TINY BUT MIGHTY
When Zoe Birch and her partner Lachlan Gardner decided to open Greasy Zoe’s – a diminutive 10-seater located in the leafy suburb of Hurstbridge, some 45 kilometres outside of Melbourne’s CBD – it wasn’t necessarily born from a romantic notion.
“It came out of a bit of frustration at the industry,” says Birch. “It got to a point where we thought, okay, we’re either gonna open our own place and do it our way, or maybe we have to think about doing something else.”
Their plan was to run the restaurant as sustainably as possible, with a “hyper local” approach to sourcing produce from similarly small-scale farms and producers in the region. Rather than hire staff, Birch and Gardner opted to do everything themselves: from harvesting vegetables on their
