Community Highlights: Meet Nicole Limo of Get Chef’d

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicole Limo.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My path to Get Chef’d wasn’t a straight line, but looking back, every step was preparing me for it. I’ve spent the last eight-plus years in healthcare finance and management consulting, where I partnered directly with executive teams and boards on growth strategy and capital planning. That work taught me how to build and scale operations, but it also taught me how to spot a gap in a market when I see one.

I actually got my first taste of entrepreneurship at 22, when I started a candle company called Goodness Candles. I grew it from a concept into a profitable business within three months, scaled it through both direct-to-consumer and B2B wholesale, and after two years of solid growth, I sold it. That experience gave me the confidence to know I could build something from nothing and the discipline to know what it actually takes.

Get Chef’d came from a much more personal place, though. I found myself wanting to book a private chef who could cook food from my own culture for a special occasion, and I could not find one not through agencies, not through word of mouth, nowhere. The private chef industry is enormous, but it’s also incredibly fragmented and informal, and it wasn’t built with either chefs or clients truly in mind. Agencies take a huge cut from chefs, while offering clients very little transparency or choice.

That frustration turned into an idea: what if booking a private chef could be as easy and trustworthy as booking a dog sitter on Rover? A platform where chefs set their own rates and availability, where clients can browse real profiles and book with confidence, and where nobody’s paying an agency markup to make it happen.

From there, I brought together my co-founders, whom I met at graduate school, Eli Tills and Sammy Alraies, and we started building. I earned my MBA from Pepperdine, which gave me the frameworks to formalize the business model, and the three of us have spent the last year-plus turning that original frustration into a real product one that’s now heading toward launch here in Los Angeles this year. It’s been equal parts scrappy and strategic, and I’m proud that we’ve built something that genuinely serves both sides of the marketplace: chefs who deserve better, and clients who deserve more.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Honestly, no, and I’d be lying if I said otherwise. Building Get Chef’d has been a completely different animal than building Goodness Candles.

One of the biggest struggles has been understanding how to fund a tech company. Financing a candle business and financing a tech marketplace are two entirely different worlds, and there was a real learning curve in figuring out capital structure, valuation, and what investors in this space actually expect.

Another major challenge has been developing the app itself. Building candles was a skill we learned through trial and error, but building a brand-new app with zero coding experience between the three of us? That’s a whole different level of hard. Luckily, AI tools have taken off this year in a huge way, and I was actually able to use them to build out the skeleton of the app myself. From there, through some connections and a lot of searching, we found a developer who could help us bring it the rest of the way to life.

And then there’s just the reality of time. All three of us, myself, Eli, and Sammy- work full-time in demanding careers, so finding the hours to actually build this has been its own challenge. We’ve given up a lot of weekends, and I’ve personally had more late nights than I can count after work, digging into strategy, marketing, financing, business modeling, and outreach. It’s not glamorous, but it’s been worth every bit of it.

As you know, we’re big fans of Get Chef’d. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Get Chef’d is a two-sided marketplace that connects vetted, independent private chefs directly with clients looking for personalized dining experiences- think intimate dinners, celebrations, corporate events, and everything in between. We built it app-native, commission-based, with no agency middlemen. I like to describe it as “Rover, but for private chefs.” Rover proved that people will trust a platform to connect them with an independent professional for something deeply personal, in that case, their pets. We’re applying that same model to something even more intimate: inviting someone into your home to cook for you and the people you love.

What really sets us apart is that we built this platform for chefs, not just around them. Most private chef companies operate on an agency model; they take anywhere from 20 to 30% of a chef’s earnings, control their pricing, and leave them with very little say in how they run their own business. We flipped that. On Get Chef’d, chefs set their own rates, manage their own availability, and keep the vast majority of what they earn. We’re also mobile-first and app-native in an industry where a lot of competitors are still just websites, or so exclusive and high-priced they only serve a narrow slice of the market. On the client side, every chef is vetted, so people can browse real profiles and book with confidence, no more relying on word of mouth or hoping an agency sends someone who’s actually a good fit.

