Dirty Linen - A Food Podcast with Dani Valent · A Deep in the Weeds Production

Marcus Warner (Pepo Farms) - small farms, small business and big dreams

·34 min·2 clips

Tasmanian hazelnut growers nearly bulldozed their crop until Pepo pressed the oil and won a gold medal at the Royal Sydney Show.

Dirty Linen revisits Pepo through Marcus Warner, the company's CEO, after an earlier chat with Sharon from Pepo Farms. The setting is Bright in Victoria's High Country, and the road-trip feel is part of the appeal. Dani sounds genuinely happy to be in the room with people who build food businesses in real places. Warner describes Pepo as basically a food version of a cellar door. He says almost everyone who walks into the farm shop walks out with products, and that simple detail opens up the bigger story. The conversation keeps coming back to taste, smell, and the moment when people decide to trust their own senses. Warner talks about trying to teach Australians that produce does not need to look perfect to taste amazing. He pushes back on supermarket habits that train shoppers to expect fixed shapes, packaging, weights, and prices. The episode treats that as a cultural habit as much as a shopping one. It also leaves space for the idea that Australia has enormous food-growing potential. Warner speaks warmly about the farmers Pepo has worked with over the years. There are a dozen or so of them, and they still deliver product by hand. They come in to see what happens after harvest. They watch the oil being pressed and wait for the finished product. That relationship between grower and maker gives the business its human texture. The conversation widens into food identity, resilience, and ownership. Dani and Warner talk about how people understand what food is worth when they have not been encouraged to think about the source. The episode also nods to supply shocks abroad, using olive oil in Europe as a reminder that food systems can be fragile. Against that backdrop, diversity and resilience look less like buzzwords and more like common sense. The talk ends with a tasting promise, including hazelnut oil and chocolate, and the sense that small businesses survive by making good things and teaching people how to meet them halfway.

As heard by us

A food-business conversation about taste, resilience, and teaching people to look past cosmetic perfection.

Marcus Warner's Pepo Farms segment presents a regional food business in plain, grounded terms: a farm shop that works like a cellar door, hazelnut oil and chocolate on the counter, and a steady case for trusting flavor over appearance.

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Why you'd press play

A Bright farm-shop return where taste beats polish.

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