Housekeeping: This blog will be taking a holiday on December 24 and 25 to cook dinner for mom and dad.  Also, Happy Birthday, Brenda!

So, since July, or you could argue since August 2007, my company has been working on a big project. Today, the first baby steps of the project are finally happening — a beta version of SpoonFeed, our digital dashboard for chefs, is now available for our clients to try out.

We have a saying at RIA — The Internet is great for most people, since they work at a desk and can tap away at the computer all day long. But if you put a computer on a chef's workstation — a stove — it would melt. 

And we've used that mantra to build software chefs will want to use, be able to use without effort, and will begin to rely on every day.

In short, SpoonFeed wrangles the digital life of restaurant staff.

· SpoonFeed connects a restaurant's staff together in a private online community — moving the conversations off of email and onto an easier-to-navigate online platform (there's a reason you talk to your friends on FB more than email, it's just easier to manage).

· SpoonFeed also integrates Facebook and Twitter, so chefs can understand, access and use these websites for business a little more effectively.

· Because our roots at RIA are in PR, we've built a platform so journalists, bloggers and the like can contact them on SpoonFeed. This bit is a paid-for service, but it is a dead-simple way to keep on top of these crucial conversations.

All this constitutes big change, to be sure, and it is going to take a while to turn the large ship that is a chef's habits and beliefs in the tiny channel that is a chef's free time to learn something new. 

But we know chefs, right now, are a frustrated lot. They are desperate for communication tools that work. They would love more, easy directions on what technology they need to know and which they can ignore, for now.  They beg for PR that accepts the new realities of direct access between chefs and journalists — and encourages it, in fact. And they long for more contact with one another, as they are their greatest inspirations.

I've spent somewhere around 18 years in the company of chefs, and eaten more than my share in those years.  And today, through SpoonFeed, I start to really give back.