Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in food and beverage but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Garrett Lang, Founder, and President of PlateRate, located in Allendale, NJ, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

We help customers earn lots of free food to try the top-rated menu items at local restaurants, and we do it in a way that supports local restaurants, unlike our competitors.

Tell us about yourself

My goal is to create the ultimate dining experience for diners while supporting local restaurants. I want to prove by being the most generous company with diners and restaurants that we can be the most popular as well.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

I’d say there are two:

  1. Winning an award for the most visionary product of the year from an organization of over 30,000 software inventors is one.
  2. Getting early signs of traction with a food tech company that validates all the pivots I’ve made in the company.

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Making sure everyone feels comfortable challenging you even though you’re the owner – I take great care to value my team’s feedback because the owner that thinks they know all the answers themselves is far more likely to fail - We make better decisions taking everyone’s feedback into consideration.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Focus on the MVP - the thing that offers the most valuable that’s the fastest to bring to market.
  2. Listen to everyone around you with an open mind, and value the ideas/feedback they give you.
  3. Take my product management boot camp, it will teach you how to get traction without having to spend the many angel investments my cofounder and I put into PlateRate.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://linktr.ee/platerate.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/platerateus/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/platerateit/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/platerateit
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/platerate/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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