Earlier this year, Miami-based startup SpeedETab was acquired by Wix and joined our Restaurants group. We caught SpeedETab’s co-founder Adam Garfield for a chat about his decision to choose Wix over other offers, about using Wix’s reach to amplify the service and what really happened on his first day at our Miami office
Not long after Adam Garfield moved from Miami to Boston a little more than a decade ago, he noticed that he was wasting his time.
The problem wasn’t his job (corporate finance) or the people around him. It was his lunch and coffee breaks. Before work and during lunch time people would rush to coffee and sandwich shops, stand in line to order and pay, and then wait again to get their food and rush back to the offices. “Maybe I'm just a very impatient person, but I felt like waiting for someone to take my money and give me goods was the most ridiculous thing. I wanted to be able to skip the line”, he laughs.
Adam was frustrated, and around 2011 or 2012 thought to himself that a smartphone app similar to the one used to order a car service from Uber could cut down his waiting times. He was reluctant to take the risk and start a company, but ended up understanding that “the risk of never trying would always outweigh the risk of trying and failing”.
He quit his job, and along with Ed Gilman founded SpeedETab in 2013. A couple of years later they launched an app that helped its users (restaurant owners) and their users (their patrons) skip the line for their coffee, food or drinks.
SpeedETab started out as an app that allowed people to discover restaurants near them, browse their menu, and order ahead on their phones so they could pick up their food without having to wait in line.
In 2017, SpeedETab created a white-label version of the app and allowed restaurants to brand it. That decision changed the company’s business model and enabled it to reach many more users. “Before the change we were getting a percentage of the sales but then we started charging a flat monthly fee and also handled the payments aspect of the business, which garnered revenue through that as well”.
How was the connection with Wix established?
“I was introduced to Wix about 6 months before the pandemic. I was at an event that was being held at the Wix offices and met Brett Haralson, who's one of the heads of the Miami office here and we became friends. During Covid, our business dramatically accelerated as every restaurant went online and we furthered our offering to support enterprise size customers, loyalty rewards, and more delivery integrations. I think we and Wix saw in each other a lot of great synergies. We felt that we could really help Wix in terms of their online ordering offering and their overall restaurant offering, because we have a lot of great integrations. So we started talking with Wix about a possibility of an acquisition, and pretty soon those talks accelerated”.
You had other offers. What made you choose Wix?
“What was different about Wix compared to other companies was their interest in us as human beings. Other companies were also very interested in us, but Wix was the only one that really brought the human element into things beyond the commercial aspects. We met people from Wix’s People group who told us how Wix treats employees, what the work experience is like here, and how Wix focuses on culture building. It meant a lot to me because we were a small team at SpeedETab - just 15 people. We had a very strong culture internally and we all had great relationships with each other.
“Wix has over 5,500 people these days, but some of these startup elements still exist within its culture and it was really important to us since it's a big decision moving forward with an acquisition. You want to make sure that not only are our shareholders happy, but that your employees are happy. Wix enabled us to achieve that and to keep everyone happy.
“I think one of the big fears startup founders have when they’re being acquired is going into an enterprise size business and fearing being just a cog in a wheel of 5,000 plus people. At Wix, the structure of multiple companies within the company allows us to remain a small team within a bigger team, and so - you still feel like you're within a startup.
“Another part of that is the investment in employees. As a founder in a startup, that was one of the things that I always wish we could do more for our team: provide more education, more learning opportunities. As a startup you’re building so quickly and you don't have those resources that larger companies do.
“Also, there’s the fun element. You want to join a fun company. We didn’t want to go to an old school company where you have nothing going on. You know, it's little things that make a big difference. And then also there's the experience within a large organization: I can learn to be a better professional within a large sized company such as Wix".
So how does joining Wix impact Wix Restaurants?
“Our mission at SpeedETab was to help restaurants increase their revenue and provide a better guest experience for their guests. Now, being a part of Wix, we have the ability to take that and amplify it with Wix’s reach. So we went from serving a few thousand customers across the U.S. to many many more and access to more than 200 million users. I think the really amazing opportunity is to have Wix’s resources on top of our product and being able to impact and change the way that Restaurants operate, and do that through really powerful integration that SpeedETab had with POS (Point of Sale) systems. The typical Wix Restaurants user can be the pizza tosser or the coffee pourer. These people are in their stores, pouring their heart and tears into their business, so from a tech perspective, the fewer things that they have to do - the better. Our goal with Wix is to just simplify everything for them and make their lives as easy as possible”.
What was it like to join Wix during the pandemic?
“Covid has made things very different than any other time in history, and even more so in mergers and acquisitions because not only are you joining a new company and a new entity, but you're doing so remotely. It's one thing to integrate companies and integrate people when you can sit them next to each other and have everyone meet each other. It's another thing to do that when you're doing it via Zoom and Slack so that can be very difficult. I feel like over these last six months it's actually gone very well. Obviously it's exciting when the office is opened back up and you have a chance to go in and you meet people and it helps you learn more about Wix.
“I think Wix also does a great job in explaining the company’s vision: Why you're doing what you're doing? Why is that important? Why should I care? Events like Wix’s Roadmap week in which different groups within the company present their achievements in the last quarter and their plans for the next one, help galvanize everyone together behind a common mission because you know what's happening, not just within Restaurants but within all of Wix”.
We liked your vlog about your first day at our Miami office :) Tell us how it felt.
“It was really fun. You know, we came from a small office where we're all crammed together in one little room and just feverishly hunched over working at a desk all day. So after that you walk into the Wix office and it's beautiful and it's got fun things all around: from the giant kitchen that everyone loves and the ping pong table and the pool table. Having a good double monitor set up and ready to go at your desk. So all that, and of course meeting other people. We've met people within the Miami office that we didn't know before and now we can learn about what they're working on. It’s awesome”.
