Our story

Meet Josh

Head chef and owner of Kinship. Landowner and community builder. Meditator. Relational skills ninja.

Josh Robbins owns and lives on a property in Candler where eight people live communally, with a garden they all eat from. He recently bought a second piece of land with friends and their families, where they are actively building a multigenerational living community.

Food, community and growing things are not a sideline to the work. Sustainability and people are his way of life. Pop by his kitchen and he is almost always cooking a meal for friends while prepping for the next catering job.

Josh, the chef behind Kinship Catering

How he came to feeding people

Food has shaped his life in more ways than he ever expected.

After being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at a young age, Josh began paying close attention to the connection between what we eat and how we feel. After trying plenty of popular diets, he came back to a few simple principles: use fresh, whole ingredients; eat lots of vegetables; don’t eat too much; and pay attention to how food makes you feel. Every body is different, and mindfulness is one of the best ways we can learn what helps us thrive.

Reducing stress became just as important as changing his eating habits. Through a decades-long meditation practice and a deep interest in communication and connection with others, Josh has found a way of living that has helped keep his Crohn’s symptoms almost completely cleared.

Community has shaped his life, too. Josh has spent nine years practicing and teaching Authentic Relating, and trained in Forum facilitation and conflict resolution at Tamera, a peace research village in southern Portugal. None of that appears on a typical caterer’s résumé. All of it shows up in how a room feels.

For decades, Josh has cooked for families, retreats, and celebrations. Every meal reinforces something he resonates deeply with – sharing good, healthy food is one of the simplest and most meaningful ways to care for and connect with one another.

Josh in the kitchen holding a finished dish

Flat Creek

Your booking supports our land project.

We own twenty acres on Flat Creek in Weaverville, where we’re building a multigenerational community and a regenerative farming project. A place where people can live, grow and gather together. The vision includes a working farm that will one day provide ingredients for the very celebrations that inspire it.

Some of the proceeds from every wedding we cater go directly toward continuing to develop this project.

The meadow at Flat Creek in Weaverville

What that means on your wedding day

We love food.
We love people more.

Josh hires for relational skill as much as for cooking. The crew have done that work themselves, and it shows up in ordinary ways.

  • We talk to your grandmother.
  • We read what the room needs and adjust to it, usually before anyone has to ask.
  • We hold the edges of the day while you get married.

It is the thing people comment on afterwards, usually with some surprise. Nobody books a caterer thinking about what the team will be like to have in the room, and it turns out to be one of the things they remember.

“Planning a wedding was such a crazy experience, and he did a great job of making it easy and smooth.” Michal, married in Asheville

The ingredients matter enormously. The people eating them matter more, and so does how the day feels while it is happening.

The crew

We only hire people you’d be glad to have at your wedding.

Aurora and Josh holding big wooden bowls of salad The team serving guests along an outdoor buffet Serving guests by candlelight in the evening

Let’s begin

If that sounds like the way you want your day looked after

Book a short call, or send us your date and we will come back to you.

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