n TASTE
From left: Business partners Abe Cunningham
and Sonny Mayugba with Director of Operations
Justin Jabali inside Solomon’s Deli in Sacramen-
to, which is expected to open this summer.
of Bite Club hurt deeply. … Bite Club was
right on time, and I fault myself for the
mistakes that were made. I’m over it, but
I’ll never forget it.”
That failure wouldn’t be his last.
Requested, launched in 2014, was a pol-
ished phone app featuring a dynam-
ic pricing concept at restaurants with
plenty of financial backing, but it never
gained traction. Customers were invited
to bid on prices for menu items, the idea
being that restaurants would be willing
to accept lower prices during slow times,
much like hotels do. Building the busi-
ness accounted for more than a year of
his life, and it wasn’t paying off. It was an
innovative idea that consumers found
awkward to use.
Rather than lick his wounds, Mayug-
ba put together a deal in 2016 to merge
with Waitr — and the fortified venture
soon flourished. Becoming a publicly
traded company on the NASDAQ was a
milestone worth millions on paper for
Mayugba and affirmation for a dreamer
and risk-taker who persevered through
his share of false starts and missed op-
portunities. Looking back, Mayugba
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comstocksmag.com | May 2019
says he had a grasp of the opportuni-
ties available in the new digital age in
business.
“What I recognized pretty early on
was the democratization of information
and the access to build things — the low-
ering of the hurdle to build something,”
he says. “The real thing that blew my
mind that the old-legacy guys didn’t see
was the speed at which the tech com-
panies were growing — the adoption
by consumers was just unbelievable. I
think I saw that.”
Mayugba is still dreaming up new
ideas. Next on his docket is getting Sol-
omon’s Deli launched in Sacramento,
with an expected opening this summer.
The first location opened in Davis last
May. “Like so many of us in the restau-
rant business, Sonny has always been
one of those guys who wants to make
Sacramento a better place,” says Andrea
Lepore, who cofounded Hot Italian piz-
zeria in Sacramento a decade ago and is
a partner in Solomon’s. “Elevating peo-
ple’s expectations in Sacramento is one
of the reasons I reached out to Sonny
with Solomon’s.”
Due to open in September 2020 at
the Market + Makers is another unusual
offering called Smash Table Tennis Bar
— Ping-Pong, cocktails and a 360-de-
gree bar. It will be one of the many offer-
ings in this eclectic space.
“Sonny has always been the same
person,” says wife Lynn Mayugba, who
met her husband in 1994. “I think he’s
just become more refined in terms of
business. He’s always been extremely
exuberant. I think he’s the happiest per-
son I have ever met in my life. Every day
is like the best day of his life.” n
Blair Anthony Robertson is a freelance
writer who previously worked at The
Sacramento Bee in multiple roles over 18
years, including feature writer, restaurant
critic and craft beer columnist. He also
worked at the Detroit Free Press and at
the Charlotte Observer. These days, he is
a dog lover, fitness enthusiast, avid cook
and devoted vegan.