Passionate grower Horst Sjostedt said IGA supermarkets in Blayney, Forbes, Orange and West Wyalong are now featuring his tomatoes, as well as West Point market and Country Fruit in Bathurst, and Foodworks in Oberon.

Horst visited each supermarket with his display, wooing romantic ladies from each store to come and taste, smell and feel his tomatoes, and Horst said they were in love at once.

“Once they tasted them, I said to them: ‘Now you are done. You will never forget that’,” he said.

Horst said that tomato sales in Blayney, West Wyalong and Forbes IGA supermarkets have increased 20-fold since they began.

The demand for tomatoes at Mawhoods IGA is also increasing five to 10 per cent a week, and Horst is on a crusade in a bid to make his tomatoes the highest selling item in the produce section after they have come in second, just behind bananas.

Horst said that he has met people who have visited Oberon in order to get their hands on his tomatoes.

“It is great for the whole town that people are coming here to get tomatoes,” he said.

Horst said with the demand growing his business now includes another new employee, Sashi.

Ian Mawhood of Mawhoods Supa IGA, who has assisted Horst in selling his tomatoes to IGA supermarkets across the Central West, said that other IGA supermarkets have been very supportive, as they are all about local people selling local produce.

“IGA are run by local people supporting local growers,” he said.

“Horst has taken an Oberon product out into the west.”