Should Your Perth Kitchen Buy Local or Imported Noodles?

Oct 7

5 min read

For fresh wheat noodles, a Perth kitchen is generally better served by a local supplier, and freshness is the smallest part of the reason.

Noodles made in Osborne Park reach your kitchen within days of production, and our article Why Perth's Top Asian Restaurants Choose Yunion Noodles sets out how a fresh noodle holds up through a service.

In this article, we examine what a supplier's location changes for your kitchen and your menu.

Key Points

An interstate or overseas supplier will set a larger minimum order, because they ship in full loads. You would be holding several weeks of noodles in a cold room you also need for produce.
Imported food is inspected at the Australian border, and a consignment can be delayed there. Your order would be held up, and there would be no local supplier to fall back on.
To join Buy West Eat Best, 70% of your main and entrée dishes must have their main ingredient grown in Western Australia. In a noodle dish, that ingredient is the noodle.
Print on your menu where your noodles are made and you are accountable for that claim. Ask your supplier for the manufacturing address in writing.

How Imported Stock Affects Your Cash & Cold Room Space

A supplier bringing product in from overseas, or freighting it across from the eastern states, ships in full loads. That sets a minimum order, usually several weeks' worth rather than one. You would be paying for those weeks of stock up front, and giving them cold room space you also need for produce.

Imported food is inspected at the Australian border. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry runs the Imported Food Inspection Scheme under the Imported Food Control Act 1992. Where a consignment is delayed there, your busiest dish would come off the board until the next one clears.

Your supplier could not shorten that wait, however much notice they gave you. Yunion makes its noodles in Osborne Park, so the factory filling your order is in the same city as your kitchen. That also keeps the distance your noodles travel short, which some venues now report on or state on their menu.

Before you commit to a supplier, ask what the minimum order is, how far ahead they need your order, and what they do when they cannot fill it in full.

How Distance Affects Traceability & Short-Notice Supply

When a customer complains about a dish, or a batch has to be traced, you need to know which production run your pack came from and what else went out with it. A local manufacturer can answer that from its own records within the week.

With imported product the question goes through an importer first, the run may be months old, and the rest of it has already been distributed across several states. You would be holding a product you cannot account for, with nothing to show your own auditor.

Running short between deliveries is the other test. Around 100 stockists across Western Australia carry the Yunion range, so a kitchen that runs out on a Wednesday can buy the same product that afternoon and serve the dish unchanged.

With imported stock, the nearest replacement is in the next consignment. Our where to buy page lists the stockists by area.

Yunion makes every batch at one factory in Osborne Park.

What Buy West Eat Best Membership Requires of Your Menu

Buy West Eat Best is the Western Australian local-produce program run by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development. Your restaurant or cafe can join it and use the logo. The membership guidelines state the requirement for food service members:

"70% or more of the dishes on the main and entrée menu must feature the main characterising ingredient as grown, farmed or fished in Western Australia."

On a noodle menu, the noodle is the characterising ingredient in most of the dishes. A hokkien char and a wonton noodle soup are both named for the noodle in the bowl, and a laksa is just as dependent on the noodle it is served with.

The requirement concerns where the wheat was grown, not where the noodles were made. So ask your supplier where their wheat comes from before you apply.

Apply without checking and the dishes your menu is built on may not count towards the 70%.

Yunion is a Buy West Eat Best member. Ask us about ingredient sourcing if it matters to your own application.

How Country-of-Origin Rules Affect Your Menu

A line on your menu saying your noodles are made in Western Australia is a selling point an interstate competitor cannot copy. Print it and you are accountable for that claim.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sets the limit in its country-of-origin food labelling guide. A business selling food exempt from the standard, which includes restaurants and caterers, "may make any origin claim provided it is not false or misleading".

Where a supplier moved their manufacturing without telling you, the line would have to come off the menu, and you would be paying to have the menus printed again.

So ask a supplier where each product is manufactured.

Ask which claim their product supports as well. "Made in Australia" describes where the manufacturing happened, and "Product of Australia" is a stricter claim about where the ingredients came from. Yunion makes every noodle and wrapper in Osborne Park.

When to Buy Imported & Interstate Noodles

Some products are not manufactured in Western Australia at all, and you will have to source those elsewhere. These are the cases that come up most often:

Dried and shelf-stable lines a kitchen holds as a backup
Regional specialities produced in one place and nowhere else
Volumes larger than a single local factory runs in a week

Many Perth kitchens buy the fresh products their menu depends on locally, and source the rest wherever the price and the lead time suit them.

Our product range shows which fresh noodles and wrappers are made here, so you can see where that line falls for your own menu.

Trade Accounts for Perth Restaurants & Caterers

Yunion has been making fresh noodles and wrappers in Osborne Park since 1989, and around 100 stockists across Western Australia carry the fresh noodle and wrapper range.

Tell us what is on your menu and roughly how much you go through in a week, and we will tell you which products and pack sizes suit your kitchen.

Trade and wholesale applications go through our contact page. Our office is open Monday to Friday, 7 am to 2 pm, excluding public holidays.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I buy noodles in bulk in Perth?

We sell fresh noodles and wrappers to food businesses on a trade account, and the application forms are on our contact page. Kitchens buying smaller quantities can pick them up at a stockist instead. Our where to buy page lists them by area across Perth metro, the northern and southern suburbs and regional Western Australia.

Can I say a dish is Western Australian if only some of the ingredients are local?

A claim about a whole dish covers everything in the bowl, so the noodles alone would not usually carry it. Name the ingredient that is genuinely Western Australian instead, for example "WA-made noodles", and check the wording against the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission guidance before it goes to print.

How do I check where a supplier's noodles are made?

Ask for the manufacturing address on the product specification sheet rather than the head office address, and ask for it in writing. A brand may be owned in one state and manufactured in another, or overseas. The pack label is the authority on ingredients, allergens and storage, and it should agree with the specification you were sent.

What should a trade account application tell a supplier about my kitchen?

Give the dishes the product goes into, roughly how much you use in a week, and how much refrigerated storage you have. A supplier can then recommend a pack size your kitchen will get through before the use-by date, so you waste less of it.