Australian Food Awards Producer Spotlight: Rodriguez Bros
23 Oct 2024 / Food
On Thursday, 3 October, Melbourne Royal announced the results of the 2024 Australian Food Awards, celebrating Australia’s finest food producers. This year’s competition saw top-quality entries evaluated by a panel of industry experts, with each product blind tasted and judged on their own merits against a set of criteria.
Among the top winners was Rodriguez Bros, which took home both Champion Australian Large Smallgoods Producer and Best Salami. Melbourne Royal caught up with Maree Rodriguez, who shared how these prestigious awards are impacting the family business, the importance of the Melbourne Royal Australian Food Awards, and her highlights from the 2024 Trophy Presentation.
Q&A: Maree Rodriguez, Rodriguez Bros
What does winning the Best Salami and the Champion Australian Large Smallgoods Producer awards mean for your business?
The Champion Australian Large Smallgoods Producer award has been enormously beneficial to our family business! It’s been an opportunity to showcase our products to clients and colleagues and provide them with the certainty that our brand creates products worthy of these prestigious awards.
We’ve received so much positive feedback over the past week; so many clients and colleagues have reached out to express their love of our products. We are already developing new business relationships as a direct result of these awards.
Salamanca has long been a favourite product of the immigrant Spanish community since we started producing it in the 1970s. By winning the Best Salami award, we can showcase this product to the broader Australian community with the confidence that it can hold its own against the other exceptional products on the market.
Why are the Melbourne Royal Australian Food Awards are so important for the industry?
Melbourne is arguably the gastronomical forge of Australia: it is one of the hardest markets to crack and maintain market share as the quality of local producers is exceptional. It is the city that can make or break many producers.
The Melbourne Royal awards have a long history of prestige and rigor that provide consumers with confidence in product craftmanship. These awards not only recognize exceptional Australian producers, they also open up our domestic industries to the international stage.
What did you most enjoy at the 2024 Melbourne Royal Australian Food Awards Trophy Presentation?
Networking with colleagues in the food industry from around Australia! And tasting the champion products across the classes.
Australian producers are some of the most innovative in the world, and tasting their creations firsthand—discussing their product development strategies and manufacturing process with these exceptional entrepreneurs in the icon MasterChef kitchen was a unique opportunity.