Sign InTry for Free

Built by a Brisbane dietitian in 1989

about foodworks

Foodworks exists because a dietitian needed it to. Chester Goodsell was working in clinical practice in the late 1980s and couldn't find the nutritional analysis software he needed. So he built it. Three decades later, Foodworks is relied on by hospitals, universities, food manufacturers, and private practices throughout Australia and New Zealand. The company behind Foodworks is Xyris, still based in Brisbane, still building for dietitians and other nutrition professionals across the region.

How we got here

In 1989, the options for nutrition analysis in Australia were limited. International tools existed, but none of them understood Australian food composition data, and none of them were built for how Australian dietitians actually worked. Chester Goodsell, a dietitian with a background in information technology, decided to close that gap himself.

The first product was Diet/1, a DOS-based nutrient calculation tool designed specifically for Australian clinicians. In 1996, it became Foodworks Professional for Windows. In 2003, when FSANZ introduced a new Food Standards Code, the team launched Foodworks Nutrition Labelling to help food manufacturers meet the new requirements.

Each version was built in response to a real need from the people using it and that’s still how the product evolves. In 2012, Xyris released Easy Diet Diary, a free mobile app that gives everyday Australians access to the same food composition data that professionals rely on. When a patient tracks their food in Easy Diet Diary, that data flows directly into the dietitian’s Foodworks analysis. It’s one connected workflow.

In 2021, the team rebuilt Foodworks for the cloud. The desktop product that thousands of professionals had relied on for decades became Foodworks Online, accessible from any device, anywhere.

Chester passed away in November 2020, before the cloud product launched. The team carries his work forward with the same commitment he started with: build for Australian professionals, get the data right, and stay close to the people who use the product.

Three brands. One company.

    Nutrition analysis and food labelling software. Built on Australian and New Zealand food composition data. Used by dietitians, nutritionists, food technologists, universities, and researchers.

    A free food tracking app for patients and consumers. Built on the same Australian food data. Integrates directly with Foodworks so dietitians can analyse what their patients track.

    Visit Site

    The Brisbane-based company behind both products. Founded in 1989 by Chester Goodsell. Still run by people who understand clinical nutrition from the inside.

    Visit Site

Support from a small team of people who get it

Our Product Manager is a dietitian. So is our Accounts and Licensing Manager, who’s usually the first person you’ll speak to. Product development itself is guided by that dietetics background, so whether you’re calling or emailing, you’re talking to someone who actually understands nutrition software from the inside.

It shows in the harder conversations. A regulatory affairs manager asking about an edge case in allergen labelling gets someone who understands the Food Standards Code. A dietitian stuck on a complex dietary analysis can talk to someone who’s done that exact kind of analysis themselves.

It’s also why so many of our customers across Australia and New Zealand know our team by name. We’re small enough to actually know our customers, and we’ll stay on the phone with them until the problem’s sorted.

how we work

Meet the Brisbane-based team

    Declan G

    CEO & Managing Director

    CEO of Xyris, carrying forward our founder Chester’s legacy by building practical, reliable nutrition software people trust every day.

    Read More

    Declan G

    CEO & Managing Director

    Shian R J

    Product Manager, APD

    The Dietitian helping shape Xyris products through nutrition expertise, customer insight, and product strategy.

    Read More

    Shian R J

    Product Manager, APD

    Courtney M

    Accounts and Licensing Manager, APD

    Accounts and Licensing Manager, helping Foodworks users every day with support backed by real dietetics experience.

    Read More

    Courtney M

    Accounts and Licensing Manager, APD

    Paul L

    Product Designer

    Product Designer at Xyris, shaping the UI/UX across our whole suite so every product feels considered, whether you're a dietitian planning meals or a manufacturer working through labelling.

    Read More

    Paul L

    Product Designer

    Nicholas M

    Technical Manager

    Technical Manager splitting his time between project management and tech lead work, always hunting for the simplest way to solve a customer's problem.

    Read More

    Nicholas M

    Technical Manager

    Zac M

    Quality Assurance Analyst

    QA Analyst with a background in economics and a game developer's instinct for finding exactly where things break.

    Read More

    Zac M

    Quality Assurance Analyst

    Shelley S

    Developer

    Full stack developer with a UX mindset, focused on the small details that make Foodworks feel effortless to use.

    Read More

    Shelley S

    Developer

    Robbie R

    Developer

    The person who keeps the foundations of Foodworks.online steady, looking after the infrastructure and architecture the rest of the team builds on.

    Read More

    Robbie R

    Developer

    Brendan C

    Developer

    Full-stack developer who brings an engineer's eye for clear systems to hard problems, turning complexity into something easier to build and work with.

    Read More

    Brendan C

    Developer

Our guiding principles

Get the data right

Every number in Foodworks traces back to a verified source. Our customers make clinical and regulatory decisions based on our data. That responsibility shapes everything we build.

Stay close to the work

The product was built by a dietitian for dietitians. Our Product Manager is a dietitian. Our front line customer support is a dietitian. We attend the same conferences. We understand the workflows because we've done the work.

Pick up the phone

We're a small team and we intend to stay that way. Every customer who calls gets a person who knows their name and understands their question.

Built for here

Foodworks is built specifically for Australia and New Zealand. Not adapted from an international product. Not configured for the local market. Built for it, from the ground up.

Explore the software shaped by dietitians, decades in the making

Try Foodworks with a 14-day free trial of Duo giving you access to both Professional and Nutrition Labelling workspaces. No credit card required.

