A cut above: high-tech 24/7 butcher goes viral

“It’s all pretty amazing,” said Jacob Wolki, 32, who worked in his parents’ bicycle shop in Albury, NSW, before starting his own farm two years ago, and then set up the butcher’s shop in the main street to process and sell his fresh meat.

“I opened the butcher’s because no one else in town could handle the volume and quality of the meat I produce,” he said. “I tried to work out how I could do it as efficiently and cheaply as possible, and I came up with this, and it seems to be working well, with around $3000 a week revenue.”

Wolki’s invention is a shop filled with fridges for his fresh meat products, but which operates like a giant vending machine. Customers have to register to receive a code that lets them in the front door, and then they pay for their goods with a QR code system that puts the charge on their credit card.

So it is able to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no staff costs at all.

“All the locals have been very supportive and it’s got almost a cult following,” Wolki said. “I think it works so well but I think other people – up until now – have been too scared to give something like this a go.

“I’ve now seen food vending machines in Japan on the internet but this is on a different scale.”

Yet with Wolki now touting his novel invention on Tik Tok, showing viewers the fridges full of vacuum-packed cuts of beef, chicken, pork, lamb, wild-harvested venison and mince, and explaining how it works, it’s likely to become a template for other businesses attracted to the minimum-cost and maximum-sale prototype. So far, his video has attracted so many views on TikTok and Twitter that fans are starting to order his meat from all over Australia.

Wolki grows everything on his 120-hectare farm 10 minutes out of town, where at any one time he keeps 120 head of cattle, 1000 hens and 60 pigs.

He began the venture two years ago as a first-generation farmer after getting married and having a child and becoming more interested in better-quality organic food and animal welfare. The butcher’s shop simply became a necessary adjunct to the farm.

It’s been growing slowly since its opening soon after the farm kicked off but recently a friend of his introduced him to another friend who suggested he showcase his brainchild on social media. The friend helped him make the video and put it on Tik Tok and now Wolki has been inundated with interest from around the world.