Founder Interview w. Sam Bernstein, Founder and CEO at Table22
By: Tribeca Venture Partners
Tags: Tech, Entrepreneurship, Founders, Startup, Venture Capital

Tell us about Table22 and why you started the company?

At Table22’s core is a reverence for the role that restaurants play as nexuses of creativity, connection, and joy in our communities. When our own business was upended by the pandemic, we found ourselves up against the same set of existential crises faced by many of the restaurant partners we work with today. So we leaned up our team, resolved to reorient our focus, and began again new.

Our conversations with some of the best hospitality operators around the country affirmed that many of the structural problems with the restaurant business model — twenty-year margin compression; a lack of any recurring/predictable demand; unhealthy relationships with third-party delivery apps; and ultimately, high failure rates — had been accelerated, not created, by the pandemic.

The basic question we asked ourselves was: “How can consumers play a role in ensuring the viability, stability, sustainability of their favorite restaurants?” That led us to a vision for what a new model of consumer hospitality patronage could look like through subscription.

In late May, we launched with our first restaurant, a bento cafe and natural wine store in Austin, TX, called Bento Picnic. Their offering’s success surpassed all of our expectations, and we began sprinting to onboard restaurants, learn more about the model, and help our customers launch subscription offers. A little more than six months later, we’re proud to have scaled quickly and made a significant impact on our customers’ businesses, communities, and lives.

You chose to launch a new company in NYC during the pandemic (that takes courage). How has the experience been with restaurants during this time?

We are fortunate to have incredible customers. They are resilient, entrepreneurial, creative, and tough. At a fundamental level, we’ve helped them turn lemons into lemonade. We think the dislocation and stress created by the Covid shock, while painful, will be a forcing function for restaurants to adopt sticky, enduring, positive changes to their models.

Take Oxalis, a Michelin star restaurant in Brooklyn whom we’ve helped build a near-six-figure annual revenue stream through wine & pantry share subscriptions on Table22. For them, we think expanding TAM by selling complementary goods, building predictable & stable revenue through subscription, and bringing their brand to life off-premise in new ways will all be enduring innovations to the model.

What’s been the most important milestone for you and the Table22 team?

Top-down, hitting $1m of annualized subscriptions was a really fun milestone. More specifically, we hear incredible day-to-day stories of Table22 revenue allowing restaurants to remain open, to hire staff back, to bring their creativity to life for customers in new ways. Those are wonderful.

What are some of your favorite NYC restaurants that have recently joined Table22?

We recently launched one of my all-time favorite spots, The Four Horsemen, in Williamsburg. Their wine program is innovative and renowned, and they got a Michelin star for the first time this year. Their program has been hugely successful. I’m a personal subscriber there and excited to get my first wine picks next week.

Our TVP Founders tell us there are so many lessons in entrepreneurship. What’s the biggest lesson from your Table22 journey?

I think just to be really learning-oriented. We took all of the lessons from missteps at LoftSmart and codified them into a set of operating principles — how we work back from problems, stress-test assumptions, maintain unit economic discipline, etc. — that we take really seriously. In my view, this operational scaffolding has been fundamental to our ability to scale Table22 in a short period, with real impact on customers, high growth rates, and strong business fundamentals.

What’s your advice on what an entrepreneur should look for in an investor?

Many entrepreneurs always told me that the true test of a good investor was how they behave in difficult moments. I lived that this year and finally understood why. I was lucky to have Chip & TVP there to support us through our transition and going forward, we’ll continue to be eager to work with investors who don’t blink when it’s time to be in the foxhole with us.

How do you deal with failure or setbacks as you build a startup?

I’ve been given the feedback that, as a team, we do a good job of striking a balance between shaking off losses and mistakes — they are, of course, inevitable in the course of scaling quickly, building product, and learning — but also ensuring we diagnose, codify, and channel our learnings from those mistakes into go-forward processes, products, systems, etc. If anything, I’m incredibly proud of how simultaneously resilient and learning-oriented this year has shown our team to be.

How do you balance working remotely and maintaining a team culture?

Our team is fortunate to have built close friendships and working relationships in The Before Times. We’re definitely drawing from that well of familiarity every day — knowing one another’s mannerisms, dos and don’ts, and working dynamics. We’re starting to hire new folks now for Table22 who never worked on the LoftSmart team, and I’m sure that will be a fun culture challenge. I’d say in general, we try to set and communicate clear goals, check in on them a bunch, and keep a fun/upbeat work environment.

What are you currently reading/aspiring to read this winter?

Two memoirs! Obama’s, and David Chang’s.

Words to live by…

Several months back, I was listening to the “How I Built This” with John Poley of Peloton, and I remember a quote that he offered, that someone else had offered to him: “Risk is the tariff paid to leave the shores of predictable misery.” I love that.