Then there’s Waitr, the food-delivery
company for which he is chief market-
ing officer. With an explosion of recent
growth, Waitr operates in 250 cities in
10 states. In November 2018, Mayugba
and his business partner rang the open-
ing bell at the NASDAQ to celebrate the
launch of the Louisiana-based Waitr as a
publicly traded company.
In 1993, Mayugba was making mini-
mum wage as a courier when Matt Ken-
nedy and John Baccigaluppi started an
edgy little snowboarding magazine in
Sacramento called Heckler and asked
him to be a partner. Mayugba had only
gone snowboarding once in his life.
But he had made a name for himself as
a courier for Baccigaluppi’s company,
hustling up new business leads from re-
ceptionists he met during his rounds. He
scored plenty of business cards, but Ma-
yugba now laughs at the memory — he
was simply trying to meet girls.
“[We] figured it out on the fly,” says
Baccigaluppi, who now lives in San Ra-
fael and publishes a magazine on mu-
sic recording called Tape Op. “We were
making a small income on it, but it was
an insane amount of work. Sonny was a
super-positive person. It would be hard
to think of Sonny ever being negative.
He always had a can-do attitude.”
By 1996, Mayugba was a 26-year-
old editor, publisher and global trav-
eler whose magazine was thriving, so
much so that a major publisher came
calling with an offer the three founders
couldn’t refuse — $1.5 million cash and
the founders could maintain editorial
control. But after nine years at Heckler,
Mayugba was feeling burned out, so he
sold his stake and sought his next entre-
preneurial challenge.
Mayugba came up with three restau-
rant concepts and approached Kurt Spa-
taro, executive chef and partner with the
Paragary Restaurant Group, which is one
of the most prominent locally owned com-
panies in the Sacramento food and bever-
age category. Mayugba credits his gift of
gab and willingness to reach out to those
who could teach him something about
business with opening new opportunities.
Soon Mayugba was working grueling
split shifts as the pantry chef at Esquire
Grille. It was 2002, and nobody at the
restaurant knew who he was. “You’re the
lowest guy, the hardest-working guy in
the kitchen. You know what? I loved it,”
he says. “It’s what I needed. At Heckler,
I became this little king. I was publisher
and editor-in-chief at one of the hottest
snowboarding magazines in the world,
flying all over the planet, hanging with
AC/DC and Tony Hawk, all these big
names, boxes of free stuff showing up
every day. I had become that sensitive,
ego-driven idiot. I was too cool and I
hated that about myself. I was doing it
for the wrong reasons.”
Mayugba quickly realized he didn’t
want to be a chef. So he became PRG’s
first marketing director. In 2006, he had
another idea — online social media for
the restaurant industry. He called it Bite
Club. This was when Facebook was just
a fledgling enterprise. He launched the
startup with some investors but just
missed out on the coming boom in that
realm.
“Social was where it was at, and I saw
that,” he says. “But I failed in two areas.
As CEO, I thought my ideas were the only
way. I invested all of my brain cells in
marketing and very few in product. It’s
supposed to be the opposite. The failure
Sonny Mayugba (right) and his business
partner, Tyson Queen, rang the opening bell
at the NASDAQ in November to celebrate
Waitr going public.
Who’s innovating the restaurant
industry in the Capital Region?
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May 2019 | comstocksmag.com
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