At 18, I landed my first job as a fry cook at Abuelo’s Mexican Food. Back then, I wasn’t thinking about food safety or compliance, I was just trying to keep up with the line and learn the ropes of kitchen life. It wasn’t until years later, when I became a Chef and eventually an Executive Chef, that I truly understood what it meant to run a kitchen responsibly.
After college, I took a detour into IT. I worked my way through roles as a Geek Squad PC Technician, Firedog Master PC Technician, and later as a Network Administrator. I loved problem-solving, troubleshooting, and building systems. But spending all day behind a computer screen eventually took a toll on me. I realized that a purely technical career wasn’t where I found meaning, and my mental health was suffering.
That’s when I made the switch back into the kitchen. This time, it wasn’t just about cooking, it was about leadership. Wearing a coat with “Chef” and later “Executive Chef” embroidered on it meant the responsibility for food safety, compliance, and the well-being of my team fell directly on me. I became Kitchen Manager Certified, earned my HACCP certification, and quickly saw how vital food safety was to a successful operation.
But I also saw the problem: compliance was messy and outdated. Kitchens were still tracking Time as a Public Health Control (TPHC) logs and labeling by hand. Missed entries or incomplete records weren’t harmless, they could mean wasted product, failed inspections, or even fines. Managing these systems with paper and pen felt like trying to do today’s work with yesterday’s tools.
For a while, I even ran a food safety consulting side gig, helping restaurants get inspection-ready and tighten up their compliance practices. But balancing that with full-time chef work took its toll. I knew I needed to focus on the kitchen while still pursuing a way to make compliance better.
That’s where my IT background came back into play. I realized I could merge my skills from both careers to build tools that solved the problems I had lived through firsthand. That was the start of Culsi (Culinary Safety Innovations), a company built to simplify compliance with smart, affordable, easy-to-use technology.
Today, Culsi creates solutions like pre-configured tablets loaded with compliance apps, free labeling software for TPHC and 7-day logs that works with Avery or thermal printers, and even Culsi Mobile, which helps restaurants brand their websites into apps. Everything we build comes from the same goal: to make compliance hands-free, stress-free, and accessible to any kitchen.
Looking back, I’ve gone from fry cook, to IT professional, to Executive Chef, to software developer and founder. Each role gave me a piece of the perspective I bring to Culsi today. And that’s why our tools work, because they’re built by someone who’s been on both sides: managing servers in a data center and managing cooks on the line.
Culsi isn’t just software. It’s a bridge between the kitchen and technology, born from experience, built for people like us.