One of the things I’m proudest of is that we haven’t just built an app and waited for launch; we’ve been building real community and brand awareness before we even go live. This year, we hosted our first two live events, and they’ve become a cornerstone of how we think about marketing our chefs. The first was a watch party here in LA featuring Chef Mario Benavidez as our lead chef and Chef Jordan Solich as co-chef, a night of great food and good company that let people taste their cooking firsthand. The second was “Pressed & Poured,” an intimate dinner we co-hosted with Tanna, owner of O&V CA, a local olive oil shop, pairing Chef Mario’s food with Tanna’s curated olive oils and wine for a small, elegant evening. Both events represent something we plan to keep doing as we grow: giving our chefs a real stage. It’s one thing to see a chef’s profile in an app; it’s another to sit at a table, taste their food, and book them on the spot because you just experienced what they can do. That’s the kind of marketing that builds trust, and it’s core to how we plan to grow, not through ads alone, but through real experiences that put our chefs in front of the people who’ll become their clients.

Beyond bookings and events, we’re also building a genuine community for chefs through mentorship, networking, and a shared feed, because independent chefs often work in isolation without the camaraderie of a restaurant kitchen.

If there’s one thing I want readers to know about our brand, it’s that Get Chef’d was born out of a real, personal frustration. I once wanted to book a private chef who could cook food from my own culture for a special occasion, and I simply couldn’t find one. Everything we’ve built since has been in service of fixing that gap, for chefs and clients alike. We even have a little phrase we live by: Chef’s Kiss, because that’s exactly the feeling we want every booking to leave you with.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Growing up, I was actually super shy; I didn’t like being the center of attention at all, and I was pretty quiet as a kid. I was also a good student and gravitated toward the sciences; for a long time I thought I wanted to be a vet, because I’ve always loved animals. That love turned into a lot of volunteering over the years. I’d volunteer at animal sanctuaries and clinics whenever I could, and in college I went on Amazon medical service trips.

That same drive showed up athletically, too. I was a gymnast for years growing up, which turned into cheerleading in high school. I loved that it became a team effort rather than just an individual pursuit. I’ve always been really athletic; I went snowboarding and wakeboarding every year, and these days that’s evolved into tennis, Lagree, Pilates, and weightlifting.

Alongside all of that, health and nutrition were always a big part of my world. I got into meditation in high school in a pretty unexpected way, our mythology teacher actually shared clinical studies on the benefits of meditation and taught our whole class how to do it. We’d meditate for the first five minutes of every class, and it quickly became my favorite part of the day. It’s something that’s stuck with me ever since and shaped how I handle stress and decision-making as a founder.

A lot of that discipline and ambition traces back to my family. My parents are immigrants, so I’m first-generation American, and they never once put a limit on what I could dream about. Even when I’d rattle off some combination of wanting to be a vet, a CEO, and a lawyer all at once, they’d just say, “Nothing is impossible.” They came to the U.S. specifically so I could have the opportunity to pursue whatever I wanted without limits, and that pushed me to be studious and ambitious from a young age.

That same family also gave me my relationship with food. We’re Peruvian, and if you know anything about Peruvians, you know we are proud of our food, we’ll happily tell you we have the best cuisine in the world. Cooking is taken seriously in my family. I grew up learning in the kitchen from my mom and my tías, and to this day I still cook Peruvian food at home all the time. Lomo Saltado and Seco de carne are two of my favorites.

Looking back, it’s funny that quiet, animal-loving, team-oriented kid, raised in a family obsessed with food, ended up building a company centered around culinary experiences and bringing people together at the table. It kind of makes sense now.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://getchefdapp.com/
• Instagram: @getchefd.app

Image Credits
Two chefs featured: Chef Mario and Chef Jordan