This isn’t about turning the world into temps. This isn’t about digitizing the race to the bottom world of staffing agencies. This isn’t about random people turning up to shifts in pubs.
This is empowering people to live a happy, flexible and varied work life.
This is making it easy, cost effective and viable for hospitality venues to access and work with this growing generation of flexible talent.
This is about enabling hospitality venues to build consistent teams of flexible staff.
This is the answer to fair and ethical gig work for those who say no to traditional employment.
Limber’s founder, Chris (aged 10), starts his first enterprise - selling miniature football shirt pillows. It ends in PR disaster in a story involving color running ink and the death of a customer’s pet gerbil. It’s a humbling beginning to the world of business.
Chris starts working as a pot wash in a local pub and discovers he’s nimble with sponge and a bottle of fairy liquid.
Chris works front of house and behind the bar (staying out of the kitchen to avoid fires). It’s here that Chris learns the industry is really fun, but the hours are a drag. A lot of his colleagues are kinda sleep walking and no one seems that engaged. Loads of people are working 60 hour weeks and staff turnover is mega high.
Chris starts a terrible hospitality agency called Sharp Service Waiters Ltd out of his 6th Form Common Room with a guy called Matt Robinson (who went on to found GoCardless and Nestd).
Chris continues to graft in pubs and bars, including managing hospitality sites.
Chris works in the city as an IP/Tech lawyer before moving to Betfair to work for one of the most successful marketplace products in history, the Betfair betting exchange.
Deciding it’s time to revisit his roots, Chris starts his own business. Combining the knowledge he gained from his tech career and his background in hospitality, he searches for a solution that makes working in hospitality more fun, varied and flexible for staff, whilst retaining consistency of staffing for employers. Chris and Richard Lees set out to build a product with the help of JMAN consulting on a shoestring, and limber is born.
Crucially, limber wasn’t an agency. I wasn’t about supplying temps. It was about empowering people to work flexibly and enabling employers to offer that via a smart and user friendly platform. It wasn't the gig economy either - we wanted everyone to earn a pension and get a proper payslip. It was the gig economy 2.0
Chelsea Newton of Bristol, works the first shift on the platform at The Rummer Hotel. She gets the top rating and sets a hirer feedback standard that 96% of workers uphold to this day. The Rummer adds Chelsea to their team of flex staff.
limber raises its first round of funding and a team of talented individuals join the mission - Mark, Sam, Joe, Rory and Georgina enter the fray.
limber continues to develop its tech, focussing on enabling sites to build their own relationships with flex staff while staying out the way as much as possible. Traction grows, and Butcombe and Youngs join the community.
New joiners, Egon and Emily, but then disaster - Covid strikes.
tumbleweed. Oh, and relentless zoom quizzes. With borders closed and crops perishing, we attempt to take limber’s technology to pastures new and build a weird product for the fruit picking industry called “picker”.
like a phoenix from the ashes, limber rises again. Propelled by peoples’ increased passion for flexible working and the industry’s new appetite for creative staffing solutions, the platform thrives. From michelin star indies to nationwide brands, limber becomes the no 1 place to work and earn flexibly in hospitality.
a new team of Catherine, Yaz and Alex join the team. After that - who knows what’s next.
This isn’t about turning the world into temps. This isn’t about digitizing the race to the bottom world of staffing agencies. This isn’t about random people turning up to shifts in pubs.
I write words. Sometimes those words appear on websites, or on social media or inside the app. If you’ve ever received an email from limber, it was probably from me. I joined limber straight from university, just knowing that I wanted to write, and I’ve since had the freedom and support to grow into a self proclaimed bad ass Head of Comms. There’s lot’s of reasons I’ve put up with my job at limber for so long, but the thing I’m most proud of is our incredible team. I also love start up life – I’d never survive in the corp world!
All things tech and product, is what I do and writing the code is how I do it. My job is to make sure that everyone has a good experience on limber, all the way from designing to building with my fellow talented techies. Tooting ones own horn doesn’t come naturally to me, but since joining, we’ve built some great features that I’m super proud of. I love feedback be it negative or positive, as it’s what really drives the progress, so feel free to tell it like it is!
Having come from a former career as a children’s nurse, I’ve always had a fire in my belly to improve people’s lives, which has now taken new avenues into positively impacting society’s attitudes towards a great work/life balance. I talk to businesses about limber. Part of my job is helping hospitality venues who use limber have the best experience possible and part of my job involves talking to new businesses about our product. I love building trusting relationships with people and helping them solve real world problems.
I’m also part of the tech team alongside Egon, developing new features and enhancing the user experience is our passion! It’s fantastic to be a part of team Limber and seeing how we can make a real difference to the hospitality industry.
I talk to customers. I help the platform run smoothly behind the scenes and, if there is a problem, I’m usually the one trying to solve it. If you have ever emailed limber, it’s likely we have met!
I started limber, but if you’re reading this page, you’ve probably already heard enough about me!
Limber is supported by some fantastic third party organisations. All of these partners are integral to either helping the platform work or grow:
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limber is a shiftworking marketplace designed to help employers and staff work flexibly together. Employers post shifts, staff apply and we take care of payment, payroll and paperwork.