Choosing a hamper for someone in Melbourne usually comes with a deadline attached: a birthday on Thursday, a settlement that went through, a thank you that should have gone out last week. Every hamper on this page is packed by hand by our team in Geelong, an hour down the highway from the city, so a Melbourne order does not begin its life on a truck from interstate. Order by 12pm on a weekday and it is dispatched the same day, tracked with Australia Post.
Under the gold ribbon of each box sits a free personalised gift card carrying your message. Below you will find hampers built around Kangaroo Island honey popcorn, Chocolatier Belgian truffles and Valley Produce Company crackers, with champagne or without.
Our packing bench is in Geelong, just north of Geelong. Everything here is assembled by hand in Victoria and handed to Australia Post as a tracked parcel, which is the plain reason a Melbourne order behaves sensibly: it is a short domestic run inside one state rather than a crossing of the continent. Order before midday on a weekday and the box leaves that day, and you get track and trace so you can watch it land instead of guessing.
These boxes are built to be eaten from rather than admired. The contents that appear most often across the range are Kangaroo Island Produce Co honey popcorn, Chocolatier Belgian chocolate truffles, Valley Produce Company mini artisan crackers and Kangaroo Island olives, with Scottie Dog shortbread fingers and the Valley Produce Co fig and almond pyramid close behind. Depending on the box you may also find Chocolatier caramelised cashew brittle, VPC roasted peanuts, Hunter's Gourmet black truffle potato chips or Buttermilk caramel sea salt fudge. Each one is a premium hamper box finished with gold ribbon, and most travel inside an insulated shipper.
If the occasion wants one, the champagne hampers carry G.H. Mumm Cordon Rouge, Moët & Chandon Impérial Brut or Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label, and the wine boxes run to Château Tanunda Grand Barossa Shiraz and Stoneleigh Sauvignon Blanc. Where a bottle would be awkward, for a workplace, a dry household or a new baby, the non-alcoholic hampers use the same food and the same box.
A good share of Melbourne orders never reach Melbourne. Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, the Mornington Peninsula and the Surf Coast all take their turn, and because the parcel starts in Geelong it is already on the right side of the state. Everything ships tracked Australia-wide, so a hamper for a Gippsland farm gate and one for a Docklands tower leave on the same run. The detail sits on the delivery page.
Gifting in this city bunches into a handful of weeks. Spring Racing pushes a run of hampers into offices and marquee lists through late October and early November. The football finals do something smaller in September. End of financial year moves client gifting into the back half of June, and then December swallows the lot. If your gift belongs to one of those weeks, order at the front of it rather than the back. The midday cut-off is ours to hold; the postal network during a peak week is not.
In Geelong. Our team builds each one by hand, ties the ribbon and slides your gift card underneath before the box is closed.
The packing is Victorian, the food is not all local, and we would rather be clear. Kangaroo Island Produce Co, for one, is South Australian, and other producers come from further afield again. What is Victorian is the bench the hamper is built on and the hands that build it.
Each hamper is judged on its own. A hamper over $100 ships free; one under $100 attracts a shipping charge. Hampers do not pool toward that figure, because each is packed and sent as its own parcel, so two boxes that are each under $100 carry two shipping charges.
Midday on a weekday. After that the parcel goes out the next business day. We do not promise Australia Post transit times to any Melbourne postcode, but every parcel is tracked, so you always know where it is.