The AirBnb for Chefs
We live in an amazing time where you can literally be connected to the entire world through the click of a button. You can rent out somebody’s private home to replace a stay at a hotel using AirBnB. You can use the likes of Uber to use somebody else car to get you around in the place of a taxi. Up until these past few years, we have had such a two dimensional way of navigating the world around us and it is because innovators have come up with a way to use other peoples’ assets to build out large scale businesses with almost no assets to themselves.
I think that we are moving in a direction where skillsets are going to be chartered in the same way that physical assets are, meaning we can use our skills as trade job workers to disrupt current industries and allow for a more personal touch in any kind of service based business. Gather and Forge is going to pave the way for like minded food creatives to use their unique style and skillset to bring a 5 star restaurant rated meal to your kitchen. Whether that be a 3 course meal or 7, we think that we can be the restaurant alternative and deliver an experience that is unmatched by anything else out there. Coupling this with a monthly secret supper club, we know that there is thousands of people that would host a dinner party if they just knew how to do it.
Gather and Forge has been working on ways to bring this kind of experience into the homes of others for over 4 years and we have got it down to a science. We know that there is demand for such a thing but it wasn’t until recently that we decided that we were going to take it into our own hands build out such a place. A place where chefs and cooks of almost any level can monetize their skillsets to earn a second income on their days off and hopefully have the opportunity to be able to do this full time. This is how Gather and Forge wants to scale and we already have the path, we are just asking all of you to join the movement.
Deciding to do this was based on a couple of things that really concerned us here at Gather and Forge. One of those things is how chefs or cooks get treated in a restaurant. After spending years myself working in the industry that we call the restaurant business, it seems to me that the whole entire model is flawed and if people knew more about it, they too would see that downfall just as clearly as we do. You see, in the beginning of a young cooks career, they are treated like the scum of the earth. Working for a starting wage of $9-12/hr with no benefits and REQUIRED to basically clock out after 39 hours and continue to work for free to “gain their stripes”. After you put in your time in your “starter restaurant” you are then put on a salary, a salary that basically allows the employer to stop counting hours and continue to overwork their people. I personally know people that have put in 80 hour weeks for $45,000/yr. Coming from $11/hr @ 39 hours which would equal $20,592.00/yr. Here is the twist that people don’t really seem to understand. Once a Chef is put on salary, that restaurant owns that chefs time and is required to put in as much work as it takes to get the job done. So @ 80 hours per week and a salary of $45,000.00/yr this person is ACTUALLY making $11.71/hr and is working twice as hard. After doing this math over and over, we knew that we had to be the change and to let the world know that these people are being straight up scammed.
The idea came to us over a couple of beers after working a 19 hour day for the second day in a row. The sad part is that we had to be at work 5 hours later to start the third 19 hour work day. It was time to figure out a way to make a living doing what we loved to do but also getting paid for it. Gather and Forge was born and we quickly got traction which is where we came up with the "AirBnB for Chefs” idea. We are dedicated to building out a platform that can house chefs and service clients. We want to bring the restaurant and 5 star food into your home instead of you leaving the house and making reservations. There is a ton of work to do, and we are lucky to have the team that we do but you all can guarantee that we are coming for the market and we will not stop until we hit our goal of 100 dinner parties per weekend.
Thanks for reading and please keep us in mind for your next event. We are really excited to bring this to the market and we hope that you are too.
-Ryan Francis Owner of Gather and Forge