Launching gobblr at the Cornwall Business Show

Every kitchen is a puzzle. Where the team stands, where the plates land, what happens when it's full. I've been working that one out since I started as a kitchen porter at fourteen, and I kept at it all the way up to executive chef, through hundreds of weddings and more Christmas parties than I could count.

On 8 October we took gobblr to the Cornwall Business Show. It was our first show, and I came home with a different puzzle. What struck me was how many of the people who stopped to talk already had a system of some kind, a booking tool or an online form. And they were still retyping.

An events planner from a big Cornish venue told me a colleague takes every online pre-order form and keys it into Excel by hand. They have the form. They have the system. The two just never meet, so a person sits in the middle doing the joining up. Someone who runs weddings told me the couples send their details over in an Excel sheet, and her team has to put it all into their own system.

None of them said "we've got a problem". They said "this is how we do it". You only see the problem when you watch what people actually do with their hands, and I know that because it's how I did it for twenty years.

I used to say there are ninety-five spreadsheets in a venue and none of them talk to each other. On the 8th I said it all day.

The other half of the puzzle is the guests. One visitor couldn't believe how many supper clubs there are in Cornwall. When we went looking, most of them were on their own website or a Facebook page and nowhere else, so you'd only find one if you already knew to look. A cottage owner told me they've got a lovely private room for twenty-odd people and have never promoted it. The information exists in both cases. It just isn't anywhere useful.

That's what gobblr is for. The enquiry, the menu choices, the dietaries and the deposit go in once, and the kitchen sees exactly what front of house sees. The people booking choose their food and pay without twelve emails going back and forth. I built it because I wanted the calm version of a chaotic job, and at the show I heard a room full of people describe the chaotic version back to me.

My wife Wendy has spent fifteen years moving businesses off paper, so the technical side is well covered. Our seven-year-old named it. The show's team interviewed us both beforehand, and the longer version of how we got here is in Meet the Exhibitor: Wendy and James Harris from gobblr.

Want to list your next event?

If you want to list your next event, help people find you, or sell tickets for your food events, sign up to gobblr. We'd be delighted to help.

You don't need all of it. Some places just want the free listing, so people planning a party can find them. Some want to sell tickets for a supper club or New Year's Eve. Some go as far as running their table reservations through it. Pick the one you need and start there.

If we met on the day and you didn't get a card, hello@gobblr.co.uk gets to both of us.