Where fun, flavour and personality fill the pantry at Stanley’s Jim Jam Foods
The best fruit and vegetables sourced from around Australia and all over the world is one of the many secrets to the success of Steven and Maggie’s Jim Jam Foods.
The others include Steven’s finely tuned palate, Maggie’s genuine love of marketing and customer relations and the pair’s undying passion for food and flavour.
“It helps that Steven can turn his hand to just about anything,” says Maggie.
“His knack for combining flavour, texture and bringing culinary elements together that you wouldn’t normally expect is fairly amazing.”
His ingredients come from near and far: Glenrowan quinces, Echuca tomatoes, Greek olives, Egyptian strawberries, Serbian raspberries and Polish cherries — a deliberately varied, flavour‑first mix of Australia’s finest and the world’s standouts.
It was an “I can make a jam better than that” moment in Melbourne 28 years ago that sparked what would become a thriving artisan food business. It also prompted a bold move north, with the couple relocating to the Indigo Shire 300 kilometres away to build their venture from the ground up.
And the good news is – you can visit the farm gate in Stanley (12 kilometres from Beechworth) seven days a week and sample every one of the 39 products on offer.
“It started out with a homewares store in Brunswick Road,” said Maggie.
“It was a friend of Steven’s partner at the time and they had a raspberry jam for sale and after he tasted it he said ‘I can make you one better than that’.
“He made nine jars and they all sold in three days.”
Things moved quickly from there and Steven ramped up his preserve‑making while still running his graphic design business — a handy combo, given he now had jars that needed dressing up as well as filling.
“I met Steven and became his distributor in those early days and his products I sold alongside those of Maggie Beer, Meredith Dairy and Carman’s Muesli.”
Today you’ll find the products in many gourmet food stores and providore outlets as well as in Albury’s Harris Farm Market and all Ritchies stores.
There is an extensive selection to choose from, ranging from the sample size fruit pastes (70g, $6) to sauces and salsa’s (260g $10.50), various jams (300g $10.50) and the beans and pasta sauces (560g, 540g $12).
What makes Jim Jam Foods so distinctive isn’t just the flavour — it’s the philosophy.
Steven starts with the best raw ingredients he can find, whether they’re grown in Australia or sourced from long‑established producers overseas.
“If the guy next door grew them, I’d be in there like a rat up a drain-pipe,” he laughs. “We get what’s good — why wouldn’t we?”
That commitment to quality underpins everything, from their top‑notch fig and quince pastes to the cult‑favourite beans that flew out the door during COVID.
Even the naming process is part of the fun.
“In reality a lot of the products first come from the name, and I work backwards,” Steven says. “If I’ve got a bean product and I think it wants to be Moroccony, I call it Haz — and then you work backwards. The name and what it is are important.”
The result is a range that feels both familiar and delightfully unexpected.
“We don’t make fancy esoteric products,” Steven says. “We just make the things people enjoy — but we make them really, really well.”
The quirkiness, he admits, is simply who they are. “The brand is probably the personification of me, or vice versa. It’s pretty much me, in a jar.”
And the jars keep coming. With another dozen products in development — including Asian‑style pickles, sambals, new pasta sauces, and what Steven promises will be a standout olive ketchup — Jim Jam Foods continues to evolve while staying true to its roots: great ingredients, bold flavour and a sense of fun that runs through everything they do.
The pair acknowledge that convenience foods are also part of the future.
“More people are looking for ‘a meal in a jar’, something you can stick in a microwave then put on plate or add to something and think this is pretty good. It’s convenience yes – but with a bit of “oh wow” and that’s the catch. We make a really good product, that is convenient, and you don’t always associate those two things together,” Steven says.
It’s everyday food, elevated.
After 28 years, the magic of Jim Jam Foods is still the same: a graphic designer with a finely tuned palate, a marketer who loves people, and a shared belief that good food should be both delicious and joyful.
Visit the farm gate in Stanley and you’ll taste exactly what they mean — one colourful, cleverly named jar at a time.