If he were a teenager today, Andrew Gray might have ended up an apprentice at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Melbourne. He is now CEO of distribution and production company Raw Materials, a Melbourne-based firm specialising in gourmet pantry and deli items. But the Bendigo-raised Gray wasn't enamoured by school and was politely asked to leave in Year 10.

"In a way I was saved by my love of food and cooking," Gray said, rummaging around his Raw Ingredients' warehouse. He had just shown me in his coolroom samples of wagyu and Australian-made beef prosciutto so it was obvious he doesn't love just any food. And Australia's top chefs, including Shannon Bennett, Tetsuya Wakuda, Neil Perry and Stefano de Pieri, reap the benefits of his commitment to quality.

Gray trained to be a chef at Geelong's Gordon Institute, cooked briefly in Bendigo and Melbourne, worked with renowned providores Mario Duso (US) and Simon Johnson (Sydney), and became an accredited cheese judge. Despite that he said it was his mother who was his biggest influence.

"A lot of the recipes we have come from my mother," he said, explaining that she had taken him aside and reminded him of that when he had once talked about "his pasta sauce". But he reminded his mother that she received the recipe from his grandmother! "My mother still makes her own pasta sauces," he said. "She is passionate about food and loves cooking. I found it quite hard when I became an apprentice [chef] and all of a sudden someone opened a can of, heaven forbid, tomato paste!"

For Gray, a born foodie who for his ninth birthday received eight potty calves from his father, it's either the highest quality produce or nothing. After working for Simon Johnson and King Island Dairy, Gray four years ago thought he had enough knowledge of fine food, distribution and marketing to start his own business. So he did what any intelligent businessperson does - he established a business plan, a marketing plan, attracted some capital . . .

. . .well, actually, none of the above.

"We started with nothing," he said, "not even enough to put carpet on the floors. The business was started on a credit card - $5,000 and off we go!"

Raw Materials today has a turnover of $5 million per year and it's growing. The company's top-of-the-range imported, local and in-house produced seafood, dairy, condiments, larder, pantry and sweet products are in demand all over Australia - and the world. And apart from David Jones and some major hotels, Raw Materials' success has mainly been achieved by selling to high-end - but low volume - retailers.

"People like Passionfoods [Melbourne], About Life, Macro, About Thyme, Paddington Fresh [Sydney] - and small delis and food stores. I've always had the philosophy that small fish taste sweeter," he said. "It's not about the big majors, it's about the little delis in the suburbs or seaside towns."

Gray said most of the outlets he supplied were in close proximity to major supermarkets, meaning Raw Materials had to supply them with competitively priced, but higher quality products. He explained that, in the early days of the company, one of the manufacturing agencies with which he worked launched product into Coles and Safeway. Gray asked them for a different offering for Raw Materials.

"And they said no," he recalled. "I realised my business was built on these people controlling my business when really it should be the other way around. So I got together with a friend and we invested in machinery and after three months we launched a competitive product into the marketplace. That agency rang me up and said, 'What are you doing? I said, 'Well, I am now your competitor and I know who all of your customers are."

Gray said most distributors just accepted products from manufacturers and that was almost the extent of the relationship. By contrast, he thinks the manufacturer-distributor relationship should be one of total honesty.

"With give our manufacturers our stockist's lists; we want them to know where their products are. We embrace our manufacturers. We share information, get them out on the road with the sales team . . . We are also pretty fussy about the products we take on."

Yoghurt cheese, cabernet vinegar, lavosh, olives, grissini - as long as it's the best of its kind, Gray wants it - and produces it (his 20 top selling items have the Raw Materials brand). And, what's more, Australia's best chefs want his products, too.

"People like Shannon Bennett, the great chefs, their food is not that complicated. You look at it and most of the time you can break it down to four products on a plate, and a marriage of four flavours. It's not 15 things and I think that's what I love in food," he said.

Gray's foodie background was very helpful recently when an overstretched Stefano de Pieri rang him on the eve of an event at which the celebrity chef was cooking.

"He rings me up: 'Andrew, I need an entree for 150 people, what can you suggest? And I'm short on time'," Gray said laughing. "He was run off his feet, and I said, 'Hot smoked salmon, that's easy. Serve it with a salsa verde or something like that, put your own spin on it and we can get that down there for you on Friday."

Gray added that, as well as Raw Materials' quality and its commitment to smaller retailers, the company's refrigerated logistics record really set it apart.

"Most companies of our size, or even larger, don't know how to do refrigerated logistics Australia-wide, whereas we do that and do it very well. We've got relationships with several different freight companies, centralised warehousing here and an office in Sydney," Gray said.

Raw Materials' chicken, vegetable and veal cooking stocks (under the Moredough Kitchens brand) have been amongst the company's most successful offerings. Many in the industry told Gray three years ago that it was impossible to produce a low salt, preservative- and additive-free stock. He proved everyone wrong and last year sold half a million units. Mike Murray from Prestige Foods was the only one who trusted Gray's crazy stock idea and the relationship between the two companies now extends to export.

"We send to New Zealand, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, and we've had interest in the Japan market for the stock pouches so we're working on the labels and packaging now."

Effective packaging is another area of passion for Gray. He said he loves watching people shop - if you see a guy hanging around the aisles, trying to look inconspicuous as he pushes his trolley or carries his basket, that will be Andrew Gray. He said that in packaging the most important factor was to realise that customers often stand up to five feet away from the shelves. Gray uses large type and clear images - or product windows - so consumers are attracted to the Raw Materials range and know exactly what's on offer.

There seems no limit to Gray's enthusiasm for his work. He told the story of seeing a woman walk out of one of Sydney's premium stores, AC Butchers, carrying an armful of his veal stock packs, but no meat. He quizzed her and found out she bought her meat locally and had travelled 20 kilometres to get her hands on his stock.

"So I jumped in the car, programmed my GPS and went and saw her local butcher," Gray laughed.

If you want to get a job done well it's important to have the right raw materials. Passion and commitment to quality seem to be the main ones in Andrew Gray's larder. And, of course, love for his Mum's home cooking . . .