How fresh food markets are avoiding Australia’s crippling supply chain crisis

Markets have plenty of fresh fruit, vegetables and meat available and have largely avoided the supply chain crisis that has stripped shelves bare at the big supermarket chains, according to operators and farmers.

Supermarket distribution centres have suffered staff shortages caused by the Omicron wave that has forced as many as a quarter of their workers to isolate, prompting Coles and Woolworths to reinstate purchase limits on some products after panic buying emptied shelves.

However, market stall operators don't suffer from the same problems because they buy directly from wholesale markets, the chief executive of Melbourne's Victoria Market, Stan Liacos, said.

"The way they purchase has far more flexibility in it than the way the far larger multinational supermarket chains do business," he said.

He said the market's 60 fruit and vegetable operators and 10 fishmongers bought most of their stock daily at Melbourne's wholesale markets.

"They basically pick the stock, and if certain stock isn't available from certain suppliers, they simply turn around and buy from others.

"So they're not locked into a handful of huge, watertight, contract-style relationships."