The Mellow Mushroom on Peace street in Raleigh NC was the very first restaurant to use Schedulefly. They started using it sometime in 2006 – back when it was running on server at my house in Raleigh. They’ve been a customer ever since and really helped us early on by suggesting stuff to add or…
Pi Pizzeria has been wildly successful in a short amount of time. Chris and his partner, Frank Uible, opened their first location on “Pi Day” March 14 (3.14) 2008, and by that October then-Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama enjoyed some of their pizza after a St. Louis campaign rally. He loved it, and Pi,…
A buddy of mine (Scott) has built a nice software service for fishing guides. He is a Charter Fishing Captain himself and also a CPA – so he has a great story and reason for creating this business. Fishing guides use his service to manage their clients and trips – and also to keep track…
We were thrilled to see our book Restaurant Owners Uncorked mentioned today in a blog post by the Wall Street Journal. The article is called How to Open a Restaurant and contains tips from Damien Scoditti, a NYC restaurateur. The post also includes a shout out to Bobby Flay’s new reality show and links to…
Mic and Molley Heynekamp started Socorro Springs Restaurant & Brewery in 1999. After four and a half years of planning, they took their original $1,000,000 business plan down to $100,000. And they wound up starting with only $70,000. Ten years later they opened Eddyline Restaurant & Brewery. Both restaurants have been very successful, and Mic…
Yesterday my mom called me and said she had just started reading Restaurant Owners Uncorked. The first comment she made was, “William, this book is not just for restaurant people. It’s for any entrepreneur.” She’s right. This book is full of excellent general business wisdom that anybody starting a business could learn from. Here are…
Something inspired me today to write this blog post…. Business owner or not, “entrepreneur” or not, married or not, young or old, if you ever find yourself doing something that you don’t enjoy immensely, or living a life you wish you were not living, or hanging out with people you don’t want to be with,…
Penny Karas left a career in policy-related communications work in Washington, D.C. to start Hello Cupcake. She opened her first store in 2008, and is getting ready to open a second location soon, as well as launch a national shipping platform. Hello Cupcake makes gourmet cupcakes fresh from scratch, all day, every day, using high-quality,…
About a year ago, Wes and I started batting around an idea for a restaurant concept, and we decided we’d try to open a restaurant together one day in ten years or so. Right now we’re 100% focused on Schedulefly, but we figured ten years from now we may be at a point where we…
When I began to create Schedulefly, there were no official “software requirements”. There were no meetings beforehand with other developers or shareholders or investors. There was no money. There was no discussion about out how the system would be architected, where it would live, how it would scale to thousands of users etc. There was…