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Meet the Chef

Chef Charley Smith grew up on the coast of Mississippi, where his love for southern food and Cajun cuisine was first realized. He started working in a Mexican restaurant at 15 and has always had at least a part-time restaurant job. After graduating high school in 1997, Charley joined the Marine Corps, serving as a motor vehicle operator in Okinawa, Japan, and at Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina.

In 2003, while stationed in Okinawa on a 3-year tour, he realized more opportunities were available and transferred to the intelligence field. He once again returned for a tour of duty in North Carolina and ended up serving three combat tours in Iraq as the intelligence chief for Combat Logistics Battalion-8, 2005–2006 in Fallujah, Intelligence Chief for HML/A-269, 2007 Al Asad Air Base, and Intelligence Chief for Marine Aircraft Group-26, 2009 Al Asad Air Base) for a total of 25 months.

After his 3rd tour of duty in Iraq and having orders to Okinawa for another 3-year tour, Gunny decided it was time to call it quits and focus on his family. He left the Marine Corps and worked as a security contractor for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he also went to school full-time, earning an Associate of Science in Business Administration Management. After losing his job to the government shutdown in 2013, Gunny moved his family to Winston Salem, NC. He attended culinary school at August Escoffier School of Culinary Arts in Boulder, Colorado, and graduated in 2016.

Gunny worked in a few locally owned restaurants before becoming the executive relief chef at The Twisted Vine in Jamestown. He returned to Escoffier in 2020 for the pastry arts program and graduated in 2021. Chef Charley and his wife Laurie started their business in 2013 with a home-based bakery and added a hot dog cart in 2014.

They have since added a personal chef service catering business, run a ghost kitchen a few days a week in Kernersville, and are almost done converting a school bus into a food truck. Gunny is always looking for new and innovative ways to create income for his family and will gladly work with you to customize a menu for your event.

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