Springhill Beef is responding to customers turning away from feedlot cattle found in supermarkets in favour of old-fashioned farm techniques.

And they deliver their product to your door via orders online.

"The cattle [used for supermarket meat] are fed a lot of hormones, they eat a lot of grain which is covered in pesticides and they are confined in very little spaces. Ours roam around the paddock," Simon and Cameron Philp, the owners of Springhill Beef said.

"We do a fresh grass fed beef, we age it and it is just premium quality."

"The internet for us has just been a boom. Our customer base has increased as three or four-fold to around 4000 word of mouth customers enjoying the meat. We couldn't live without it."

"Now with the internet. You can bypass Coles and Woolies and get it direct. Direct from the farmer. It is power to the people."

Springhill's unique selling point is their beef is grass fed, hormone free and aged on the bone for 20 days.

But they are not the only online players in the market. Across the spectrum small and large players are now using cyberspace to sell to consumers.

In 2008, Pip Lampe told Today Tonight she bought her lamb from online supplier, Moppity Meats. She argues it is cheaper than the supermarket.

"I make a huge saving on my weekly grocery bill. For that box, $115 and I get half a lamb. That is a big saving on what I'd pay at the big supermarket chains. It would be upwards of half price," Pip said.

RG Meats' Colin Cooke is a wholesaler. He refutes the notion that online suppliers can sell at the best price.

"The thing with the internet is they make you buy the package deal. Which is fine. The idea is to buy bulk. But when you work out that package deal, I've gone through it myself, there is [sic] a lot of things I really don't know what to do with, can't use and yes, there are a couple of things I can get at a good price."

He also argues that online meat is not as fresh as the wholesale meat.

"A wholesaler like us, everything is cut fresh this morning and it is all cut fresh again tomorrow. Now if I am the internet, I am cutting today and it is delivered tomorrow. And some of the deliveries may not get there until the next day."

On price alone, approximately 18kg of beef from Spring Hill will cost you $200. The same package at a local butcher cost us $271.50. Coles was also more expensive at $232. Woolworths were cheaper than the online offering at $185 and RG Meats was the cheapest at $147.

Springhill also deliver door to door - a cost not factored into Today Tonight's comparison.

"Well, we are natural, we try and do it as a natural product. You can't guarantee when you have grain fed steer where those grains have been, what they have been sprayed with."

Simon and Cameron's hormone free, grass fed, black angus is also aged for 20 days.

For some, online beef is another world away. For Springhill, business is booming with customers hitting the internet to escape the product and the power of the large supermarkets.

Links

SPRING HILL BEEF
Web: www.springhillbeefhamper.com.au

Tel: (02) 4872 3965

RG WHOLESALE MEATS
Web: www.rgmeats.com.au
Tel: (02) 9905 3855