Albury’s 24/7 self-service butchery Wolki Farm goes viral on TikTok

A small butcher shop in New South Wales has been going viral on TikTok over its unique 24-hour self-service business model. Wolki is a regenerative farm in Albury with a focus on fostering a connection between food and consumers.

Owner, Jacob Wolki, started the farming business as a response to some burning questions he had around why his family had so many food intolerances and how many kilometres away their food was coming from.

Wolki saw a widening gap between consumers and the food source and wanted to “reinvent the modern-day dinner table.”

It began with a greenhouse but now Wolki Farm is a whole operation that not only grows food, but offers workshops, farm tours and community gardening.

Wolki Butchery is a subsidiary of the farm located in Lavington. It began as a back-of-house operation but opened the storefront after calls from the local community two years ago.

It operates purely on a self-serve basis, with customers able to access the store 24/7 via their unique access code.

All of the meat in the store is from Wolki Farm, which is just 10km from the store. Customers can choose what they want from the fridges. This includes the likes of wild venison as well as soup bones, marrow and pet mince.

The store also offers a selection of other fresh produce such as eggs, jerky, jams and chutney from the farm.

To use the shop, customers can scan the barcodes via an app called Express Checkout. The payments then run directly through Stripe where the business pays roughly 1.7% in fees.

The Wolki Farm TikTok account only launched a few days ago, but its video about the butchery has already garnered almost 550,000 views as well as thousands of comments and shares. It’s also caused the Wolki Farm website to crash periodically.

@wolkifarm

My butchery is open 24/7 every single day and has NO STAFF! #butcher #farmer #regenag

♬ Aesthetic – Gaspar

Questions around job crisis

The video came out within days of Woolworths announcing that it would be shuttering 250 of its in-store butcher counters. This is resulting in the loss of 489 jobs across the country. 

It also comes at a time when the cost of living and job losses are at the forefront of Australians’ minds.

While the original video was popular and largely well-received, there were some comments asking about running a self-service store when job shortages are rife.

Wolki addressed this in a follow-up video, saying the only way the venture would make fiscal sense would be for the shop to be unstaffed.

According to the video, the wider Wolki Farm business made around $450,000 in revenue the year the butcher opened.

“To put somebody out front on minimum wage to sell meat just did not make any sense,” Wolki said.

“I’d be tipping out all of my net profit, plus a bit, just pay a minimum wage earner to sit there in a quiet little butchery. We purely weren’t producing the volume to make it viable.”

Wolki also explained that the business was passionate about jobs, in the right place.

“We are not anti jobs. I employ 50 people in our region,” Wolki said.

He also said in the video that he’s not passionate about providing a “nice” shopping experience.

“My consumers can buy online, they can buy through an email form, they come and self-service. The food is there for them,” Wolki said.

And perhaps that is where some consumers would disagree. Wolki listened to the community and found a way for them to buy in-store anytime, day or night. They also have the ability to buy in multiple other ways detailed above. Customers are also able to pay online with fiat currency, via bank transfer and even with Bitcoin if they so choose.

That seems like extreme dedication and passion for a positive shopping experience. Still, Wolki maintains that the farm’s focus is purely on the product and the people it services.

“I am passionate about jobs. I am passionate about highlighting skilled labour, improving systems on the farm,” Wolki said.

“What we do is grow meat that we think is exceptional. We are going to tip our time, resources, labour and wage spend into enhancing those production models on farm, and not put them in store.

According to Wolki, the butcher shop nets around $2500-$3000 per week. All of that reportedly goes straight back into the business, including “contextual welfare for animals and positive stewardship of the land”.

“We want to improve soil health, water quality, air quality and the health of our community.”