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You may not have heard of Beak & Johnston, but, given that the group has annual sales in excess of $300 million, exports to over 15 countries and produces one of Australia’s most successful private-label brands, it’s worth taking note.

Beak & Johnston was established in 1986 to supply value-added meats, ready-to-serve soups and ribs to retail and restaurant clients. The company now encompasses six separate businesses: Beak & Johnston, Commissary Food Company (CFC) and BeakNZ and joint ventures Beak A La Carte, Cleavers Organic Meats and Kobeak Foods in Seoul, Korea.

Beak & Johnston’s major customer is Woolworths, but they also supply a number of large fast casual and casual dining restaurant chains.

During its 26 years in operation, Beak & Johnston has experienced almost constant sales growth, which has accelerated in recent years and the company has now reached the point where it needs to expand significantly to continue to meet demand.

Two new food processing facilities – one for ready meals and one for case-ready meats – are on the cards. One of them – it’s not yet been decided which – will be co-located with company’s existing operations in Greenacre, Western Sydney, increasing it from 10,000m2 to 15,000m2. Beak & Johnston is aiming for them both to be completed in the next 18 months.

At the ready

The fastest growing areas of the company are its ready meals business and its Mr Beak’s Sausage brand. Its subsidiary CFC was started by a group of Michelin-starred chefs, who endeavoured to industrialise restaurant quality meals. CFC has won a number of awards for its ready meals, including Woolworths Private Label Supplier of the Year 2011; Woolworths Supplier of the Year 2011 – Delicatessen; and Finalist Overall Supplier of the Year 2011.

Beak & Johnston merged its soups and meals business with CFC’s meal business in 2011 when it acquired the business and renovated its Greenacre facility to expand its capacity and capabilities. Beak says the company invested a lot of money in new technology to automate the meal lines, so it can produce the meals faster and more consistently which has also led to a major improvement in product quality. It has also built a high care room to keep bacteria levels as low as possible.

“If you want to avoid things like preservatives, you’ve got to run a really clean operation,” says Beak. “The meals are chilled from 90oC when they’re cooked to 0oC within four hours.”

CFC is the largest supplier of fresh ready meals and soups to Woolworths nationally under the Woolworths, Emily’s Kitchen and House of India brands. These two supermarket brands are pioneers of the next-generation premium ready meals. Emily’s Kitchen is carefully presented as an authentic alternative to home cooking, while House of India is positioned to take on the huge Indian takeaway market. Carefully eschewing any mention of Woolworths, they are both branded to look like premium brand products.

Unlike their frozen counterparts, which are usually buried at the back of the supermarket in the freezer aisle, these freshly-made, chilled products usually take centre stage alongside the fresh fruit and vegetables at the front of the store. Today’s time-poor consumer is no longer satisfied with stodgy, frozen ready meals. They want fresh, healthy products of a premium quality and, as a result, the Australian chilled ready meals market is experiencing double-digit growth.

What is more, the premium positioning of chilled meals allows retailers to charge a higher price point and use better quality ingredients. In this respect, CFC’s chilled meals contain no preservatives or additives and only the best fresh ingredients daily from local suppliers. Its meals are made daily and distributed nationally overnight, so they can be available in store the next morning.

“Michelin-starred chefs developed the original recipes and we use bones to make stock for the products, which makes a real difference to the taste,” Beak says. “We don’t use powders, we make them as you would at home or in the finest restaurants.

“It’s really about using the best possible fresh ingredients to create restaurant quality meals.”
It’s tough manufacturing food and beverage products in Australia in the current climate, but Beak & Johnston is making it work.

“We’ve built our business model around supplying supermarkets and that’s how we run our business,” says Beak. “We firmly believe that unless a product has got something really unique about it, it shouldn’t be branded.”

Sausages with sizzle

For this reason, Beak says the company thought “long and hard” before deciding to brand its Mr Beak’s sausages. Prior to launching the brand, Beak & Johnston carried out consumer research that revealed consumers buy their ‘everyday sausages’ from the supermarket, but if they want a gourmet sausage, they will go to the butcher shop.

“We just said, ‘Well why don’t we create a sausage that is better than anything in the butchers’ shops?’ and that’s really how this project started,” Beak says.

The company took almost three years to develop a unique, patented process to produce the sausages. It uses the whole carcass to create the sausages, which means they contain a lot more meat (up to 93 per cent) than standard sausages. Normal sausages are made with the bits that are left behind after the main cuts of meat have been stripped from the carcass. The company is not vertically integrated, but Beak says that it’s invested in the abattoirs to get this new technology to work.

Beak explains that the animals used to produce standard sausages are hung for up to a week, but Beak & Johnston chills the meat within 40 minutes of slaughter to reduce the bacteria count and, because the meat hasn’t gone through rigor mortis, the meat is much sweeter and juicier. This process makes the meat naturally stickier, so binders don’t need to be added and only a little water is required to keep it moist. The sausages are also gluten free, MSG free, contain no artificial flavours or colours and are made with 100 per cent Australian Hunter Valley beef.
Currently, Mr Beak’s sausages are available in three varieties – The Original, Smoky Chorizo, and Spicy Salsa – from Thomas Dux, Supabarn and nationally in Woolworths.

Beak & Johnston’s patented process means the sausages are around 10 per cent more expensive than regular sausages to produce and are sold at a slight premium, but Beak says that consumers seem willing to pay extra for the superior quality.

Beak & Johnston’s marketing efforts are fairly low key. Apart from a couple of ads in the Donna Hay magazine the company is relying on word of mouth to grow the brand. It has also created a ‘Mr Beak’s ute’ with a pull-out BBQ which it is taking to charity events, such as the Bondi Nippers, Royal Childrens Hospital, Avner Nahmani Pancreatic Cancer Foundation and Camp Quality, where it sells sausages and then donates the proceeds to charity.

Looking ahead, the company is launching Mr Beak’s burgers in May and developing products using its patented process for the Japanese and possibly the Korean market.

“We’ve also got new chilled ready meals in the pipeline and a number of new meat products,” says Beak. “There’s always a lot of innovation [at Beak & Johnston] and 40 per cent of everything we sell has been developed within the last three years.

“We’re very much about driving innovation in our business.”

Given this level of innovation and the success of its new products, it’s unlikely that Beak & Johnston will be able to stay under the radar for long.

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