A new winery, cellar door, and restaurant operation at Wayfinder in the Margaret River region opens this month, built around a one-acre market garden that directly supplies its kitchen. The venture represents a fully integrated agritourism model in which the growing, winemaking, and dining components are managed as a single production system rather than separate business units.
The Integrated Production Model
Wayfinder’s kitchen, led by head chef Brendan Pratt, operates on the premise that the garden dictates the menu rather than the other way around. Head gardener Amy Dyson, previously at Glenarty Road in Karridale, manages the property’s market garden alongside a co-worker. That garden has been supplying Wayfinder’s Dunsborough wine bar for two years, meaning the supply chain was tested and refined before the restaurant opened.
The practical consequence of this model is that purchasing from external distributors is reduced significantly. The kitchen works with what is ready at harvest, which creates pressure on culinary creativity but removes reliance on commodity produce pricing and availability. The team is also developing on-property livestock production, with lamb expected to be processed on-site.
The winery component produces organically certified wines overseen by winemaker Andrew Trio. The physical structure, a rammed earth building constructed in a disused dam over eight years, integrates the cellar door, tasting room, and restaurant under one roof. Native marri trees are incorporated into the site as a deliberate landscape feature.
Revenue Structure and Visitor Experience Design
The restaurant offers both set menu and a la carte options at opening. A more casual food format is planned to be introduced closer to summer 2026-27, which suggests a tiered pricing and accessibility strategy aimed at broadening the visitor demographic across different spending levels.
The kitchen ethos is described as demonstrating sustainability practices without prescriptive messaging, a deliberate positioning choice for operators who want to attract environmentally aware visitors without alienating others. Pratt’s framing, that guests might “leave with some new ideas about food,” positions the experience as educational without being didactic, a distinction that matters for operators designing interpretive content.
What This Means for WA Operators
The Wayfinder model is directly relevant to WA agritourism operators considering whether to add a dining component to an existing farm or winery operation, or to formalise produce flows that are currently informal.
Several elements are worth examining:
The market garden was established and supplying a simpler venue for two years before the full restaurant opened. Operators planning to build a kitchen-garden link should consider whether they have a lower-complexity venue, such as a wine bar, farm shop, or events space, that can absorb and stress-test garden supply before a full dining operation is committed to.
Staffing the integrated model requires people with cross-disciplinary skills. Wayfinder’s kitchen team includes a former butcher returning to cooking, which speaks to the value of recruiting people whose prior experience covers multiple stages of production.
The physical structure was built into a disused dam over eight years, suggesting long capital planning horizons for built infrastructure that integrates with existing landscape features. Operators in the Margaret River or South West regions considering new build or adaptive reuse of on-farm structures should note that planning and build timelines of this length are not unusual for heritage-sensitive or environmentally integrated designs.
The decision not to lock the menu to a fixed list, while still offering a set menu option, gives the kitchen flexibility to work with variable garden output. This is a practical operational solution for any farm dining room where produce availability is seasonal and unpredictable.
The transferable lesson is principally about sequencing: building and testing the supply chain before scaling the dining offer, and using a simpler hospitality format as the proving ground.
