When the company’s first baker, Edward Halsey, began preparing the first Sanitarium products in January 1898, he was driven by a desire to offer Australians healthier alternatives to the low nutrient and fat-laden foods that were common at the time. Trained at Battle Creek Sanitarium and invited to Australia by Willie White, he rented a small bakery in Northcote, Melbourne, where he produced the country’s first batch of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals. These included Granola (made of wheats, oats, maize and rye) and Granose (the unsweetened forerunner to Weet-Bix), as well as peanut butter, which had been patented by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg in 1895. By April 1898, Sanitarium Health Food Agency was registered as a business.

It wasn't long before the fledgling company relocated to larger premises adjacent to Avondale College in Cooranbong, New South Wales, just south of Newcastle. The existing sawmill on the property was converted into the new bakery to save money.

Like many businesses during this time of economic depression, it was a constant struggle to source working capital, but with much perseverance, sales began to climb.

In 1901, Halsey transferred to Christchurch, New Zealand, where he began making Granola, caramel cereals and bread for a health home.

In 1902, as the popularity of Sanitarium products grew, the company began opening cafés around Australia that offered customers wholesome, plant-based foods and cooking demonstrations. The first was located in Pitt Street, Sydney.

Again, operating funds were tight, but under the leadership of manager George Fisher, the Sydney café became a profitable business.

He asked one of the first café workers, Laura Lee, to train his café staff and give lectures and cooking demonstrations to the public on nutrition and the preparation of healthy meals. Miss Lee also experimented with new foods at the Avondale factory and became a renowned figure for her contributions to the health food work of the company.

The café concept aimed to introduce people to a healthier way of living and was embraced by the community.

One customer was so impressed by the café fare when he visited the Sydney store in 1905 that he wrote asking for another meal to be prepared so that he could show his friends – more than 450 kilometres away! This prompted the Company to begin selling its products by mail order.

Over a six-month period in 1904, the Pitt St cafe served 8,000 customers. By 1939, this had increased to almost 100,000 customers over an equivalent period.

George Fisher went on to open cafés in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Hobart in Australia, as well as Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin in New Zealand.

Sanitarium cafes and health food stores flourished for decades, but by 1988 changes in the buying habits of consumers prompted the company to close these outlets in order to partner with the growing supermarket age.

By this stage Sanitarium had developed a strong food production and distribution division which accounted for almost 90% of the business, establishing itself as a significant supplier to the grocery industry.

However, the foods sampled and sold in the cafes and retail shops introduced the public to many of Sanitarium’s now iconic products that are still produced today.

The first company-owned vehicle was a decrepit horse and old dray that carried raw materials from Morisset to the factory and the manufactured goods to the train station for delivery to Sydney. By 1902, both were so worn that a 35 foot launch 'Avondale' was built to transport finished product down Dora Creek to the station.

In the very early days in Sydney, one or two men pushed a hand cart up and down the streets selling product, but by the 1900s it became the job of horses and drays. As business improved in the early 1920s, sales representatives were supplied with motor bikes and sidecars. The first Weet-Bix vehicles were ten Chevrolet vans. In the 1930s, most branch managers proudly drove grey Buick cars.

Sanitarium purchased the first of many large vans in both Australia and New Zealand around 1928. These are fondly remembered for the beautiful artwork on the side and rear panels. In 1934, 'Big Bertha', a large Leyland truck that could fill a rail goods wagon with one load, was used to make quicker trips by road.

Sanitarium was an early pioneer in the export of foods to international markets, and was making its mark on South-East Asia as early as 1905. The company opened a small warehouse in Clarence St, Sydney – convenient to the wharves. Company records indicate initial shipments to Singapore in 1906, and within a few years sales were being recorded in South Africa, India, China, Malaysia, Burma and throughout the Pacific Islands.

After World War I, Sanitarium moved its warehouse to Sussex St, and local wholesalers began buying its products and exporting them. By this stage meat substitutes Protose and Nutmeat, baked beans, savory lentils, and vegetarian sausages were all being produced. As the trade developed, Sanitarium appointed local merchants to act as agents in various markets, such as stationing a representative in Singapore in 1935 to look after its interests in South-East Asia. Sanitarium widened its product range and export trade after World War II, expanding into Africa, the Middle East, Mauritius, the Persian Gulf and North America.

