Retail Heros: meet Carol and Longy from Camilleri's Fruit Market

Here at Garlicious Grown we think we work hard BUT this week I got to know one of our great new retailers Carol Long from Camilleri’s Farm Market, up near MacKay, and she taught me a thing or two about working hard!!
Carol and her husband “Longy”, as she refers to him, bought Camilleri’s Farm market in the height of COVID after working for this group for a couple of years prior to purchase.
Their shop front is open 7 days a week 8am – 6pm, Mon to Fri and 8am-4pm on the weekend. What’s more, ALSO on the weekend they do markets where they have 4 marquees to set up each weekend and get up at 2am Saturday morning to be ready for opening at 6AM!  By this stage I’m feeling positively lazy with my own work ethic!!
On top of this, Carol does all her own social media and does an amazing, consistent, “on point” job of this. She says “I just post things that I’d want to know about certain products if I’d never heard of them before”. She says she loves to cook so is always using the products they sell so just photographs and posts them along her way.  Sounds easy, but I know – that is more work!!
Carol is a great supporter of individual suppliers, like ourselves. She jokes that about every 3 weeks her and Longy treat themselves to a ‘holiday’, which is an 8hr drive, ONE WAY, to Bundaberg to collect avocados and macadamias from local farmers. She also likes to get in unusual products that are of great health benefit to consumers, the latest being kunzea cream, moringa powder and of course our black garlic.
Carol moved up to northern Queensland from Tasmania some 30 years ago for her own health benefit and hasn’t looked back.
We have only had Carol as a retailer for a couple of months but what a treasure she is and her black garlic sales alone prove what a great saleswoman she is too.
Finally, don’t forget if you are ever up Mackay way to call in to Camilleri’s Food Market for some stunning produce and make some time for a chat.
In conclusion we would love to find about 50 more Carols to do business with – haha – but more importantly meeting the Carol’s of this world is what makes our job really enjoyable!