We were lucky to catch up with Paul Sofsky recently and have shared our conversation below.

Paul, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I was working at a local establishment and was asked to hit cost of goods that seemed impossible so I created a 17 page excel sheet where all the pages connected and feed each other data so I could track food and beverage inventory down to the ounce. In the first year I saved the company a million dollars! I got 4 $10,000 raises in just one year going from 45k a year to over 1ook. I decided to take that sheet and convert it into a full blown app for restaurants to use for their stores. 10 years later and a lot of ups and downs we have 12 employees and over 1000 restaurants using the service.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I was young when I started in the hospitality industry. I was only 16 when I started deliverying pizzas. Did that through the first half of college. I started low and worked my way up. First delivery, then a bus boy which was insane. Dirty dishes and heavy lifting for a long while. I started serving half way though college and got into the bartending shortly after. The first gig I had was in the most dangeroud place I have every worked. We had 2 shootings in and just outside the bar in just one year. At leas one fight a night and full scale brawl every week. I made a ton of cash but it wasn’t worth my life so I left to get into a more upscale bartending. Moved my way to bar manager, then General Manager, then director of a 50 mm establishment. That’s when the ideal came and we got in at the perfect time.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I remember starting out. My office was my living room/TV room/Daughters bedroom. I would have to go into my bedroom and close the door to take phone calls. The entire apartment was about 900-1000 square feet. On different occasions we where about to completely run out of money that month and be thousands in the hole. Each time it happened something super lucky would happen right before we hit major debt. The first time it happened we got a big sale. The second time it happened I remeber we had the office, and we where going to run out of money that month and still owe somewhere around $5000 to $7000 at the end of the month. 1 week before we ran out of money we got our first angel investment of around 600k and that really changed everything.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

When we first hit the market it was ridiculous. We would drive all over Los Angeles trying to meet owners for sales. Restaurant owners are flaky to say the least. We had little to. no success until we started partnering with major players in the industry. Sysco was our first big partner and it really helped us get moving.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.orcainventory.com
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