Brisbane’s Sweetest Secret: Meet the Woman Powering Australian Cafe Desserts

From quiet achiever to dessert trailblazer, Xanny Christophersen is the force behind Priestley’s Gourmet Delights, a female-led Australian business and Queensland dessert manufacturer that supplies Australian cafe desserts to thousands of venues nationwide. The twist? You’ve probably never heard of them.

Meet Xanny Christophersen: The Woman Behind Priestley’s Gourmet Delights, the quite Australian Cafe Dessert Brand

At a glance, Xanny Christophersen might not seem like someone running a multimillion-dollar food enterprise. Quick to laugh and refreshingly candid, she prefers to say she “just makes cakes.” But step inside her world, and the scale of her work becomes clear.

As CEO of Priestley’s Gourmet Delights, a quietly prolific Queensland dessert manufacturer, Xanny oversees the production of more than 270,000 individual desserts each week—many of which end up in cafés and restaurants from Brisbane to Broome.

“We’ve been the brand behind the brand,” says Xanny. “But now, I think it’s time people knew what they were eating.”

Kerry Heaney and Xanny Christophersen, Priestly’s Gourmet Delights

The Brand You Didn’t Know You Knew

Priestley’s isn’t a household name, and that’s by design. You won’t find their label on the packaging, but their desserts are everywhere: at Domino’s, The Coffee Club, Baskin-Robbins, and even Bunnings café counters. It’s not a bad reach for a business that began with a woman selling cakes out of the back of a station wagon in the 1990s.

That woman was Marilyn, Xanny’s aunt—a determined entrepreneur who built her dessert business on persistence and French pastry know-how. “If a chef didn’t want to see her,” Xanny says, “she’d wait outside until they came out for a smoke break. She just wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Queensland dessert manufacturer Priestley’s Gourmet Delights carrot cupcakes.

From Station Wagons to Solar Panels

These days, the station wagon has been swapped for a $53 million solar-powered facility in Brisbane’s south for this Queensland dessert manufacturere. It’s an impressive leap, yet the company still feels more like a big kitchen than a factory.

The new Priestley’s Gourmet Delight space allows them to double production without losing what makes them different. The cakes are still hand-finished, the core recipes haven’t changed in decades, and a firm commitment to local produce underpins everything.

“We use Sunny Queen eggs, Bundaberg sugar—whatever we can source locally,” says Xanny. “It’s not the cheapest option, but it’s the best for quality, and it keeps food miles low.”

In a globalised food system where ingredients can circle the planet before hitting a plate, the company’s local-first approach feels notably old-school—and all the more refreshing for it.

Priestly’s Gourmet Delights makes Australian café desserts like this.

Tech-Forward, People-First

While tradition holds strong in the baking department, Priestley’s is also embracing innovation. Their new factory includes robotics and AI—but not to replace staff. “It’s about removing the mundane tasks,” Xanny explains, “so we can give people higher-skilled, more meaningful work.”

And that’s not just corporate-speak. The company has created an open-plan, non-hierarchical workplace. Xanny has no designated desk or car park. No one eats lunch at their desk. There’s a shared kitchen and even EV charging stations.

“If you want to attract and retain great people,” she says, “you need to create a place they actually want to work.”

It’s a simple philosophy that’s working. Some staff have been with the company for nearly 30 years. Others, like innovation manager Nikki, are leading the next wave in Australian café desserts, tracking dessert trends, experimenting with flavours, and testing everything from ube to pistachio crème.

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Queensland dessert manufacturer Priestley’s Gourmet Delights

The Case for Quality—and Quiet Confidence

Despite the new technology and rising profile, there’s no temptation to flood supermarket shelves with these Australian cafe desserts. Priestley’s Gourmet Delights remains firmly embedded in the hospitality sector, where quality matters and brand egos stay in check.

Still, that doesn’t mean the business isn’t changing. Xanny, now 15 years into her time with Priestley’s, is pushing gently but firmly to raise the company’s profile—not through big marketing campaigns, but through conversations, storytelling, and growing partnerships.

“We don’t want to be Australia’s best-kept secret forever,” she says. “I want people to start asking, ‘Is this a Priestley’s cake?’”

It’s a quiet kind of ambition, driven more by purpose than by PR. The kind that says: we’ve been here all along, doing things right. You were just too busy enjoying dessert to notice.