Smart cookie

A number of investors jumped on board, leaving the company with six shareholders. Gradually, Mr Slater bought them out, securing 100 per cent ownership of the company five years ago.

Since then, he has purchased Luken and May, a highly successful boutique biscuit company – which was very well known in Sydney’s northern suburbs – and Falwasser, a company that produced gourmet crispbreads.

For both practical and media purposes, it became evident that Mr Slater needed a company name that would encompass all of his business ventures.

He couldn’t keep introducing himself as ‘chairman of Byron Bay Cookie Company, Luken and May and Falwasser with more companies to come’, he recalls – so Slater International was born.

Byron Bay Cookie Company now sells more than 65 million cookies per year in Australia alone, distributes its products to 40 different countries, has more than 120 staff during peak periods and has successfully made the transition from a boutique operation producing hand-made products to an international company that uses machines and meets international food standards.

The trail of growth and acquisitions would be considered successful for most businesspeople or entrepreneurs. But the path is somewhat unusual given that Mr Slater – in fact, Dr Slater – is a qualified and practising orthopaedic surgeon.

He obtained his Orthopaedic Fellowship in Sydney in 1997 and subsequently undertook advanced training in foot and ankle surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

He is an editorial board member of the World Journal of Orthopaedics and continues to spend time at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York to keep himself updated on the latest technology.

Mr Slater also operates out of a Sydney private hospital.

Not surprisingly, quality and precision are paramount in both of Mr Slater’s professional lives.

Quality control

In an economy in which people are spending less and investigating cheaper food alternatives, it is tempting to cut corners and reduce costs by also reducing quality.

But just as with surgery, he says, these shortcuts are not worth it.

“People come out and copy us, but they’ll make cookies with margarine rather than butter,” he says. “It’s very, very tempting – particularly in times like these, when people are questioning why you’re more expensive. But no-one is going to be happy if they buy something and it doesn’t deliver.

“You’re better off making a lower margin, selling more units and having a happy customer at the end of the line.”

That temptation, however, is present in all industries during tough economic times.

“There’s always a temptation to ‘dumb down’ your product,” he says. “I look at it this way: if you’re going to have a treat during the day (and everyone loves to have a treat), we want to be that treat. We want to deliver.”

In addition to integrity when it comes to taste, Mr Slater says food safety and controls of the manufacturing process are paramount to Byron Bay Cookie Company’s success.

“We have very stringent quality controls and other measures of the product to make sure that we deliver,” he says.

There is also a further expectation to perform because the product is considered ‘gourmet’, and the brand ‘high end’.

Byron Bay Cookies are also distributed to big brands with big budgets and expectations of their own, such as Woolworths, McDonalds and Qantas.

“You need a high-end security of product when dealing with companies like this,” he says. “You need to have a high-end food security process and that costs money.”

This is particularly important when dealing with markets such as Japan, where if there is even a hint of irregularity in a product, it will be returned.

The company’s transition to machine-based production, however, has enabled the product to be more consistent.

“Going from being purely handmade to designing a machine that could help in the forming of the product was a huge milestone for the company,” Mr Slater says. “You can't get the nutritionals perfect from a handmade product. That was a major change for us because it meant we could put the nutritionals on the packaging.

“But it took an enormous amount of time and capital.”

Travelling food

In recent years, ideas about quality and food security have also become increasingly linked to the environment.

“In Europe, there has been a big move to regional food production,” Mr Slater says. “It’s bad for the environment to make something in Australia and send it over to London when it could be made in the UK.”

European countries are now familiar with the concept of ‘food miles’, which takes into account the carbon emissions from transportation, as well as the other environmental factors involved in shipping overseas.

Mr Slater says his desire to continue manufacturing solely in Australia had become unfeasible.

“A lot of the major accounts we had started to delete us because we were made so far away,” he says. “We had the worst food mile credentials of anybody else – making it in Israel would have been closer.”

This, combined with the high Australian dollar and export pressures, forced Mr Slater to make a difficult decision.

The UK was an important market for Byron Bay Cookie Company and he wanted to retain the company’s market share.

Products for the UK market are therefore now made in Manchester, rather than Australia.

“It was a difficult decision to make but we had to do it,” he says.

The company’s products have also found success in the Middle East, the United States and across Europe all the way to Moscow.

“We even sell shortbread to Scotland!” Mr Slater adds – a feat that could be compared to selling ice to Eskimos.

“I have mates who come back from Scotland and say, ‘I can’t believe it. I was in a Glasgow railway station and I bought a Byron Bay Cookie Company shortbread’.”

Despite the company’s continuing success and Slater International’s growing portfolio of companies and brands, Mr Slater says the pleasures of his job are simple.

“I get to taste a lot of cookies and I eat a lot of them.

“Watching people interact with the product – laughing, smiling and enjoying it – is also wonderful. It is a really fantastic thing.”