In the 1940s and early 1950s, the company’s manufacturing facilities continued to expand to meet this demand. Factories were built or bought in all capital cities of Australia and were also established or expanded in New Zealand at Auckland, Palmerston North and Christchurch.

By 1987, Sanitarium opened a new distribution centre at Castle Hill in Sydney for all of the company’s products in New South Wales and a base for the growing export business in Asia, the Far East and the South Pacific.

It soon became apparent that the capacity of the Cooranbong factory was unable to meet demand, so a new factory at Berkeley Vale was opened in 1995.

Today, Sanitarium exports to 44 countries around the world, including its largest export market, China.

Sanitarium’s approach to advertising has always been guided by the principles of reliability, trustworthiness and good nutrition. In the early years, the best form of promotion for Sanitarium products came via word of mouth recommendations and referrals from chemists and doctors, as the foods were sold on their health benefits.

The first advertisement for Sanitarium appeared in Melbourne’s The Bible Echo, in 1897. Prior to 1920, most of the advertising conducted by the company was done by local retailers, who would put products on display in their windows.

In October 1922, the decision was made to begin placing advertisements in the leading newspapers in capital cities and some of the larger towns around the country. The first official campaign began later that year. By the mid-1920s, Sanitarium had become a household name.

The new medium of radio was explored during the 1920s and 1930s. Various programs including ‘Quiz of Quizzers’ and Queenie Ashton’s ‘Kommonsense Kitchen Klub’ were sponsored by Sanitarium at this time. Late in 1930, Sanitarium moved into gift-coupons, which were a popular advertising strategy of the day. The practice of inserting collector cards in boxes of Sanitarium Weet-Bix began in 1942, and continues with collectible stickers today.

From the mid-forties onwards, Sanitarium’s advertising campaigns began to address the changing nature of the Australian breakfast. During the 1960s and 1970s, Joan Bateman presented a weekly ‘Taste for Food’ TV segment which demonstrated vegetarian cooking techniques using Sanitarium products. Television advertisements for Sanitarium products began appearing from the early 1960s. One of the earliest advertisements was for its Honey Weets breakfast cereal.

The Company strategically held cooking demonstrations on local television wherever they had retail shops and in new shopping centres, seeing direct results in the sales figures.

As the era of the retail health food shops drew to a close, in October 1987, the company launched a professional support system to champion nutrition education, which drew on its long history of teaching the benefits of plant-based eating.

The Sanitarium Nutrition Service operated for 21 years and greatly influenced Sanitarium’s nutrition reputation with government and consumers. The team answered thousands of consumer enquiries about nutrition and vegetarianism, published cookery books, gave cooking demonstrations and attended trade fairs, before folding to invest in future ways to engage people in health and wellbeing.

However, the service lives on today through Sanitarium’s Nutrition Insights team, which supports the development of educational materials and recipes, provides nutrition advice for product development and plays an important role working with government and industry on food industry policies. The team also supports the “Ask a Nutritionist” inquiry line, continuing this free service for consumers.

Sanitarium’s Advanced Nutrition Unit is a small team dedicated to identifying and developing solutions for people living with altered or diagnosed nutritional needs. Its first product, Weet-Bix Cholesterol Lowering, was launched in 2017 and is the first cereal in Australia to include the Heart Foundation’s recommended two grams of plant sterols per serve. In recognition of this innovation, Weet-Bix Cholesterol Lowering was named Australian Healthy Food Guide’s 2017 Product of the Year. The Advanced Nutrition Unit is currently partnering with research organisations such as the Hunter Medical Research Institute, CSIRO and leading clinical researchers from several Australian Universities.

In keeping with Sanitarium’s ethos of nutrition and healthy living, Sanitarium also partners with a range of charities, both locally and throughout the South Pacific.

Good Start Breakfast Clubs, run in partnership with Foodbank Australia, Kickstart for Kids and the Australian Red Cross, give thousands of disadvantaged children a healthy start to their day while promoting good social and learning outcomes, equating to over 1.5 million serves of Weet-Bix, So Good and Marmite products each year. Sanitarium has also partnered with Foodbank Australia since 2010 through a collaborative pack arrangement, to tackle the serious issue of food security. This has resulted in over 2.3 million serves of Weet-Bix product donated to the many Australians seeking food assistance.

Sanitarium has been a partner of World Vision since 1984, contributing a total of over $400,000 to support the 40 hour famine and the Youth Ambassador Programme.