Wixted Catering & Consulting Announces Unique Partnership: Creating the Largest Food, Drink & Hospitality Innovation, Experience & Venture Agency in Australia

DARWIN, Australia and LONDON, March 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Wixted Catering & Consulting has announced it is joining forces with Xpert Innovation and World of Zing, to create the largest Food, Drink & Hospitality innovation, experience and venture consultancy in Australia, Wixted Innovation, specialising in the food, drink and hospitality industries.

The partnership will focus on helping Australian companies grow the share of their food, drinks and hospitality business both locally and in the global marketplace. Their vision is to bring food and drink ideas to life, new products, brands and services to market and to co-venture new businesses with clients and other food entrepreneurs.

The partnership brings together Wixted Catering & Consulting founders, foodtpreneurs, catering company founders, product developers and identical twin brothers Andy & Mark Wixted with award winning Xpert Innovation founder Greg Wixted and World of Zing founder Pritesh Mody.

Wixted Catering is Darwin based and set up but the Wixted brothers, Mark is also consulting head lecturer and assessor in Commercial Cookery charged with training the next generation of chefs. Together with Andy oversees an ever-growing portfolio from FoodTech, recruitment, restaurants, specialist catering ventures  to Schools & Co, a new and innovate approach to school catering, whereby students work with chefs, nutritionists and designers to create healthy school food and a canteen space they love in their school.  They both have consulted on food and drink product development and innovation projects, for leading global brands.

Xpert Innovation is a consulting firm based in Europe and the Middle East. For the past ten years, Xpert has worked with clients including Bakkavor, Blue Skies, Hearst, Sanrio, Diageo, ABS, Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts and has a portfolio of start-ups spanning the UK, USA, Spain, Serbia and the Maldives.

World of Zing is often recognised as one of the UK's most innovative drink entrepreneurs. It brings exciting moment of mixology and cocktail innovation to a wider audience, operating from one of Europe's most advanced cocktail labs - including Molecular Mixology and Cocktail Ageing facilities. When not developing products for their 200 or so trade clients, the team can be found helping global brands like Diageo create unique drinking experiences.

Together, they are on a mission is to help companies rapidly create and test on-trend, first to market, high growth food and drink ideas and experiences consumers love. They do it by applying their Rapid Entrepreneurial Innovation (REI) model and a page from the Agile playbook which accelerates the time to market. It instils a culture of customer first thinking, data and insight driven decisions, a love of food and your product, rapid experimentation and iteration of the idea through testing and feedback until it is ready to launch.

Zealous opposers of the 'one size fits all' innovation approach, the companies run real food, drinks & hospitality businesses both in Australia and internationally, and know what it takes to develop great, tasty, innovative and immersive food experiences.

They innovate with entrepreneurial spirt and agility - while others are still thinking how to respond to a client's brief, they will have already started to invent fresh, new, first to market ideas. 

"Consumers are looking for differentiated products that cater to their needs, but more so they want to see companies offer added value, not just authentic, healthy and high-quality ingredients," said Mark Wixted.

"We really want to focus in on creating value-adding opportunities for Australian products in key growth areas. These include health and wellbeing, premium convenience foods, and sustainability-driven products that reduce waste or use less resources, traceability and provenance and food safety.

"But, more importantly, we want to grow the skills and knowledge base of people in the industry here. We started by training all our teams in innovation and new product development (NPD) and will be offering our style of training to all food and drink companies in Australia."

The key driver for the business with be working with companies to help deliver increased productivity, sustainable economic growth, job creation, and investment attraction to the food, drinks and hospitality sectors. Through this partnership, Wixted Catering and Consulting will be able to offer its expertise for not only the Australian market but internationally.

To coincide with the announcement, Wixted Innovation has released its first food & drinks insight report, What will Eat and How will be Buy It and Consume it in Australia in 2020. For more information visit Wixted Innovation   Schools & Co   World of Zing  We Are Xpert  

About Andy and Mark Wixted

Mark Wixted - Born in Limerick, Ireland in 1980, Mark trained at Killybegs College before working at numerous 5 star hotels including the Liebherr Group. At 23, he was Head Chef at Limerick's fine dining bistro, Freddy's Bistro and in 2009, Mark was made Head Chef of the Absolute Hotel. That year also saw Mark awarded with the title Irish National BBQ Champion. In 2013, Mark moved to Darwin as Head Chef of Monsoons. In 2017, Mark opened NT's first traditional fish and chip shop with his brother.

Andrew Wixted - Andrew attended the same catering college as Mark and has worked in many fine dining restaurants, winning 2 AA Rosettes. Andrew, along with Mark, won the title Irish National BBQ Champion in 2009. The following year Andrew went travelling and found himself in Darwin, where he subsequently married. Andrew set up his first restaurant in 2014, The Rodeo Steakhouse in Noonamah and, the following year, he took on the Palmerston Golf Club kitchen. He still manages both of these operations. In 2017, Andrew opened The Chippy Dinah Beach with Mark, along with Wixted Catering, an event based catering company with a consultancy offering.

About Greg Wixted, co-founder Xpert Innovation:

Sibling to Andy and Mark, Greg has advised and worked for some of the biggest brands on the planet. He is one of the co-founders of Xpert Innovation with offices in London and the Middle East, he has deep understanding of consumer behaviour, agile thinking, innovation and venturing and know what it takes to bring product to the global stage. He is also co-professor at the University of North Carolina teaching undergraduate entrepreneurship at their London campus.

About Pritesh Mody, founder World of Zing:

Pritesh is passionate about innovating the drink industry and so started the World of Zing. He is now recognised as one of the best in the business. Those in the UK wake up to Pritesh on a Sunday as he discusses his latest drinks and cocktails on Channel's 4 Sunday Brunch.

Links to further information:

Food & drinks insight report: What will Eat and How will be Buy It and Consume it in Australia in 2020. For more information visit:  Wixted Innovation   Schools & Co   World of Zing  We Are Xpert

SOURCE Wixted Catering & Consultancy