” he said.

Mildura Farms has been operating in Red Cliffs about four years and offers dried fruit, vegetables, hampers and nuts.

“It was an extension from the farm operation,” Mr Urand said.

“We don’t have a farm ourselves anymore but we had the customer base to sell products from our farm and wanted to continue that and now we source products from local growers direct.”

Mr Urand said the idea to set up and trial a store in Mildura came about after the success of the Red Cliffs shop.

“There was also no one else selling the products in town with the ADFA (Australian Dried Fruits Association) and Angas Fruit Park no longer operating,” he said.

The Mildura store was very successful during the Christmas period but Mr Urand said owners were concerned they were stretched too thin and it was time to focus on Red Cliffs.

“It is difficult with the expenses, paying rent, wages to support a second store,” he said.

The Mildura closure comes after a turbulent year for Mildura’s CBD, with other stores such as Sanity set to close and Dimmeys facing an uncertain future.