Professional chef by background, Joe is passionate about life, business, and food. He started in the restaurant industry when he was thirteen, and has a personal goal of serving over 10,000,000 meals in his life time to those in need. He has worked in several of the top hotels in Canada, including the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Delta Hotels, and CP Hotels & Resorts (now Fairmont). By professionally preparing over 250,000 meals in the past five years alone, this gives him a unique insight into the eating habits of food lovers throughout North America.

His most recent business, prior to Rouxbe, was a specialized mobile catering operation for Vancouver’s film industry, which he built from the ground up. During its last two years, gross operating margins exceeded sixty percent. As a testament to this success, many film industry service providers, competitors, crew and even producers, have followed Joe to Rouxbe as investors and team members. Concerned about the inherent variability of the film industry, he then led a successful exit in 2004.

Along with his co-founder, Dawn Thomas, Joe turned his attention to the web and looked for an opportunity with greater diversification and potential growth. He saw the world moving to digital media content delivered into the home via the web. In addition, both he and his partner witnessed the strong desire of food lovers to increase their cooking knowledge fueled primarily by the rapid popularity of broadcast food programming. Joe combined this insight with his love for food and his partner’s skills as a culinary instructor and the Rouxbe business concept was born.