The Story
25 years in the making.
The idea for The Chef's Companion was first sketched out over 25 years ago. The problem was always the same: professional kitchens run on paper — temperature logs, cleaning rotas, stock sheets, recipe cards — and paper gets lost, wet, illegible, and ignored.
"Over the years we tried. There was a Visual Basic version, then something in MFC,
then a FileMaker database that almost stuck, then a Django app that got further than
the rest but never quite made it to the kitchen. Each attempt taught us something.
Each one fell short. This time we finished it."
— Martin, founder
This first version is the result of all those lessons. It's not trying to be everything — it's trying to be the right things, done properly: compliance you can actually prove, recipes your whole team can find, and purchasing that doesn't live in someone's inbox.
It runs on cheap hardware in a hot, noisy kitchen. No cloud lock-in. No per-seat pricing. No 40-page onboarding guide.