The Gourmet Snack Box Hamper, Unpacked: Ten Snacks, No Fridge

The Gourmet Snack Box Hamper holds ten things to eat: sea salt crackers, smokehouse BBQ potato chips, French rosemary almonds, caramelised cashew brittle, honey popcorn and cocoa dusted Belgian truffles among them. Every one is sealed in its own packet, so there is no cheese to slice, nothing that wants a fridge and no board to assemble, which is the whole reason it works on a shared desk. It is alcohol free, hand packed in Corio on the northern edge of Geelong, and finished in a French blue box with a gold ribbon.

Why a packet beats a platter at work

A grazing hamper assumes a kitchen. Someone has to find a board, a knife and somewhere cold to keep the cheese until people are ready, and in an office that someone is usually the person who was given the gift. A snack box assumes nothing. Ten sealed snacks go on the reception counter or the middle of the meeting table, people take what they want, and whatever stays unopened goes back in the box for tomorrow.

It is forgiving about timing too. A cheese hamper has a night it needs to be eaten by. This one can sit on a desk for a fortnight, get opened a packet at a time, and still be worth having in week two. When a gift is going to a team rather than to one person, that matters more than the item count does.

Alcohol free is the point here, not a compromise

Sending wine to a workplace means knowing something about the recipient you often do not know. A snack box takes the question away. Nothing in it contains alcohol and nothing in it is alcohol flavoured, so it can go to a client you have only ever met on a call, a shared reception desk, a Kris Kringle draw, or a team where several people do not drink, without anyone having to ask first. The rest of that range sits in alcohol free hampers. If the box is going to staff rather than to clients, it is also worth knowing where a gift this size sits against the $300 FBT rule for staff gifts.

The savoury half

Three items carry the savoury end, and they are three different textures rather than three versions of a chip.

The VPC mini artisan crackers with sea salt are small, light and deliberately plain, the ones that go under anything. The Hunter's Gourmet smokehouse BBQ potato chips are hand cooked, thicker and crunchier than a supermarket chip, tangy and smoky rather than sweet. And Mr Filbert's French rosemary almonds are the bowl that empties without anyone admitting to it, roasted and lightly infused with rosemary; where that name comes from, and what else the brand tins, is in our piece on what a filbert actually is.

Between them they are the part of the box that gets opened first, usually within an hour of it landing.

The sweet half, read by texture

Seven items make up the rest, and the useful way to read them is by what they do in the mouth, not by flavour.

TCE caramelised cashew brittle is the shatter, roasted cashews set in thin crisp sheets. Buttermilk caramel sea salt fudge is the opposite, soft enough to crumble and melt, with tiny flakes of sea salt through it. Scottie Dog shortbread fingers are the biscuit for the second cup of tea, short and properly buttery. Sweet Dreams marshmallows are soft and springy, salted caramel with coconut through them. Pimlico fruit jellies are jewel bright and dusted in sugar, and they are the packet the children go for every time. TCE Belgian chocolate truffles, cocoa dusted, are the after dinner one.

Kangaroo Island honey popcorn sits across both halves. It is made with honey from the island's Ligurian bees, so it is sweet, but it goes out with the savoury things and disappears at the same rate.

One practical note for a December delivery. The shortbread, the brittle and the jellies do not mind a warm afternoon. The truffles do. If the box lands on a desk in the sun, move that one packet somewhere cool before it is opened.

Everything in the box

Sending it as a thank you

A thank you gift has a narrower job than a Christmas gift. It needs to arrive soon after the thing it is thanking someone for, it needs to be shareable if it is going to a team, and it should not leave the recipient feeling they now owe you something larger. A box of snacks at this size does all three, and it reads as considered rather than transactional because somebody clearly chose the contents.

Every hamper takes a free personalised gift card, written at checkout, so the message travels with the box instead of arriving separately by email. If the thank you is going to a whole office, one box on the shared bench lands better than eight small identical gifts. The thank you hampers range collects the boxes that suit this, and when the list runs to dozens of addresses rather than one, our notes on sending a batch of hampers to a list of addresses set out how that is run.

How it arrives

Every box is packed by hand rather than by machine, and it travels inside an insulated shipper box, which is what keeps the sun off the parcel on the way. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post. Very occasionally a single line runs out, in which case we substitute an item of equal or higher value and in almost every case keep the same category, so a fudge becomes a different fudge rather than a jar of something else.

Questions we get asked

What is in the Gourmet Snack Box Hamper?

Ten things to eat: sea salt crackers, smokehouse BBQ chips, rosemary almonds, honey popcorn, cashew brittle, caramel sea salt fudge, shortbread fingers, salted caramel and coconut marshmallows, fruit jellies, and cocoa dusted Belgian truffles. They arrive in a French blue box tied with gold ribbon, inside an insulated shipper box.

Is the snack box alcohol free?

Yes. There is no wine, beer or spirit in it, and nothing in it is alcohol flavoured, which is why it sits in the alcohol free range. It is the one to send when you do not know the recipient well enough to pick a bottle.

Does anything in it need to be kept cold?

No. Every item is shelf stable, which is what lets the box be posted anywhere in the country in December. Keep the truffles out of direct sun once they arrive and the whole box behaves.

How many people does it feed?

It stretches. An office opens it on the bench and gets through it over an afternoon; one person picks at it over a fortnight. Nothing has to be eaten on the day it lands, so a smaller team simply takes longer to reach the bottom of the box.

Can you send several boxes to different addresses?

Yes, and the number of boxes picks the route. Under five, order online and use the ship-to-multiple-addresses option at checkout, with a different gift message on each one. From five up, the bulk order form is faster: one spreadsheet, one order, one invoice, one row per recipient, run by our corporate team on 1300 936 406. A personalised card is written for each box either way.

What does it cost, and is delivery free?

The box is $99.95. Add a packet of crackers, or any other small item, and the order clears $100, which is where free Australia-wide delivery starts. On its own the box carries a delivery charge, worked out by destination and shown at checkout before you pay. Each hamper is packed and posted as its own parcel, which is what keeps it intact on the way.

The Gourmet Snack Box Hamper is the box to send when the gift has to be shared, nobody has a fridge and you would rather not guess at a bottle. The rest of the range is in alcohol free hampers, and the seasonal boxes sit in Christmas hampers.