I believe every chef deserves to be seen, thanked, and paid.

The Story So Far

It started in 2020 with a pair of rubber gloves and a sink that never stopped filling. I was 19, I needed money, and a hotel near me was hiring kitchen assistants. I had no idea what I was walking into.

My job that first week was simple: wash everything. Pots, trays, insert pans, hotel pans with baked-on grease that hadn't fully cooled yet. Eight, sometimes ten hours a day. The kitchen ran on a Saturday night the way I imagine a flight deck runs. Everyone moving. Everyone shouting in a language that was half English and half something specific to that kitchen. I was completely lost and completely focused at the same time.

The head chef was a man I will call Marcus. He had been cooking professionally for 22 years. I know because on his second week back from leave someone brought a cake and there was a card that said exactly that. Twenty-two years. He had spent more time in professional kitchens than some of the servers had been alive. He knew every technique, every supplier, every plate the restaurant had ever served. He ran that kitchen with the kind of calm authority that only comes from having survived every possible crisis twice.

He earned roughly the same as the front-of-house staff who had been there six months.

I went back to kitchens after that. Different place, different city, but same structure. Kitchen assistant, then commis prep, then general helper on busy nights. Over the next four years I worked in or around professional kitchens in four different restaurants. I scrubbed floors. I peeled vegetables at 6am. I ran plates. I watched. And the same thing was true in every single one: the people who made the food were invisible.

The waiters got tips. The waiters smelled nice and came out at the end of their shift looking almost as fresh as when they arrived. They had conversations with the tables. They got thanked directly, looked in the eye, handed folded notes. In some restaurants the tips went into a shared pot and the kitchen got a small percentage. In most, they got nothing. In none of them did a guest ever walk to the pass and say "that was one of the best things I have ever eaten" directly to the person who cooked it.

I kept thinking: why is there no mechanism for this? Your food arrives and it is extraordinary and there is no way to reach the person responsible. The waiter is the face. The chef is the ghost.

I kept that thought for a long time. Long enough that I eventually stopped waiting for someone else to build the solution.

In early 2024 I started building. I had some experience with web development and I knew enough to be dangerous. I used Next.js for the frontend, Supabase for the database and auth, and Stripe Connect to handle payments. The core idea was dead simple: every chef gets a profile page and a QR code. A diner scans it, picks an amount, pays. The money goes directly to the chef's bank account. No app needed. No account needed. Just a phone and a scan.

I built the first version in about six weeks. It was rough. The profile page barely had any styling. The Stripe integration worked but the error messages were terrible. The QR code generator was something I bolted on at the last minute. But it worked. A chef could sign up, connect their bank account, get a QR code, and receive a tip in under ten minutes. That was the whole thing.

I spent the next three months improving it. The profile got a proper design. I added a Kitchen Secret feature: a personal message, recipe, or technique that tippers receive the moment their payment goes through. I added post and recipe sharing so chefs could build a following. I made the QR code downloadable. I added analytics. I went from a rough proof-of-concept to something I would actually want to hand to someone I respected.

The thing that kept me going, every time I hit a wall, was Marcus. I don't know where he is now. I don't know if he's still cooking. But I kept thinking about that card. Twenty-two years. Twenty-two years of doing something with your hands that most people genuinely cannot do, and not a single mechanism existed for a customer to go directly to you and say: that meal changed my evening. Here is something for you.

Tip a Chef is for Marcus. It is for every chef I worked next to and every chef I will never meet. It costs nothing to join. It takes two minutes to set up. And every tip goes directly to the person who earned it. That is the whole idea. That has always been the whole idea.

What we stand for

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Whether you cook for a living or eat out every week, there's a place for you here.