We’re Beth and James.
A baker and an engineer, married, raising two small humans, one dog, and building a software company.
Beth & James
Beth builds the bakery. James builds the software.
I’m Beth. For the last nine years, I’ve run Southern Peach Pastries, my cottage bakery in my hometown of Atlanta. Over 108,000 desserts have left my kitchen headed to everyone from baby showers, birthday parties, and engagement celebrations to Coca-Cola, Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta Falcons, Georgia Tech and Emory University.
Before running a cottage bakery, I spent seven years in event production, then a year traveling around the world that led me to pastry school in London. I earned my advanced patisserie qualifications at Westminster Kingsway College, and after graduation I trained under Claire Clark MBE before moving back stateside to train under James Beard award winner Sherry Yard.
When I launched SPP in 2017, the Atlanta community I grew up in didn’t just support Southern Peach Pastries, it launched it.
I was running my home bakery in a tangled mess of notebooks, Excel, emails, and DMs that were running me. I knew early on that my system was broken. I couldn’t find software on the market that I felt suited home bakers. And then I met James.
Hi, I’m James. I’ve spent the last two decades building the software that runs businesses, across a bunch of different industries. I’ve led teams, shipped platforms and untangled more operational chaos than I can count.
Then I married a pastry chef and spent eight years watching the most capable person I know run a thriving bakery out of notebooks, Excel, emails and DMs. We always said we’d build something better someday. When our second kid arrived, someday ran out. Beth sketched out exactly what she needed, and I built it.
I build everything you see in Knead. Beth decides what it needs to do and breaks it against real orders, and if it’s not fast, clear and genuinely useful on a packed Saturday, it goes back to the workbench.
Eight years of talk. One sketch on printer paper.
We both went to Georgia Tech (and actually lived across the street from each other), but didn’t officially meet until mutual friends introduced us years later.
We’d been talking about building something since the day we met. But for eight years, it was only talk, and some loose ideation on what we would eventually create.
When our second kid arrived, the dam broke. Every hour suddenly counted twice. Efficiency was the name of the game, and our long-dreamed-about idea took off.
Beth sketched out exactly what she needed on printer paper and taped it to the wall. James built it. He built an order management system that helps cottage bakers run their businesses with ease, and answers the question that actually keeps a baker up at night:
Should I take this order? And if I say yes, what happens to the rest of my week?
Knead is our answer. Beth is customer zero, and every feature runs through her kitchen, her customers, and her orders before it ever reaches yours.
Plan better. Bake better.
That’s the whole idea. Come see what a baker and an engineer built for you.
Try Knead free →Free during beta. No credit card required.