A training philosophy centred on your front of house teams and their role in building a positive guest experience.
Learning about wine or any other alcohol category must adapt to a workforce that is more diverse in country of origin, demographic, faith, health concerns, or personal belief systems.
Winebite is the solution for operators and owners who need affordable, effective, and measurable beverage and food training that delivers positive results in guest experience, spend per head, and staff culture and morale.
The current skills shortage and constant need to adapt to changing economic, market, and trend forces mean that a one-size-fits-all training program no longer meets the needs of today’s hospitality industry. Training needs to give your teams a true understanding of your business and its product and the tools they need to serve it with confidence to your guests. A confident, motivated, and knowledgeable front-of-house team is the key to sustained success.
With rising costs in all areas of operations and goods, learning solutions need to be cost-effective and streamlined. They must have a positive impact on staff knowledge and confidence. Results need to be immediate and measurable. Knowledge must be delivered in a way that fits with the lives and lifestyles of staff, not hours spent in classrooms with textbooks. No one should be excluded from being onboarded into a drink and food offer or be excluded from being suitable for a service role because of their beliefs or choices.
Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison is a renowned wine and drinks expert, business developer, brand specialist and industry strategist who has spent over 30 years working as one of Australia’s most respected and awarded hospitality professionals.
As a sommelier, Morrison was regarded as one of the country’s best. He led the wine team of the three-hatted Guillaume at Bennelong restaurant for more than six years while winning the prestigious Good Food Guide Sommelier of the Year award. He has represented Australian wine around the world as a communicator, educator, and media spokesman as the global ambassador for Jacob’s Creek wines. He also worked with some of the world’s leading luxury drinks brands as the ambassador for Perrier Jouet and G H Mumm champagne houses. During this time was Chris was also awarded a scholarship to the prestigious Len Evans tutorial held annually in the Hunter Valley which is regarded by wine writer, James Halliday as “the most prestigious wine school in the world’.
Chris was the only sommelier selected to take place in the 2017 Wine Australia Future Leaders’ program. Held by the country’s leading wine industry bodies Chris worked alongside winemakers, grape growers, marketers, and legislators mapping strategies that would shape the future of the Australian wine industry.
As a drinks writer his published articles have appeared in the Australian Financial Review, Australian Financial Review’s Luxury magazine, Australian Traveller Magazine, Australian House & Garden, The Age and Sydney Morning Heralds Good Food sections, Delicious Magazine, Time Out and he was wine columnist for the luxury title, The Robb Report. In 2018 he made his debut as an author with the publishing house Murdoch Books and released his first book ‘This is not a Wine Guide’.
2018 saw him appointed as Group Wine Director for QT Hotels and then promoted in 2020 to QT Hotels Beverage Director. In 2022 he was promoted again to Director of Beverage for parent company EVT. Chris was responsible for the commercial, creative and strategic direction across the 140 bars and restaurants compromising one of Australia’s largest hospitality organisations. In 2024 he began an exciting new chapter when he co-founded ‘Winebite’, an innovative and fully digitised learning platform targeting the skills shortage and rising costs of operations in Global Hospitality.
‘Hospitality is a value, not a concept’
Chris Morrison
Mark Eggers
Mark is an entrepreneur who’s on a mission to improve workplace learning.
Mark has spent the last 16 years working in digital, and also co-owned a bar/restaurant in Darlinghurst. It was here running the pass on a busy Friday night, that he discovered the challenges associated with training a casual hospitality workforce. After running a tasting session just a few days before, he overheard a team member telling a guest ‘they didn’t know which wine was the best pairing for that dish’. So the idea of Winebite was seeded. Mark made it his mission to find a way that training could be embedded and refreshed so a front of house team had the right information at the right time. The next challenge he faced was designing the platform so that the content was memorable, bite-sized and gamified.
Mark also loves to fish, plays hockey twice a week, and enjoys quiet weekends with his young family.
