Mr. Winston: Hospitality Innovators

In this student entrepreneur Wouter van Ooijen and Koen Lavrijssen talk about their own business: Mr. Winston. They describe how the company has started and what it is like to be a student entrepreneur. The interview is made in collaboration with Starterslift Tilburg, which is the center of Tilburg University for entrepreneurial students with great talent and ambition.

Could you briefly describe what the business involves and what it is trying to achieve?
Mr. Winston aims to make the life of the hospitality entrepreneur easier by improving the customer experience and reducing stress. We achieve our goal by supporting the personnel and streamlining the communication between waitstaff, bartenders, kitchen staff, managers and chefs. Our hospitality system provides smart notifications and orders tickets intelligently to achieve the most efficient working methods.

When did you come up with the idea of starting your own business?
While I was working as a floor manager in a large restaurant I noticed that communication was often lacking and sometimes guests were overlooked. With the high turnover in staff in most restaurants it is difficult to invest a lot of time in training employees, but a system can also take care of some of these teaching activities. Hence the idea of Mr. Winston was born; a butler who is always present to guide everything in the right direction, but never appears in the foreground.

What made you make the first step to start for yourself?
There were a lot of systems available and my manager, the chef and myself looked at nearly all of them, but all of the systems were focused merely on keeping tabs and creating reports for the manager. None of them provided even basic smart functionality for the waitstaff, the bartenders, the kitchen staff or the chefs. Hence we set out to create a system which provided useful features for the people making use of these systems the most; i.e. not the managers.

Can owning and running a business be combined easily with your studies?
Depends. When I started my masters I had already started two companies, but I purposefully never planned on finishing it in time. I think this is mainly a question of priorities; if you want to finish your studies in time I would recommend against starting a company, but if you want to start a company while you study I would advise against trying to finish your studies in time. In any event stress is not a good thing, not for you, your study, nor your company. If you get stressed, re-prioritize.

What is the most important thing you have learned while working for Mr. Winston and cannot be learned during an education?
Conflict resolution. When you work with people, whether they are customers, suppliers or partners, there are bound to be conflicts or disagreements. How you handle those, especially when in charge of your own company, defines how you perform. The most important thing to understand is that conflict resolution starts before there is even a conflict, by carefully managing expectations. If you promise your customers the world, but deliver a marble, there will be a mismatch between their expectations and reality and this will likely result in a conflict. Always try to underpromise and overdeliver.

Up to this point, what skills have you gained from the establishment of your business?
Programming, project management, sales, networking & budgeting (a.k.a. guessing).

How do you see the future of the company?
We are defining our long-term strategy at the moment so it is difficult to say where we will be in a few years, but given from the enthusiasm we see from our current customers I would say we have a bright future ahead.

Finally, what would you like to say to students who are also planning to start their own business?
Always make sure your priorities are set!

General information
Founders: Wouter van Ooijen & Koen Lavrijssen
Study: Information Management
Company name: Mr. