The Byron Bay Cookie Company has maintained a 17 per cent year-on-year growth and 32 per cent growth in offshore sales in 2009-2010. It boasts a clientele of 9,000 independent cafes and delis in Australia and worldwide, including 500 cafes in inner city of London. The products are also available on Amazon.com and since the company revamped its website in January, online sales have gone up by 50 per cent in Australia.

Slater, a once enterprising child who would sell his family’s backyard chokos for one cent each, doesn’t shy away from taking risks and as the global financial crisis gripped world markets, launched Byron Bay Cookie products in the US.

“Once we had decided we will do it, we examined the cost base and appointed a person who set up a home office and outsourced warehousing. We kept it skinny, but aggressively moved with distribution throughout the US and Canada”, says Slater, who is also a practising orthopaedic surgeon.

He ranks quality as the key to growth. “We are very emotional about our product which we have painstakingly perfected over 20 years. We have consistently maintained top quality while continuously introducing new flavours and improving older ones with better ingredients,” he says.

“It is the real, fresh flavour of chocolate and fruit that sets our products apart as we do not use preservatives.”

While the cookies, which each sell for between $2 and $3.50, are on the indulgent end of the market, they are not the most expensive.

Recently, the company has added three more brands, Luken & May biscuits, Falwasser crispbreads and the Byron Bay Bakehouse brand, to its portfolio.

The company has released a special edition Rocky Road cookie to celebrate its 20th birthday this year.

While creating sweet delights, the company aims to leave a minimum carbon footprint. The award-winning products, which include gluten-free, dairy-free and reduced-fat ranges, are largely made from local ingredients, packaged in biodegradable plastic and staff are given incentives for riding a bicycle to work.

“In the UK, food miles, which requires food produce to be locally sourced otherwise some companies can’t deal with you, is big. It is for this very reason, we have some of the product lines made under license in Manchester. It was a huge decision to make as I had liked the fact that we were producing everything in Australia and exporting it,” Slater says.

Slater still finds human resources the greatest challenge in any small business. “If you have smart, motivated people you don’t have to watch over their shoulder than you can progress quite rapidly, but if you don’t get that right, you can’t get anywhere no matter how good your product is,” he says. “We need people with a very good palate for flavour and good managerial skills.”

Slater says in the coming years the company will expand the product range to bars, savoury and grocery lines, and focus on the US market. It will also look for local partners to market products in China and India.

“I have faith in the product and the vision to expand and keep challenging the boundaries,” says Slater.

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