Quality customer service makes Farm Fresh Market a winner
Carlo De Michele explains what has made his family’s greengrocer a two-time winner at the 2026 Murraylands Business Awards.
This story is brought to you by Drakes and Ahrns Electrical, sponsors of the 2026 Murraylands Business Awards.
There aren’t many retailers like Carlo De Michele around the place any more.
The co-owner of Murray Bridge greengrocer Farm Fresh Market, alongside his wife Tracey, is a believer in the importance of old-school customer service above all else.
It’s what has kept the couple in business for 28 years.
And it’s also what earned them and their team not one, but two gongs at this year’s Murraylands Business Awards.
They were named the best retailer in the region – their second consecutive win in the category.
They also won the coveted best customer service award, and were nominated in the best coffee category, too.
“Tracey and I drive the ship, but those awards are not ours, they’re for our staff,” Carlo says.
“We’ve got standards, we try to keep those standards – we’re the police – but they’re at the coal face.”
The standards he mentions are high, but not unreasonable: give customers your full attention, greet them with a smile and eye contact, and treat them as human beings.
It comes naturally to more mature team members, Carlo suggests, but some of the younger ones have needed a bit more encouragement.
People of every generation have different ways of interacting.
But that interaction might be what makes someone’s day, whether they’re a mum struggling with a young child, someone needing a hand to get out to their car, or an elderly shopper.
Carlo recounts the story of a widower who pulled him aside to compliment one of his young checkout operators.
Asked how his day was going, the customer mentioned a recent bereavement, and soon both he and the staff member were in tears – but the customer was grateful for the sympathy and comforting words offered.
That is what it means to be human first, and an employee second.
Farm Fresh Market first opened its doors on July 1, 1998, in a building which had previously belonged to the late monumental mason Stan Tillett, and a Nissan dealership before that.
They didn’t make much money in the early years.
Carlo and Tracey used to take a lot of their family’s own food out of the shop’s supplies, and they and their two staff would park out the front on Adelaide Road to make the place look busier.
It’s not a problem they experience these days.
The business has grown and evolved – especially since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to change their ways of working.
The need to limit face-to-face contact prompted the De Micheles to take a wholesale delivery service they had set up for pubs and clubs and develop it into an online shopping service which sends fruit and veg, bread, milk and meat to families across the Murraylands and Mallee.
Now that service makes up more than a third of their business.
They even have customers over the border: “They don’t have to hop in the car and come three hours to do the shopping.”
Around the same time, they committed to redeveloping the shop – its third expansion – and adding a cafe counter where locals can pick up a coffee, foccacia or sweet treat on the go.
These days, Farm Fresh Market employs about 25 people over five and a half days per week.
Running a business isn’t easy in the current economic environment, Carlo says.
But positive feedback from customers has kept his passion alive, whether it’s expressed through an awards vote or a “cheers” at the shop counter.
