We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ron Patel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ron, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
New Mexicans are so often overlooked, so often told that they don’t deserve the nice things that bigger cities have. Often we are ranked at the top of the bad lists and bottom of the good ones. There are no Fortune 500 companies based here that will “prop up” the team,
Our mission is to bring New Mexicans together in ways they’ve never been brought together before and to become an agent for positive change.
Notice that we don’t include the word “Soccer” in that mission statement anywhere. That’s what we do but not why we do it.
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.
Ron Patel is the President of New Mexico United, a Professional Soccer Club based in
Albuquerque, NM. New Mexico United plays in the United Soccer League (USL)
alongside over 36 professional clubs in the United States.
After Co-Founding New Mexico United in 2018 with the club’s Majority Owner & CEO
Peter Trevisani, Ron helped guide New Mexico United to league leading attendance
& merchandise figures as its Vice President of Sales. After a brief stint away from New
Mexico, overseeing a Sports & Entertainment group in McAllen, TX, Ron and his
family returned home to New Mexico in 2021. Ron and Peter “Got the band back
together” in January of 2022, with Ron returning as New Mexico United’s Chief
Business Officer. Ron was promoted to President of the club in January of 2024, a
role in which he proudly serves through the present day.
In 2006, prior to his sports career, Ron became an entrepreneur by forming “Just
Dine In,” a multi-restaurant delivery service. Starting in Albuquerque, his company
merged w/ Portland, OR based Delivered Dish in 2013. A couple of mergers &
acquisitions later, the company grew to 7 markets in the Western United States..
Publicly traded GrubHub purchased the budding company in late 2015 when Ron
exited the organization. Ron founded Albuquerque Sol, an amateur soccer club, in
2013 & was instrumental in the formation of what would become New Mexico’s first
professional soccer franchise in United.
Ron was born in Liverpool, England and is still an avid fan of his beloved hometown
team, Liverpool FC. Ron is married to the love of his life, Isabelle, is a proud step
dad/father to Jose, (29) Dominique (26) and their newborn baby girl Nadia. (Whom
Ron & Isabelle adopted in October of 2023) A small but loud Yorkshire Terrier named
Rocky rounds out Ron’s family!
Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?
I was part of a team who sold our multi-restaurant delivery service (RDS) to GrubHub in 2015. The backstory was that we started our small delivery service in 2006 with 6 restaurants. Ten years later, after merging with a much larger RDS, expanding into 7 cities in the United States, (Albuquerque, El Paso, Denver, San Diego, Las Vegas, Eugene and Portland) we were able be the beneficiaries of a strategic acquisition for Publicly Traded GrubHub.
Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?
There were tons of moments when I felt I was crazy and that I needed to pack it in. For the first 6 months of the restaurant delivery service, my business partner and I could only afford to pay ourselves $100 a week. Every Friday, we would log into our Wells Fargo account and pray that there was $200 in the bank. Many times, there was not. We would transfer $50 each and then wait for the credit card sales from the weekend to come in on Monday & Tuesday to pay ourselves the rest! How I would make ends meet was to deliver food and collect tips!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.newmexicoutd.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronpatel505
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ron.patel.142
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-patel-7b22455/
- Twitter: https://x.com/rpatelusa
