Hospitality platform
Tabern
A calm, guided way for restaurants to launch their website, menus, reservations, and delivery links.
I ship the product, not the pitch.
Design, front end, back end, and the automation between them. One to three people per project. We run lean for a reason.
Introduction
I'm Maxwell Retzer.
Digital architect, designer, and solo-founder of Responsive Company, working out of Milwaukee. I grew up inside the industry. My father ran the agency Northern Ground, so client calls and press proofs were background noise before they were a job.
That start is why I work end to end rather than in a lane. A brand, an interface, the API behind it, and the automation that keeps it fed are the same problem seen from four angles, and handing them to four people is where projects go to die.
These days that means shipping product for early-stage founders: the first real version, built to be extended rather than rewritten.
Toolkit
Here's the majority of the skills I've picked up along the way
Picked up on real projects, in roughly the order the work demanded them. The list moves; the habit of learning the next one does not.
- HTML5
- CSS
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- React
- Vue
- Nuxt
- Next.js
- Node
- Tailwind
- Sass
- GSAP
- Three.js
- Vite
- npm
- Git
- GitHub
- VS Code
- Postman
- PHP
- Python
- .NET
- PostgreSQL
- MySQL
- MariaDB
- SQLite
- MongoDB
- Redis
- Supabase
- Vercel
- Cloudflare
- Docker
- Nginx
- WordPress
- Shopify
- Stripe
- Webflow
- Wix
- Framer
- Relume
- Strapi
- Figma
- Blender
- Spline
- OpenAI
- Claude
- ComfyUI
- LangChain
- n8n
- Windsurf
- JSS
Availability
I'm in 'locked in mode' 8+ hours a day, and you can book me to spend them on your project.
I take on a small number of builds at a time so each one gets real attention. If you have something half-formed and want a straight answer about whether it is worth building, that is a good call to have.
Thirty minutes, no deck, no discovery invoice. Bring the problem and we will scope it out loud.
New work
New work.
Recent builds for teams turning good ideas into useful products, places, and systems.
Manufacturing partner
RSP Inc.
A full-service contract manufacturer helping innovators move from product concept to production through design, molding, assembly, and logistics.