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Noah Rosen always knew he wanted to start a business. At the ripe age of 12, he was managing a food blog. By 15, he was running a catering business. By the time he was in culinary school—well, anyone who knew Noah wouldn’t have been the least surprised to find him selling chef knives out of his dorm room. 

Today, Noah is a 30 Under 30 founder whose business, Forge to Table, is about to turn eight years old. Unlike many people his age, he has rubbed elbows with some of the best chefs—and mentored some of the youngest ones—in the world. 

He has also equipped them with the very tools that they cook every day with. In Noah’s own words, Forge to Table is “meant to be affordable and [serve as] a gateway knife to introduce people to crafted, Japanese-style blades.” 

And just like the blades he sells, Noah’s entrepreneurship story is anything but conventional. Even he couldn’t have predicted that his best idea yet wouldn't come by design but by staying bold, adaptable and ready when opportunity knocked.

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From forge to dorm

Before it was ‘forge to table,’ it was forge to dorm. As a bright-eyed (and “broke,” adds Noah) culinary student, being able to afford even a used Japanese knife meant saving up two weeks’ worth of pay. 

All that changed in 2017. “I had tagged along on my dad's business trip,” Noah recalls, thinking back on a Chicago houseware show that he attended. It was there that he first came across the most immaculate display of Japanese kitchen knives—and with it, Carole Zheng. 

As it would turn out, Carole was representing her family’s third-generation business of blacksmiths. “I essentially pretended to be something besides just a culinary student to get a custom knife,” Noah says. “I was like, ‘Oh, I'm a chef. Yes, oh yes, I have all these business ideas.’ And we started this conversation and developed what became a friendship.” 

Before long, Noah got a hold of a beautiful bespoke knife, hand-forged by master blacksmith and Carole’s husband, Alex. 

“Forge to Table started from my sole selfish desire to have a custom chef knife,” Noah freely admits today. “I brought that chef knife into class, showed it to my peers in my culinary labs, and they asked me, ‘Oh, whose knife is that? What brand?’”

“That was the ‘light bulb moment’ that showed me that there was something to this…I ordered 200 hand-forged knives to my dorm room and built a Wix website to sell them.”  

Developing a taste for eCommerce 

You could say eCommerce was somewhat of an acquired taste for Noah—one that stuck as he warmed up to the idea of breaking away from the traditional career path of a chef.

“I loved being a chef, but working in someone else's kitchen just wasn't cutting it for me,” he says. In his final year of school, when he was “already 150 knives sold into this” and managing a new Kickstarter campaign, he was still applying to culinary jobs.

But eventually, “I went solo and built my own online knife empire.”

Noah now commands a business that runs entirely online. Forge to Table serves more than 30 different countries and offers more than 40 kitchen products. At the back of the house, Noah is supported by a staff of culinary artists and creatives. At the forge, Alex and Carole are backed by a large team of blacksmiths, polishers, blade fitters and logistics specialists. 

Noah himself remains at the front of the house, greeting online visitors as they enter his Wix site. “Customer service is the core of what the food service world is, and it's the same with great retail and eCommerce,” he says simply, noting his team’s mise en place approach to the online experience. Every detail—from the live chat and testimonials, to the navigation and product pages—is carefully curated.

His philosophy: “We design every knife with intention and deliberate action, and we want our website to showcase that same precision.”

With Wix, he had all the ingredients to concoct a highly custom experience and stay in control of every customer interaction, order and more: “I think Wix offers the perfect medium for everyone—even someone like myself, a really good cook, but a monkey with a keyboard. I’m able to drag-and-drop edit or build an email newsletter that looks nice.”

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Serving everyone from chefs to home cooks  

If Forge to Table hosted a dinner party, the guest list would run the full gamut. You’d find first-time home cooks sharing a table with classically trained veterans. You’d bump into old cooks, young cooks, bakers, chefs and everyone in between.

It’s a classic case of being in the right place at the right time, according to Noah—with his first customers being fellow students at school; Forge to Table’s first patron being a chef whose restaurant he frequented; and COVID birthing a new wave of home cooks, eager to rediscover their love of cooking. 

