We're not a job board that happens to list food roles. We're a food-industry tool that happens to be a job board. Founded by a former line cook who got tired of recruiter spam and missing wage ranges on every listing she read.
San Diego runs on food service. One in eleven workers here holds a job in a kitchen, a café, a bar, or a food brand — and almost none of them were hired through a channel built for them.
Indeed is a recruiter spam engine. Craigslist hides wages. LinkedIn optimizes for office roles. Staffing agencies skim 25–40% off the top of every placement they touch.
We built the alternative: a wage-first, recruiter-free, San-Diego-only job board run by people who've actually worked a Saturday night line. That's it. That's the pitch.
No venture funding. No growth-hack playbook. Just a cook with a laptop, a chip on her shoulder, and a slowly-growing list of chef friends willing to post their first role for free.
Our founder Maya was working sauté at a Gaslamp restaurant and spent four hours one Sunday applying to six line cook roles. Four never replied. Two wanted a recruiter call before she could see the wage. She complained about it at the bar. The bar agreed.
During the shutdown, Maya started keeping a spreadsheet of SD kitchens that were quietly hiring back — wage visible, contact name attached. She shared it in a cooks' group chat. Within three weeks, 600 people had opened the link. The format was clearly working.
Twelve founding employers — restaurants Maya had cooked at or staged through. The first version of the site was ugly. It worked. We filled 47 roles in the first 90 days, all by direct message, all with wages posted from day one.
A barista at Heartwork Coffee in Hillcrest — the 1,000th placement — sent us a photo of her first paycheck stub with "thanks for the gig" written on it. We printed it. It's still on the wall above the one desk we share.
187 active employers. 38 neighborhoods. Still four people. Still no recruiter middlemen. Still $89 flat per post — same price we charged in 2021. We turned down acquisition offers twice. We plan to keep turning them down.
We're not claiming to be the right tool for every kitchen. But if you've tried the big boards and gotten ghosted, ghosted, and ghosted again — here's the difference.
Craigslist is a firehose of unverified posts with hidden wages. We verify every employer before their first post goes live — business license, address check, call to the listed contact. Average post quality is higher. Spam is zero.
Indeed optimizes for applicant volume — most of it recruiter-sourced. We optimize for signal-to-noise: fewer applicants per role, but each one a real human who read the post and matched the wage range. Median 11 applicants per role, vs. Indeed's 200+.
LinkedIn assumes you have a resume, a headshot, and a degree. Most line cooks have a knife roll and a stage schedule. Our profiles ask for the things kitchens actually care about — stations you've worked, references from chefs, when you can start — and skip the corporate theater.
Agencies typically take 25–40% of your first-year salary as a placement fee, often amortized as a temp-to-hire deduction from your paycheck. We charge the employer $89 flat, total. You keep your whole check from day one.
I cooked professionally in San Diego for nine years. Three restaurants, two hotels, one catering company. I staged at places I couldn't afford to eat at. I got ghosted by more hiring managers than I can count — usually after they'd already asked me to come in for an unpaid trail shift.
The reason I built this isn't idealism. It's anger. Polite anger, the kind that turns into a spreadsheet, then a weekend project, then a job board your chef friends actually use. Every choice we make — mandatory wages, no recruiters, $89 flat, San Diego only — comes from a specific thing that pissed me off as a cook.
If you're a kitchen hiring in San Diego: post with us, and we'll do the work to make sure your role reaches the right 11 people, not the wrong 200. If you're a cook reading this: your time is worth more than a screening call with a recruiter who's never plated a fish. We've got your back.
Email us, post a job, or just say hi. We read every message — usually within a day, sometimes within an hour. We're four people in a small office in Barrio Logan. The door is open.