On board the company, Gathar, already is celebrity chef Curtis Stone, who is a co-founder of the fledgling US end of the business. Stone also operates his own restaurants in California and Gathar’s co-founder and chief executive Jodie Mlikota said he saw the opportunity in the business model, which is essentially a platform similar to Airb&b in that its chefs and cooks were independent contractors, some of which were using it as a side-hustle.

In fact, Stone’s support was the thing that tipped Mlikota and her co-founders into heading to the US where she is now based.

“Gathar was an assignment at uni. That’s how it all started,” Mlikota, a marketing graduate, said.

From that post graduate study the company has grown from its Cairns-Port Douglas roots to 35 locations in Australia with up to 300 culinarians (cooks and chefs) on its roster.

“We take care of the marketing, admin, we deal with the customers. For the chefs, all they have to do is the cooking and provide the experience,” she said.

“So they can do something like this and not have to start their own catering company.”

She said its current growth in Australia was more than 200 per cent a year, but that had a ceiling. The expectation of the company was that it had the opportunity to grow 10 times its current level in this country and that’s why it had made the move to vastly bigger American market.

From the customers’ point of view, Gathar is a catering business and Mlikota said its point of difference was that it could cater to a dinner party of two or a 2000-head conference.

“When we launched it, Gathar was really to solve that problem of having a dinner party at home or when you were on holidays and not wanting to cook and clean and do all the work. There were a lot of catering companies, but they don’t service the smaller dinner parties. It really wasn’t feasible to go to someone’s house and cook for a small group.

“So, I saw a real gap in the market there and the way AirB&B exists. We try to put ourselves in a category where it’s not just for the people with the private jets.”

The funds raised through Microwd would be used for the growth as well as platform development.

“We are at a really early stage here in the US, but it’s a massive market and a massive opportunity. It comes at an expense and the funds are all about that customer acquisition and marketing and platform development as well as the growth in the team,” she said.