We ran restaurants before we built software for them.
Four decades on restaurant floors, in kitchens and behind counters, plus twelve years keeping other companies’ technology running. Cert to Table came out of both.
Where this comes from
Fourteen years running a restaurant as a general manager, and years on the floor and in the kitchen before that. Hiring never stopped, because turnover never stopped. When an inspector walked in unannounced, the compliance file had our name on it.
So we know what it costs to certify a staff, in money and in hours nobody has. We know the Thursday-afternoon jolt of finding out three people’s cards expired last month.
We bought the printed packets and chased the paperwork. We also watched good employees fail an exam because nobody had written the study material for how they learn, or in a language they read comfortably.
Cert to Table is the study guide we wanted back then.
Then keeping other companies’ systems online
That work ran alongside the restaurant years rather than after them. The job was keeping other companies’ technology from breaking in the first place, and guarding their data ahead of whatever else wanted the afternoon.
Eight of those years went to a Maryland technology company, as a service manager and a member of the executive leadership team, where the processes and documentation we put in place cut inefficiency by about a quarter. After an acquisition, that work became directing the Tier 3 support team across every region the company served.
That work teaches you to ask what happens at two in the morning, and what happens when the person who set something up left two years ago without writing anything down. We ask those questions at the start of a build now.
How the material gets checked
We write the study content against the published food safety standards and check it before it ships. Research, testing and accuracy review happen in house, handled by someone who spent two decades in the industry the material is about.
A wrong holding temperature or a garbled allergen protocol costs somebody the exam they paid for. Worse, it passes them and sends the mistake into a kitchen.
Community, and where the habit comes from
Our founder started volunteering with United Cerebral Palsy of Delaware at five years old and kept it up for thirteen years. It became a normal part of the calendar rather than something anyone set out to do.
Hospitality taught the same lesson from the other side. Kitchens run on people covering shifts for each other, and the good rooms look after the street they sit on.
So raising money for local non-profits is part of why we are building this company. We mean small organizations doing specific work in their own communities, run by volunteers who could use the help.
When we run a campaign, we will publish what it raised and who received it. We ask the organization first. A name goes on this page once they have agreed to work with us.
How we work
You deal with the people doing the work, start to finish. The person you talk to in the first conversation is the person writing the code.
We take a small number of client projects a year, so the ones we take get real attention. If your problem is a poor fit for what we do, we will say so in the first conversation.
Got something that needs building?
Tell us what is slowing your business down. We will give you a straight answer on whether we can help.
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