Lucke's Fresh Food Market

David and Cathy Lucke started Lucke's as a small husband-and-wife wholesale meat business in 1985, before opening a retail butcher shop in Bairnsdale's Old Butter Factory beside the Mitchell River. Today Lucke's Fresh Food Market is a full grocery, seafood and produce hall on Macleod Street, trading seven days a week.

From riverside butcher shop to fresh food hall

The Old Butter Factory location built a loyal following, but sitting next to the Mitchell River meant major flooding roughly every 5 to 7 years. After two nail-biting floods and clean-ups, the Luckes bought a shed on higher ground across the road that never goes underwater, moving the business there in May 2005. What had been a butcher shop grew into a full fresh food market covering meat, seafood, fruit and vegetables and groceries, now employing more than 60 local staff and apprentices.

The move across the road turned out to be more than a flood-proofing decision: the extra space in the shed let the Luckes expand from a butcher shop into a genuine fresh food market, adding seafood and groceries to a business that started out selling wholesale meat. Locals still refer to the site by its old name, the Old Butter Factory, even though the market itself now trades from the shed on the hill rather than the riverside building.

Good to know before you go

With seven-day trading and hours running well into the evening on weekdays, Lucke's works as a proper grocery stop rather than a once-a-week market visit. Easy parking and disabled access at the Macleod Street site make it a straightforward option for a full weekly shop in East Gippsland, and the mix of meat, seafood, produce and groceries under one roof means most weekly shopping can be done in a single stop.