Fabled entrepreneur, TV personality, property mogul, sporting club owner and grazing board great, Tam Wrigley (“I’m only Tamara when I’m in trouble”), has started lunch without me. (She’s not in trouble).

At Fab Slabs in Yandina, on the Sunshine Coast, the efervescent businesswoman has been picking at cheeses, twirling celery sticks into dips and rolling up slices of chicken into manageable bites for at least an hour before we connect online.

It’s hardly surprising as Wrigley (who incidentally must be one of the busiest people in Queensland), has a work day, which begins at 6.30am.

By 11am, she’s as peckish as most people are at 1pm.

Her lunch is a moveable feast with her ofsider, Cooper, so it’s fortunate that she has access to such excellent grazing boards as those hand-made at Fab Slabs.

“We arrange non-perishable items on a cutting board to gnaw on throughout the day before we close at around 2pm,” she explains.

Fab Slabs is a brand that’s been around for 20 years, initially ofering timber slabs for furniture before also diversifying into grazing and cutting boards. Natural, anti-bacterial and fashioned from Camphor Laurel wood, all of the boards are milled, kiln dried and made by hand on site.

Wrigley bought the company two years ago and has already made her mark with increased sales.

“When we took over the business, it was doing $1.1million a year. Now 2024 has barely started but we’re already on track for $1.5 million,” Wrigley says proudly.

Fab Slabs is a quintessential Australian brand with the boards also exported to Taiwan, Japan, China and South Korea.

Wrigley believes that her recent success is partly due to the fact that the COVID pandemic made consumers see the value of products made in Australia.

“There’s a big swell of support here for local manufacturing,” she says. “Everyone wants to get behind Australian brands.”

The buzz around Fab Slabs has also made Tam Wrigley – the Queensland Queen of the Grazing Platter. Does she have any rules around the correct placement of certain deli items?

“I always place dip bowls at either end with crackers and crudités around them,” she says. “Then I work back with cheeses and meats in the middle.

“Colour is key. I add strawberries, grapes, dates, capsicum and celery sticks into the mix, so there’s hardly any space left. The best grazing board is one that’s stacked.”

Wrigley says to be aware that your guests will have such fun diving and swooping on a grazing platter, that they won’t always have room left for a meal.

“So, it’s best to treat your board as the main event,” she says.

She loves that Fab Slabs is crafted from Camphor Laurel wood, which is in plentiful supply and comes in stunning shades of golden brown.

“No two boards are the same, showcasing diferent colours and grains. I’m always amazed when I see a new one. We also don’t join boards together,” she explains.

“Each one is crafted from one solid piece of timber.”

She heads home around 2pm and this is when the second half of her working day begins. Turns out that Tam Wrigley’s life is as packed as her grazing boards.

As well as her business schedule, she’s the mother to two young adults, Ashton, who is studying in Brisbane and her daughter, Mikayla, who is making a name for herself as a wicket keeper for Australia. So, there’s always a lot going on.

Wrigley also has a real estate business on the Sunshine Coast, she’s a property developer and the co-owner of a cricket club – The Moreton Magic – with her husband, Peter.

Tam Wrigley might be the ‘poster person’ for multi-tasking but she doesn’t need the kudos of doing it all.

“I like baking but not cooking,” she says, “and I always joke that our family chef is Uber Eats.”

When she does entertain it’s usually relaxed around the BBQ at home with everyone pitching in. What Wrigley does have, however, is true grit. She purchased her first property at 21 and then kept steadily acquiring more properties, including commercial buildings throughout the following years.