He also credits the company’s recipe blog ("a big point of pride for us…we want to offer our customers something that they can come back and see without just the, ‘Hey, come buy a knife’”) as well as email marketing, live chat and online ads, which are all managed through Wix.

“We're just a click away for people to find our brand, order a knife and upgrade their kitchen,” he says proudly. It’s that level of accessibility that put Forge to Table on the map for influencers, culinary students and even those looking for a perfect gift idea.  

To top it off, Noah and his team remain deeply committed to inspiring the next generation of chefs. They serve as judges for high school cooking competitions, support the National Restaurant Association's ProStart program (which reaches more than 214,000 high school students who have an interest in culinary arts and restaurant management) and team up with other like-minded brands. 

“Our work with culinary students, both high school and college level, has brought us even more full-circle moments,” Noah shares. “We have people that we worked with when they were 19 and 20 in school, now working at some of the best restaurants in the world with our knives.”

“As a chef, the biggest joy comes from watching someone do their little food dance when they take the first bite…for me, that [joy came from] passing this knife on to someone who immediately started to love cooking with it.” 

The lasting beauty behind the blades 

When asked, ‘What’s so great about your knives, anyway?,’ Noah doesn’t bat an eye. Rather, his eyes light up. 

He animatedly describes his blades’ design—

“Our best-selling Gyuto knife has elements of Chinese and Japanese craftsmanship, but in a familiar profile to the American blade.”

The weight—

“The Gyuto knife is one-third the weight of what you'll find in a German chef knife of the same size.”

The material—

“We're able to source our steel from some of the greatest steel manufacturers in Japan.”

The price—

“The price point appeals to people because when I first started, I was just selling to culinary students.” 

And when asked to pick a favorite one? “That's like asking someone to pick their favorite child.”

Noah still has many aspirations for Forge to Table, including expanding its product line, testing new designs and bringing customers’ ideas for their kitchen tools to life. The business is only just getting started, and so are Noah’s dreams of making an impact, one kitchen at a time.  

“If we can give you a knife that makes you love cooking for your friends and family again—that makes you happy to eat well and live healthy—that's what we want to do.”

Noah’s tips for running your own business

The journey to becoming an entrepreneur is full of twists and turns—Noah would know. Throughout the various chapters of his career, he has encountered his fair share of surprises and setbacks. But through it all, several key lessons have helped him stay afloat:

• Seize the opportunity: “If you have an idea that you're passionate about, take the leap. Do it, do it, do it—and do it yourself. Build a portfolio. Build a website. Build a network. Write it down. Tell your friends and your mentors. Because if you have a passion, if you have an idea, you are the person who can make it succeed. And you should start right now.”
  

• Break the mold: “My career path isn't the usual career path, and it's been exciting to share that because if you're 10, 12 or 15 years old and you want to become a chef…There's so little consideration for all that exists in the food world, like food policy or starting a small business that isn't purely cooking-based….now there's so much more in the career paths for students.”
  

• Share your idea: “When you start talking to someone about wanting to start a business, you're going to inevitably meet someone that's in a business network or has a group that they work with…and they're going to say, ‘Hey, let me connect you with so and so’ and this is going to take you to the next level. This is going to help you get started.” 

• Pick your website builder carefully: “Wix plays an enormous role for me. It’s how we reach customers, work with our existing customers and provide our recipes and our knives to the entire world…Wix is my business partner, my assistant, my CRM and my marketing assistant.”
  

• Take accountability: “The only person that I'm accountable to is myself. I always joke that my boss is just a hard-ass and makes me get up early for work, and work late and work weekends. But that's self-motivation and that self-drive is a must as an entrepreneur.”
  

• Define your ‘why’: “I found myself really doubting where this was all going a lot of times. But I always held it together because of the faces of the people that we give our knives to: the chefs, or the culinary students that are leaping into their careers with our blades in their kits. Those are the people that drive me forward and drive our whole team to keep doing what we're doing and make amazing knives.”