Lyttleton Stores is a collective of people, combining our loves of organic home grown food and artisan made craft ware. Our mission is to connect customers, makers, teachers and growers, while encouraging conscious, ethical, local economies as we move towards a no-waste, lower energy future.

What do we do?

Lyttleton Stores is a multi-faceted business situated in a beautiful heritage listed building in the Mid Blue Mountains, at approximately one and a half hour's train ride from Sydney.

'PanTree Produce' is an organic grocery store, supplying quality produce from local and Australian organic and/or regenerative producers.

'Lyttleton Kitchen' is our commercial kitchen, where the in-house chef cooks food for the 'Pantree' shelves from surplus produce, in an effort to avoid food wastage.

'Atelier' is an artisans store, exhibiting beautifully hand crafted, functional pieces from local, environmentally-aware designer makers who have the opportunity to sell their wares and share their skills. 

'Preserve' is a workshop space, where visitors and locals alike can come to both share and learn new and old creative and culinary skills. The space is open as a Community Hub with a reference library for locals outside of workshop times.

'Lyttleton Gardens' is a small patch adjacent to the shop where we run edible gardening workshops to illustrate what is possible when growing your own food at a small, backyard scale.

Why are we becoming a co-op?

We are finally ready to transition into our intended structure of a community owned and run co-operative. This project will continue to evolve as our community become co-operative members and there is nothing more exciting than an idea whose time has come.

Why Should You Be Involved?

When you spend money at Lyttleton Stores you are supporting your local economy, building resilience by providing income to local workers, suppliers, makers, teachers, artists, farmers and backyard growers. 

Unfortunately, when spending money at large supermarket chains this opportunity is lost.

Dr Stuart Palmer, Head of Ethics Research at Australian Ethical Investment, has recently stated that “Even something as seemingly innocuous as the Woolies around the corner can have a negative impact on the things you care about.”

It is easy to forget that supermarket giants also own coalmines, pubs and poker machines. Advertising and cultural influences often make it hard for consumers to make fully free and informed choices.

Farmers and manufacturers are forced into uneconomic prices and unfair trading terms. This in turn can force suppliers to adopt unsustainable practices of their own, compromising their welfare, that of their animals and the environment.

At Lyttleton Stores, we believe in improving ethical, social and environmental impacts of food production and invite you to be involved in making this happen.

We also strive to eliminate food waste and plastic pollution. We do this by preserving surplus food, composting, re-using glass containers and encouraging our customers and suppliers to phase out unnecessary packaging.

This crowdfunding campaign aims to raise an initial working budget for our financially independent cooperative. We need you, our community, to get behind us in the next phase of this initiative.

We give a huge thank you to the local Carmichael-Parissi family for allowing us to establish this project over the last two years by providing initial capital funds and the incredible heritage listed building Lyttleton Stores is in. Now we are making their vision a reality by becoming community owned and funded.

This crowdfunding campaign aims to raise an initial working budget for our financially independent cooperative. 

Your patronage will help us pay for our research, consulting, legal fees, and advertising, as well as other operational and transitional costs such as Pozible fees.

In addition, it will contribute to:

• Continuing to buy our stock from local, regenerative farmers, backyard growers, and environmentally-friendly makers
• Sourcing teachers
• Continuing to operate a regenerative food garden next to the shop
• Growing our local network
• Developing a volunteer program
• Maintaining good membership discounts

As it is for all small businesses, financial stability is a priority and difficult to maintain. There are ebbs and flows, which is why we need to have a healthy cash flow in order to focus on our mission.

Meeting the needs of our existing customers, expanding our customer base, encouraging more people to shift towards sustainable lifestyles, thus becoming financially resilient is our biggest goal. 

We also want to continue encouraging a shift to a waste-free way of life, and empower other businesses as well as individuals to embrace this challenge with us.

Self promotion is always a challenge and will be something that we will be focusing on. An advertising budget will allow us to access help and training in this area.

To accomplish our goals, we need your patronage. You can contribute to this exciting process through our crowd funding campaign, in addition to your continued support.