Grow A Small Business Podcast 5+ years of experience in launching, scaling and selling a shoe company, now the cofounder & CEO of Australia's largest online wholesale food ordering platform with over 3,000 suppliers and 85 team members. (Ben Lipschitz)
In this episode, I interview Ben Lipschitz, the CEO, and Co-Founder of FoodByUs Australia's largest online wholesale food and alcohol ordering platform that connects thousands of restaurants, cafes, and caterers with thousands of suppliers.
A law graduate turned entrepreneur, who sold his first business, Flipsters in 2014, Ben then teamed up in 2016 with Gary Munitz and Tim Chandler, combining their expertise in hospitality and technology to launch FoodByUs, a free, 'one-stop procurement shop' for small-medium sized venues. What started as a one-stop-shop online marketplace for venues and suppliers to connect has evolved into an advanced software procurement system that helps venues efficiently run their entire back-of-house operation.
Ben's impressive journey as a tech founder has been recognised with numerous awards including being named Entrepreneur of the Year at the prestigious 2022 CEO Magazine Executive of the Year Awards and winner of the 2022 Sydney Young Entrepreneur of the Year Hospitality & Tourism award. For two years running, he has also been recognised as one of Australia's top 100 Young Entrepreneurs.
In the past twelve months, he has overseen the growth of the team by 50% to 85 people and helped deliver an ongoing result of at least 30% record MoM revenue growth. Alongside this, he has been instrumental in the business securing Series A ($10m in Nov 2021) & Series B funding ($12m in Jan 2023).
Ben has said that growing a small business requires looking at the numbers every day. So he says, "When we shifted into restaurants, that made it clear that we were onto something every day, everything feeds into that there are tons of dashboards, and the entire company has a relevant dashboard for them that they literally will look at first thing in the morning every day, last thing before they leave and I think that drives the points."
This Cast Covers:
- Managing a real one-stop shop between restaurants, and all the wholesale orders for everyday needs.
- Drawing live inventory and being able to submit orders digitally.
- Growing from 5 to 85 team members for over 7 years.
- The significance of passion in selecting a business industry to start.
- Sharing the most innovative industry which is technology.
- Learning the importance of customer feedback in growing a small business.
- Tips on how to handle the unending problems inside the business.
- Accepting the reality that there are people who are better than us to do other tasks.
- Helping entrepreneurs improve their delegation skills by focusing on culture and people.
- Sharing the exciting parts of growing a small business.
Links:
Additional Resources:
Quotes:
"Running a profitable company that has a meaningful impact on the industry is a success." —Ben Lipschitz
"Have a real think about what it is you're trying to solve before you start to market and scale that marketing." —Ben Lipschitz
"As you grow, you have a lot of pains that you never anticipated." —Ben Lipschitz
"You must accept that your leaders and team are in a better position than you to complete many of the tasks." —Ben Lipschitz
"You have to build the company that you want." —Ben Lipschitz