A simple philosophy drives The Fermentary, Sharon Flynn’s small-batch fermentation business based in Daylesford, an hour and a half north west of Melbourne. “Make it delicious and people will eat it,” she says. “The by-product is that it’s good for their gut.”

Six years ago, Flynn started The Fermentary in her home kitchen at Daylesford (its tagline: “delicious ferments for flavour and gut democracy”). A lifelong interest in fermented foods had become something more serious when Flynn endeavoured to restore her daughter’s gut health, which had been damaged by repeated use of antibiotics. She put to use the knowledge about traditional fermented foods she’d accrued in the two decades she’d spent in Japan, Europe and the United States, making batches of kimchi, natto, sauerkraut and pickles to add to her family’s diet.

To Flynn’s delight, her daughter’s health improved. Word got around her local community, and soon Flynn’s friends and neighbours were asking to try her ferments for themselves.

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“It got to the point where I had five fridges in the garage, and I couldn’t keep up,” she says. “People were putting money in an honesty box. The business has been like that ever since. Our reach is organic; we don’t do any advertising, and every new shop we [wholesale to] has contacted us.”

To keep up with demand, Flynn hired a chef – Roger Fowler, a single dad whose children went to the local school. (Flynn and Fowler now live together with their blended family of five children).

Although The Fermentary started small (Flynn was, as she describes it, a single mother with zero experience in business) it soon gained the attention of influential players in the hospitality industry. Alla Wolf-Tasker, the owner of renowned Daylesford eatery The Lake House, picked up a jar of Flynn’s ferments at the health food store in Woodend and soon started serving The Fermentary’s products at her restaurant, as did chef Andrew McConnell from Cumulus Inc
in Melbourne.

Flynn’s mission was to encourage people to eat more fermented foods in any way she could. She reasoned that getting the gravitas of high-profile chefs would get the word out about fermented food. “If chefs use it, there’ll be a trickle-down effect … and they’ll show people how to incorporate it into meals,” she says.

She was right. Today, Flynn presides over a fermentation empire, and The Fermentary has picked up a swag of awards for its fermented vegetables and drinks. It continues to eschew the use of synthetic starter cultures or any other shortcuts in the fermentation process. “It’s all traditionally made,” she says.

Teaching people to ferment at home is a key aspect of Flynn’s vision. “Everyone understands how to make a cake even if their mum or dad never cooked. We just know, we’ve seen it – it goes in the oven. But people don’t know the processes of fermented food.”

In 2017, Flynn published a book, Ferment for Good: Ancient Food for the Modern Gut, and regularly invites experts to speak at events at The Fermentary. Fermentation revivalist and rock star Sandor Katz was to be the headline act at Bread and Circus, a festival for ‘fermentalists’ planned for June (and then cancelled due to the Covid-19). Prior to the pandemic, events and workshops made up around a third of The Fermentary’s income. Restaurants and bars also accounted for a significant portion of revenue. To stay afloat during lockdown, The Fermentary switched much of its activity to the virtual world, selling products like kimchi, kefir and various SCOBYs online. Fortunately, sales from its online store doubled. “That really pushed us through,” says Flynn.

Flynn plans to run a crowdfunding campaign in 2021 to build a taproom and a place where people can refill jars and bottles at The Fermentary’s home, an abandoned abattoir five minutes out of Daylesford. It’s a character-filled building, says Flynn. “The outside looks as ramshackle as it did when I first found the building.”

“We’re proud that it was a place of death and destruction and now we’re breeding life into food. It’s nice synchronicity.”

Daylesford turned out to be the perfect place to launch a business dedicated to quality, local ingredients. A mineral spring nearby provides The Fermentary with pristine water to make its ferments and the proximity to farmers is another considerable advantage for Flynn’s operation. “We’ve made so many lovely relationships with producers in the area,” she says. “We’re working out how we can best help each other at the moment.”

The support of locals like Wolf-Tasker has been a crucial factor in assuring The Fermentary’s success, says Flynn. “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to find out if my initial idea would work.”

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