It was once said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. What they forget to tell you is that even 10,000 steps in, you’ve still got a long way to go. This is especially true when it comes to entrepreneurial efforts which can occasionally experience “2 Steps Forward, 1 Step Back” Syndrome. Worse yet, the “1 Step Forward, 2 Steps Back” variant. Regardless, it a journey like very few others.

ChefWorthy’s 1,000-mile journey began, as so many such journeys begin, during a catch-up phone conversation with one of my now partners. As the Pandemic began to tighten its grip on the US economy, we both wondered and ruminated on what phoenix could possibly rise from these ashes. After kicking around ideas that ranged from the bad to the impossible, we, like Archimedes, had our Eureka! Moment (sans bathtub).

As former restaurant owners, we realized that social proofing was everywhere (think Yelp, Trip Advisor, Angi etc.) and a key part of consumers’ decision-making process. However, there was no such vehicle in the world of foodservice equipment. If you wanted to buy a $40k Combi Oven, there was no place for foodservice professionals to go to get open, honest, trustworthy, and unbiased feedback from actual users of the equipment. Oh you might get lucky and know someone who had previously purchased the equipment. But what were the chances of that? Instead you had to rely on the representations of the salesperson or the sales collateral they provided you. They might even give you the name of customers who (unsurprisingly) loved using their equipment and couldn’t think of a single bad thing to say about it.

Fueled by “Been There. Done That” syndrome, the spark of an idea flickered into existence. What if there were a social proofing website like Yelp or TripAdvisor but for only Foodservice Professionals to share their equipment experiences with other Foodservice Professionals? Think how beneficial that would be to the Foodservice Community? Plus we would reward people who wrote reviews but giving them an Amazon Gift Card. The review questionnaires would be structured with the lives of busy chefs etc. in mind (not a whole lot of writing) and be context relevant: questions about experiences with fryers would be different than questions about experiences with range tops. In addition there would be other content — blogs, videos, box openings etc. — to bring even more value to the members of our community. Thus was ChefWorthy born.

So we began the process of bringing ChefWorthy to life (sometime known as banging your head against the wall). But after months of research, due diligence, interviews, testing and bootstrap financing, www.chefworthy.pro (some squatter was sitting on chefworthy.com) was launched.

Today www.ChefWorthy.pro is well on the way to becoming the preeminent and most trustworthy rate and review website for foodservice equipment. In the coming months we are going to be adding more features to improve our visitors’ experience like video reviews, streaming content, and user forum to name a few.

We hope you will join us on our journey by visiting www.Chefworthy.pro to either write a review about piece of equipment you love, hate, or just want to share (earning $25 in the process) or to explore equipment reviews and see how different makes and models compare to one another. It’s free to write reviews but you’ll have to register and complete a profile, so we know you’re you (we gotta do what we do to help keep out fake reviews) and explore equipment reviews (no account/profile required). Be sure to check out our Blog Section as well.

Mathew Mandeltort
Co-Founder
ChefWorthy
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