Founder story
Why belonging is personal.
Forge 54 did not begin with a barbecue business plan. It began with lived experience of what it means to lose a sense of family, find belonging again and discover how much it matters when people choose to show up for one another.
At 15, Forge 54 founder Ant Hodges was asked to leave home and entered foster care. He knows what it feels like to lose family, to feel alone and to have to forge a new path before you are ready.
As a teenager, he found belonging within a church community. That experience showed him that the world was not all bad and that there were people willing to stand alongside others through difficult seasons of life. His Christian faith has continued to shape the way he thinks about service, community, grace, generosity and responsibility.
Over the years, that conviction has been lived out through youth leadership, community groups, support for a local food bank, trustee responsibilities and leading teams in business. He has also built a family of his own, with more than 24 years of marriage and two grown-up children building lives of their own.
Along the way, he has seen another kind of isolation affecting many men. Technology can create constant contact while still leaving people deeply disconnected. Comparison is easy. Close friendship can be hard. Men can reach adulthood with very few people they can genuinely rely on, little sense of purpose or nowhere that feels like their place.
Forge 54 comes from a simple conviction: gathering people together matters.
A shared fire, food prepared together, practical challenge and time around a table create the conditions for relationships to form naturally. Nobody has to arrive as a problem to be fixed. People can come because the experience looks brilliant, learn something useful, share a meal and discover something deeper while they are there.
The point
The story explains why Forge 54 exists. Then the focus moves to the people around the fire.
What we are building
A place where people can belong, contribute, learn and move forward together, with fire and food as the starting point.