The smart cookies at Kooka's and Waratah have put the small country town on the map here and overseas, writes ANDREW MOLE

Donald, discreetly, has become the biscuit capital of Victoria.

Not your common, mass-produced muck either.

We are talking artisans - a craft lovingly hand-tended and produced in small operations.

They are so out-of-the-way you would not even know were there as you whiz by along the Sunraysia Highway on your way from one big place to the next.

It all started with Kooka's almost 20 years ago.

Some spare space in the old meatworks suddenly became cookie central.

While it might have seemed the most unlikely address for a success story, this small regional hub, which caters mostly to croppers and graziers, was about to reinvent itself.

Not once, but twice.

And between them, Kooka's, and new player Waratah, have just about wrapped up the national market - and now started exporting.

Kooka's factory manager Dwain Dempsey is a local, born and bred.

He has been with the company for the past four years and just loves his biscuits.

All 648,000 they put through on an average week.

More are pumped out in the winter months when those nights in front of the fire and the telly boost demand for even more cookies.

"The business started out serving the local market, just in surrounding towns," Dwain says.

"But it was such a good product it grew quickly and the big two, Coles and Woolies, soon started stocking the product.

"Today they are the core of the business.

"We do some sports clubs locally, and our distributors still do some motels and functions with our single-wrap biscuits but we are mostly about the volume business through the big supermarkets."

But being the big bikkie in town is not all beer and skittles.

Kooka's does four varieties in its 500-gram packs, another four in the 200 grams and six for the individual wraps.

While they might dream up the flavours over a cuppa and a biscuit of an afternoon, setting them up is a very technical business.

It requires the food scientists from Melbourne to come up and fine-tune every blend so the formula is correct and consistent.

"We have also just switched to using 100 per cent vegetable oil, cutting out all animal fat," Dwain says.

"And we've changed our thickener, which also needs to be juggled with the seasons and changes in temperature.

"Once we are in production, we run two shifts a day. Three when it's really busy for about five months of the year."

Dwain says Kooka's also attracts employees from far and wide.

Five of its staff of 20 come from St Arnaud, but one family moved from Queensland for the job.

There was mum, three boys and one daughter.

Two brothers and the daughter are still on staff and mum comes in when things get busy.

And if you were wondering about the name, well, Dwain says there is a bit of urban myth to it.

He says the story goes that the four founding owners were standing around the meatworks after they had come up with the idea for the cookie factory, wondering what to call it.

"Suddenly a kookaburra laughed and they decided there and then that would do."

Waratah's Graeme Harris says his company has no fancy story about its name.

It was called Waratah when it was acquired in Melbourne and relocated to Donald.

It has a second business, Eat Well, which produces organic and vegetarian food.

And while Waratah is not a big name on supermarket shelves, Eat Well is.

Its tofu has just been placed in 600 Woolies stores nationally, and is already in Coles.

There is also a range of vegie patties, snags, soy cheese and, if you are that way inclined, tofu.

"When the two businesses were being run in Melbourne, one in Moorabbin and one in Mordialloc, I think they employed a total of seven or eight people," Graeme says.

"Now we employ 30. I think this proves we have the skills in regional areas to be competitive in the open market.

"The operation is so good we are now doing contract production for companies in Melbourne and sending food back down there.

"Our Anzac biscuits are going as far as the US - they just love them there - and demand for our products across the board is always on the rise."

Like Kooka's, Waratah and Eat Well also provide an unexpected employment opportunity in the region and, with 30 staff on the books, is probably the biggest private player in the market.

Graeme says staff come from Wycheproof, St Arnaud and Charlton and Russians, Indians and Vietnamese work alongside the locals.

"It has also been such a help for farming families during the drought, providing off-farm employment which, in some cases, may well have literally put food on the table," he says.

While it was doing that, both companies and their staff were putting a lot of treats on tables around Australia - and beyond.

So Donald, it turns out, gets the last laugh - in kookaburra speak.