Try for FreeTalk to us

Declan G

Declan’s been CEO of Xyris since 2020, when he took over the business from his father after a terminal diagnosis. He’s spent the years since making sure the company stays true to Chester’s vision and close to the people it serves. He’s as likely to be working through a partnership with a hospital as he is to be testing a new feature or providing customer support.

That hands-on approach is how Declan stays close to what people actually need. It also means meeting customers face to face at conferences around Australia and New Zealand, where many already know him by name.

Carrying on his father’s legacy is personal work. Declan is committed to building nutrition analysis software that meets the needs of dietitians and food businesses in Australia and New Zealand. When customers describe Xyris as responsive, reliable, and serious about getting things right, that starts with Declan.

Shian R J

Shian is a dietitian and the Product Manager at Xyris, working at the intersection of nutrition science and digital health. She works closely with the team and users to turn complex nutrition evidence and food labelling legislation into tools that feel intuitive and trustworthy in practice.

Day-to-day that looks like a lot of conversations: With customers figuring out what is and isn’t working, with the team figuring out how to improve it, and occasionally deciphering some fairly dense legislation with Declan. Somehow she still always finds time to chat about her latest favourite coffee shop find around Brisbane.

Courtney M

Courtney came to Xyris as a dietitian, which means she understands the work Foodworks customers do because she’s done it herself. She now manages accounts, licensing, and front-line support across the entire Foodworks customer base.

For many Foodworks users, Courtney is the first person they speak with. Whether she’s helping a clinic get set up, troubleshooting an issue, answering subscription questions, or creating support materials for the website, her focus is always on making things clear and easy to navigate.

As a dietitian, Courtney brings strong industry understanding to her role. Customers across Australia and New Zealand know her as the friendly voice who’s genuinely invested in helping them get the most out of the software.

Paul L

Paul is the Product Designer at Xyris, leading UI/UX across the full product suite: Foodworks Nutrition Labelling, Foodworks Professional, and Easy Diet Diary. He joined Xyris in 2019 in Accounts Management, but with a Bachelor of Games and Interactive Entertainment behind him, it didn’t take long to realise his real passion was in design.

These days he works closely with Shian, translating her domain knowledge into interfaces and flows that make sense to the people actually using them. As the sole designer across the suite, Paul thinks carefully about consistency and craft, making sure each product feels considered, whether it’s a dietitian planning a client’s meals or a food manufacturer working through labelling requirements. Outside of work you’ll find him listening to vinyl, indulging in a good craft beer, playing video games or running around on the soccer field

Nicholas M

Nicholas is a Technical Manager at Xyris, splitting his time between project management and tech lead duties. He joined over six years ago, his first software role after five years in hospitality, and has been designing and building features ever since, always looking for creative ways to solve customer problems. A lot of his work is about getting to the crux of things: figuring out what exactly a customer is struggling with, then finding the simplest way to make that task easier. He also spends a good deal of time improving the design of the backend systems everything runs on.

Having come to Xyris from a background in competitive sport and a love of food, he enjoys building tools in a space that connects so naturally to both.

Zac M

Zac is the newest recruit to Xyris, bringing a background in economics and a natural eye for detail to his role as Quality Assurance Analyst. He’s the kind of person who notices the things others miss, which makes him well suited to making sure what Xyris ships works the way it should.

Outside of work, Zac builds games. A hobby that turns out to be surprisingly good training for QA. When you’ve spent your evenings thinking about how players might break your software, you bring a different kind of curiosity to testing someone else’s. He’s methodical, thorough, and quietly makes sure the details are right.

Shelley S

Shelley joined Xyris in early 2022 as a full stack developer, with a Bachelor of IT majoring in User Experience. She works across all of the Foodworks products, including our companion app Easy Diet Diary, moving between front-end and back-end depending on what each project needs.

Her UX background shapes her approach. Shelley cares as much about how something feels to use, as to whether it meets the spec. Polishing the details until something feels just right is the part of the work she finds most satisfying — a smoother flow through a common task, or a small interaction that quietly makes the day easier for the people relying on the software.

Robbie R

Robbie the person who keeps the foundations of Foodworks.online steady. He joined in 2021 to help move Foodworks’ dietary analysis software from its legacy roots onto a modern cloud platform, and he’s looked after the infrastructure and architecture underneath it ever since. It’s the behind-the-scenes plumbing the rest of the team builds on. A lot of his time goes on the trickier technical problems and the architectural decisions that shape how the platform fits together.

Outside work, Robbie’s a nerd at heart who spends his downtime tinkering on personal coding projects. He’s in the Brisbane office most of the week, where a Squidward cutout his teammates made keeps watch over his desk, the lasting result of one too many SpongeBob references. On work-from-home days that job falls to his senior cat, Chanel, supervising from the background of his Slack calls.

Brendan C

Brendan is a full-stack developer who joined Xyris at the beginning of the Foodworks.online journey. Prior to moving into software, Brendan graduated as a civil engineer and worked for many years as a project manager. That background shaped the way he approaches development: with a focus on clear systems and making complex problems easier to work with. As a self-taught developer, he brings both technical curiosity and a practical understanding of how products need to perform.

Outside work, Brendan is an obsessive rock climber and long-time van traveller. He has built, lived in, and worked remotely from vans across the world, and now works from the Blue Mountains. That mix of travel, climbing and remote work reflects the same curiosity, persistence and problem-solving mindset he brings to development. He also spent time as a professional fire spinner, which feels like a useful credential… somehow.