There is a lot to be said about the current state of “going out”. Last year was a wild one to say the least but what it made us do was think of alternative ways to solve problems. In the personal chef and private chef space, we saw a dramatic uptick in interest as we rowed through the year. We think that a lot more people have been looking for alternate ways to enjoy “going out” as we have also seen a dramatic uptick in inquiries to our business. Let me explain.

When the pandemic hit, we were forced to rethink our entire strategy and move swiftly into what our new world was going to look like. What we didn’t know was that this was going to bring our business even higher. As March 2020 came around, as I have stated previously in this blog, we saw what would end up being our worst month since we conceived the business and that was a scary thing to see, especially as the owner of this small business. What ended up happening what losing almost $80,000 in revenue as I decided to give everybody their money after they had booked and given us their deposits.. this was the most trying week of my entrepreneurial life thus far and to this day reminds me how important it is to keep an emergency fund just in case things get hairy. After about 2 weeks, the bleeding has stopped and I was able to assess the damage and recalculate what we should do, if anything. Did I even have a business anymore? Was 5 years of work completely washed out within a week? Was there any options on the table that could somehow salvage my business? Who knew what would end up happening next.

After many whiskey drinking nights and watching the news tell us that the world was basically going to end, I woke in the middle of the night and had an idea. The idea was to completely pivot the brand and change course in order to survive. We started an entirely new vertical and implemented a meal delivery service to get us through to the other side.. we were going to do whatever we had to do in order to “make it”. I got on instagram, made a video and executed the plan with 2 of the best humans on this planet and the only 2 chefs that stuck around to see it through. Weeks went by and we started to gain some traction as ‘Family Meal’ started to take the place as our main revenue stream. During this time, we innovated and cooked our asses off in order to barley stay alive and then our President allowed us to come out of “lockdown”. It was mid May and we were now aloud to do dinner parties again and so we did what we do best.. cooked and then cooked some more. Our first dinner party was pretty awkward as we were basically fully masked up and changing gloves out every time we touched something new. This isn’t bad practice but it was definitely new and definitely something that our clients were looking out for. Slowly but surely we got back to our feet and started doing dinner parties regularly again.

A month or so went by and what started as a slow burn quickly escalated into more and more at-home dinner party inquiries. This now made sense.. people didn’t want to go out to a restaurant but instead wanted the restaurant to come to them, in the comfort of their own home. As I ran the numbers, and counted the inquiries coming in, what I noticed was that we were seeing double the amount of people to the website. We were doing 10+ Services a week and we were back to doing what we love to do instead of doing what we had to do. There was no time to waste and there was no time to think, there was only time to DO. In the private chef or personal chef industry here in Austin, we usually see a pretty dramatic down tick in business during the hottest months of the year (July and August), but not this year.. this year we were busier than ever. I had lost most of our chefs in the beginning of the pandemic but realized that this would be a great time to change our entire business model as well. What I ended up doing was completely changing the way we pay our chefs and finally being able to really change the lives of the people that matter the most.. the chefs.

You see, chefs in the restaurant industry get paid poorly and have absolutely no creative freedoms, not to mention the fact that they have the worst schedule of any career path. What this gave me the opportunity to do was literally start to mold a new system so that chefs could reverse all three of those things.. Gather and Forge Private Chef Services was able to pay the chefs more by compensating them as contractors, we were able to give the chefs full creative freedom and allow them to work when and if they wanted. What I thought initially to be a nightmare ended up being a blessing in disguise. We were able to do what we have been wanting to do for years.. help change the lives of chefs.

Well it is now October 2021 and we are staring at our biggest month yet.. in the history of the company. Sure this is a great thing for me but even more, it is AMAZING for our chefs. We had changed and made the move last year looking to the future and hoping that one day we would be able to do this at scale. In business, I have learned that scaling is by far the most difficult thing that you must overcome before you are able to truly expand. You might think that those things are the same thing but in my mind, scaling is building a process that can be repeated so that you can expand your services to more and more people. Now, what seems to be the most challenging issue is building out a process that can harness and organize the companies many responsibilities. A literal dream come true. If you go back and read the blog from several years past, you will run into a blog that writes in detail about this exact thing and that to me is what makes my job so fulfilling. Through the years, Gather and Forge has given me one hell of ride and sometime all I wanted to do was to quit but now that I look back on it, all it was doing was growing and as with anything that grows… growth brings pain.

If you have been with us for the last 6 years, I want to express my sincere gratitude to each of our customers because without out you, there would be no opportunity to change anybody’s life. We continue to be the best that we possibly can be and try extremely hard to listen to our clients and give them what they want. Now the time has come that we must move that needle forward again and continue our pursuit of changing people’s lives. 6 years ago, I had no idea that I would be sitting here in my office even having this to be grateful for but today I know that the picture is much larger than I ever imagined it to be. I know that there is more work to be done and more lives to be changed and it is my duty to both our clients and our chefs to make that happen. We are becoming the restaurant alternative and we are paving the way for chefs to create financial freedom and teach people what an amazing evening can look like inside of their homes. Thank you Austin, for allowing us to grow and prosper (even through a global pandemic). Thank you to the people that doubted me and to the people that keep pushing me forward, it is because of you that I push so hard to make this happen. I continue to live in awe about the amount of support that has been shed on us and I will never forget to count my blessings as each day falls. You all are the bomb and we KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

-Ryan