Page 30 - Food & Drink Business Magazine September 2018

INGREDIENTS
✷ HIGH POINT
TYRANNY OF
DISTANCE
Ensuring the smooth operation of a manufacturing plant can present unusual challenges to a regional operation like Snowy Mountains Cookies.
“Because we are isolated geographically, we are very aware of the importance of maintaining our machinery,” says Nolen Oayda, co-founder of Snowy Mountains Cookies.
“We employ two mechanics in our facility and they are constantly servicing our equipment”.
Freight is another part of the formula that the business can struggle to control.
“We may be able to find five suppliers for one particular ingredient, but three of them will say: ‘Oh gosh, you are in Jindabyne. I can’t send it to you there’. Or they might say: ‘We can send it, but the freight cost will be enormous’.
“So we always try to ensure we have two suppliers for each ingredient, so we always have a backup plan”.
But this is all part of the regional challenge the business willingly embraces, he says, with its location in the Snowies considered a
key part of its identity.
introduction of a savoury range. Oayda says it took them a year to create something that was unique, that could also be run through the existing process equipment.
The business now has three separate offerings: Snowy Mountains Cookies, Snowy Mountains Savoury, and Snowy Mountains Snacks — comprising muesli and snack bars.
And while the sweet products remain their flagship, he says the business now actually makes more money from savoury items.
“Savoury has been good to us. And the beauty is they don’t cannibalise each other as they
are completely different markets.”
As well as servicing eight airlines, the business
also supplies many cafes, and provides contract
manufacturing services to a
number of brands, in what is an increasingly competitive space. In the meantime, Oayda says
the price of ingredients continues to rise.
“There is this constant, eternal struggle to get better at what we do to cope with price increases from our suppliers,” he says.
purchase imperfectly formed cookies.
The business has also made a significant investment in a new IT system, which can now track everything from the flow of ingredients to the management of accounts, providing superior reporting capabilities to help managers control costs.
“ We have no preservatives in any of our ingredients... and our cookies are free of artificial colours and flavours, yet we can have a 12-month shelf life on them.”
“We’ve just won a new contract, but it was initially at a price that didn’t make much sense for us. So we went back to the drawing board and totally restructured everything we did.
“We looked at the systems that we’d had in place for a few years, and then said: ‘Lets turn this upside down and look at it in a completely new way’.”
An example is the way the cookie manufacturer has turned waste products into a revenue stream through its factory outlet store in
Jindabyne, where visitors can
ABOVE: Nolen and Daisy Oayda.
LEFT: The company’s savoury range is available on airlines.
Dealing directly with all of its customers is a strategy that has always worked well for the manufacturer. This, however,
is another area of the business that has now come under review, says Oayda, as they begin to target smaller, family- sized distributors with close connections to their customers.
“We have revamped our pricing, packaging and shipping to embrace these new markets in a very controlled manner, through partners that understand our story, what we are selling, and what we stand for,” Oayda says.
“We are a Snowy Mountains manufacturer, living the dream, and making cookies from wholesome, tasty ingredients. Thatisouruniquestory.” ✷
30 | Food&Drink business | September 2018 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au