The Mango Men: delivering summer

Posted on 20 December, 2017

Public service announcement! You can have summer fruit delivered to your desk.

Well, to your workplace foyer at least. Santa may not quite be here yet but the next best thing is. The Mango Men is the brainchild of Anthony Iannelli of The Food Forum Westfield Belconnen, who thought that summer deliveries could become a whole lot sweeter.

“We did a Christmas market at a public service building with mangoes and cherries a couple of years ago and it went off with a real bang. Everyone we spoke to was rapt—people would take the fruit back to their desk and then come back with five friends.”

“We this for a couple of years and everyone kept asking for us to come back more often on a regular basis so that’s where the idea came from. It’s been in the back of our minds for a while.”

If you’re one of those people who would appreciate a delivery of summer fruit to their workplace (and really, who isn’t?), it’s pretty simple to ask the Mango Men to swing by.

“We have a Facebook page and people comment on the posts, telling us which office or workplace they’d like us at and we pick a place from there and set a date,” says Anthony.

It’s not just mangoes either. Anthony explains that their offerings are wholly dependent on seasonal and local availability so at this time of the year the selection could range from cherries, white and yellow peaches and apricots to strawberries white and yellow nectarines and of course, mangoes by the tray.

It’s important for Anthony and his team to support regional growers by being flexible with their offerings. In his words, this lets them offer what tastes the best, not just what’s most attractive.

“We try and source straight from the grower to help those guys out—once they go through the supply chain their cut gets dropped down, so we try to deal with as many quality local producers as possible.”

Delivery days vary as Anthony and his team try to be as flexible as possible in relation to demand. Some weeks they may have multiple pop up shops at different workplaces as well as weekend delivery, if the need is there.

You can request the Mango Men pop by your department or workplace via their Facebook page here.