From a care home kitchen to a connected platform.
It started in a care home kitchen. Nick was the head chef, and the paperwork looked like it hadn't changed since the 1990s: SFBB booklets, loose sheets and the same records written out twice. It ticked boxes but didn't help anyone run the kitchen.
Before cooking, Nick had studied IT at college. He chose the kitchen over a desk job, but the interest in technology never went away. So in 2018 he built a simple digital setup for his own kitchen: record forms and a digital rota. Nothing fancy, but it worked, and it ran for a few years. When he moved on, the project sat untouched.
Then a back injury ended the long chef hours. Nick became a stay-at-home dad to twin sons and a daughter, and somewhere between school runs and packed lunches he went back to that old idea and rebuilt it properly, this time as a platform other kitchens could use.
In 2025, CompliChef opened to subscribers: kitchens, cafés, pubs and care homes that wanted their compliance in one clear place. Staff rotas, task management and allergy management followed, and the separate tools grew into one connected platform. Since then it has added labels, Click & Collect, CareMenu Pro for care homes and CompliChef Lite for home bakers and market stalls.
Nick jokes that he never wanted an office job, and now he spends most days at a keyboard writing code, fixing bugs and answering customers. The difference is that he's building something kitchens use every day, and he's stood where they stand.