In February of 2015 Chicago based online food delivery company GrubHub completed the acquisition of Boston based DiningIn. DiningIn was started by a single entrepreneur, Michael Hackel, in 1988 and had evolved from a Boston based business to a nationally recognized brand which operated in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, and the Twin Cities. Michael grew the business to over 100 employees and more than 500 delivery drivers over his 28 year career by focusing on one thing and one thing only – getting great local restaurant food delivered effortlessly into the homes of hungry patrons. Hackel’s mission from day one was to revolutionize the takeout experience and to help busy customers find time in their day by offering home delivery for restaurants which don’t normally offer delivery options. I recently sat down with Michael Hackel to learn from this entrepreneur his thoughts on building, scaling, and eventually selling an empire.
What Can I fix?: Hackel says he never had a formal job after college, and admits that he never really wanted one. Instead, he wanted to find an opportunity to build a business where he could fix something that was broken. He said that he would at times wander through Copley Place, a Boston based shopping mall, looking at the stores and restaurants and he’d ask himself, “What is it that I can bring to the world?” One night, back at his apartment, he ordered food for delivery from a local restaurant. It took more than two hours for the food to be delivered and, the kicker, said Hackel, is that when he called multiple times to check on his order, the restaurant was rude to him. It was the night in which DiningIn was formed, at least conceptually. Shortly thereafter, Hackel launched his business, DiningIn, which partnered food delivery drivers from his company with all the best local restaurants around Boston, in order to offer high quality food delivered to busy families, quickly and with great service. Hackel’s advice for other entrepreneurs seeking to start a business is to go out and find something that needs to be fixed, then fix it. Hackel built a multi-million dollar empire by doing something simple; fixing something that was broken.REAL LIFE. REAL NEWS. REAL VOICES.Help us tell more of the stories that matter from voices that too often remain unheard.Support HuffPost
One Piece of Advice: Hackel says that his one piece of advice he’s willing to offer every business owner and entrepreneur, is to never give or take advice. Hackel says that advice is not helpful. What is helpful, he says, is when people share stories and experiences. Hackel says that when someone asks for advice, he simply shares stories of similar situations so that the person can draw his or her own conclusion as to how it applies to their situation. As well, when he needs to figure out a problem in his own life or business, Hackel asks others to share stories of how they handled similar instances. In this same vein, Hackel says that what motivated him in his 28 years of growing his DiningIn empire was the stories he absorbed about other business leaders by reading books about entrepreneurial greats like Howard Schultz, or by surrounding himself with other successful business owners, which he accomplished through a long standing membership in YPO. Hackel says that no other entrepreneur knows your business intimately like you do and so nobody is poised to give advice about it. He says it’s your job as an entrepreneur to make the best decisions by knowing your business and your brand. He says the best way to mitigate risks taken on each decision you make is to closely study what other business leaders are doing.
Bootstrap: Hackel built his business from the ground up by bootstrapping. He admits that he may have grown faster had he sought out private equity or other capital sources, but for him, bootstrapping made him a more vigilant business owner. He says that in the beginning years, he always felt undercapitalized and because of that, he was never reckless with the money that he generated. He says bootstrapping made it easy to get up every morning, because he had to hustle in the beginning years, to keep revenue coming in. He says the upside to bootstrapping is that he was able to grow and experiment with his business over 28 years, never under any pressure to sell because there were no partners. He says that perhaps he would have grown larger and at a more rapid pace with equity partners, but for him, bootstrapping gave him the opportunity to grow at a controlled pace and to be the sole decision maker operationally and when it came time to sell.
Only As Good as Your Last Customer: If there’s one thing that Hackel took very seriously as he grew his empire, it was customer feedback. Hackel says that it’s very easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in the data of their business, but that data never tells the entire story. He says that just because your business is growing year over year, doesn’t mean that the business is running effectively or efficiently. He says you really have to pay attention to other things, like customer feedback. Hackel’s entire business was born out of a terrible restaurant delivery experience and so whenever a customer had something bad to say about his business, he jumped on the opportunity to learn from their feedback and to make changes. While many business owners would disregard a customer complaint in light of positive sales data, Hackel says that he always put customer feedback in front of any other data he had. He says customer feedback, even when it’s bad, is a blessing that no company can afford to ignore.
Now that Hackel has sold his business, he’s working on other ventures. He says he spends plenty of time with family, invests heavily in real estate, and he’s considering starting something he’s very passionate about, an animal shelter. With his track record for entrepreneurial success, there’s no doubt that Hackel will pave the way for new and better ways to save animals as he begins the next chapter of his career.