Three quirky Brisbane start-ups, The Bun Mobile food truck, Nom Nom! Mobile Food and HelloFresh, each had success over the past year as consumers demanded more choice in pre-prepared food.

Small food businesses, in particular takeaway businesses, are among the few areas of retail growth, up 4 per cent in December 2012, according to the Australian Food and Grocery Council-CHEP retail index. The index predicts further steady growth through early 2013.

The Bun Mobile, which started in March last year, delivers variations of Taiwanese gua bao buns across the city.

Owner and chef Harold Fleming said business had been "fabulous and far exceeded expectations".

However, he said enlisting a social media advisor helped enormously.

"We would be sitting in the middle of nowhere with no customers without our Twitter and Facebook followers," Fleming said. "It drives our business."

He said the business had spent more than $100,000 on the truck and the fit out, as well as a further $8000 on signwriting, but it now averaged more than 250 customers on a two-and-a-half hour night and expected to see that number grow.

Kate and Toby Birtwhistle, meanwhile, started serving their pre-prepared vegie meals at a Brisbane craft market in December 2011.

Now, Nom Nom! has grown through word of mouth and employs four staff. It is also looking to start office deliveries in an echo of the old Brisbane "smoko" pie vans.

Food-box delivery service HelloFresh expanded into Brisbane in October last year under former MasterChef contestant Tom Rutledge.

He said social media marketing, as well as exposure through food events, had boosted the company's image.

The business now delivers boxes ordered online to 3000 households across the nation every week.

The produce is sourced from Queensland and New South Wales and the boxes contain the ingredients for three to five weekly meals.

Mr Birtwhistle and Mr Rutledge both pointed to licensing and refrigeration logistics as barriers to expansion, and web exposure as the key to keeping small food businesses going.

Former food wholesaler and yogurt seller Robert Falzon is in the process of opening a website he hopes will become the "Alibaba" of Australian food, saying small Australian food producers need to go online to compete with the major supermarkets. Alibaba, which also sells food, is the largest e-commerce site in China.

FoodTraders.com is hoping to amass a profile of all food businesses and growers in Australia to give the world access to Australian produce and products.

Two-hundred businesses are already on board, including Brisbane's Traditional Small Goods. Falzon said that while the site was still a work in progress, 20 per cent of site views were from overseas.

Falzon has been surprised by how many small producers and businesses who do not make creating an online presence a priority.

"Coles and Woolies are doing so well, and if we let them keep going, there won't be a market for small producers any more,” he said.

Falzon said "the food industry was expanding and Australia had great products the rest of the world are after".

He warned, however, that smaller businesses needed to make themselves known to avoid being outdone by supermarket brands.