Our story

Hi, I’m James

I started in a professional kitchen at fourteen as a KP, and the trade had me for life. Every station, every shift, every Saturday wedding. Over the years I managed and catered hundreds of weddings, and worked my way up to executive chef.

The pandemic changed my path, the way it did for so many of us. I retrained, and these days my weeks look different. But you don’t spend a lifetime on the pass and stop feeling the pull of the serve. I still miss it, and I’ve never stopped thinking about the problems we all just learned to live with.

“I built the thing I wished I’d had on every one of those nights. The calm version of a chaotic job.”

This is my build. My wife Wendy has been building internet software, the software-as-a-service kind that businesses run on, for over fifteen years, so I’ve got the technical side well covered. And here’s what’s changed: in an age where someone with real kitchen knowledge can finally build software at a price that makes sense, the trade can have tools shaped by a person who actually stood on the pass. It’s a project I genuinely believe can help venue teams streamline the way they run their weddings and events, so the focus can go back where it belongs: on the people enjoying the day, the team running it with a bit more calm, and the food itself.

If you’re run off your feet and clawing back every window you can, this is built for you, by someone who gets it.

James · founder of gobblr · a chef giving back to the trade that made him