Christmas Hills Raspberry Farm's busy season

Cafe supervisor Anna Murphy said this time of year is crazy, but fun. 

“The doors open at 7am and sometimes there are people waiting outside to come in because they’ve just got off the boat. The room is normally full by about 7.30am,” she said. 

The restaurant seats about 120 people. 

Keeping the shop’s fridges stocked is also a big job and then the berry order arrives in the afternoon. 

“The berry order just depends on what we’ve sold the day before. The fridge should constantly be full. We’ll have a couple of hundred punnets,” Ms Murphy said.  

The punnets are about 300 grams, meaning the shop sells about 60 kilograms of raspberries each day.

Berries are picked everyday and then cooled overnight.  

“When the berries are warm they’re better if you cool them quickly,” Ms Murphy said. 

But, the cafe’s best seller is its chocolate-coated raspberries, made by hand.

“We always have a panic when we get down to our last packet of coated raspberries during the middle of a busy day. They’re world famous,” Ms Murphy said.

“We did a little investigation into how many chocolate raspberries we make in a year and we worked out that we make 10 tonnes of chocolate raspberries a year and we give away four tonne in a little bowl on the counter.”

The farm is not located in the fruit fly control zone, so the season had not been effected too much, Ms Murphy said.

“We have tried to be responsible around that and we made sure people are aware of it,” she said.  

“We’ve got various posters up, so we’re trying to make people aware of it. A lot are aware there has been a problem and they do ask about it.” 

Ms Murphy said she was pleasantly surprised about how busy the cafe had remained during the festive season. 

“The supermarkets are flooded now with Driscoll's berries and they’re often at a good price, and we have to try and be competitive with that,” she said. 

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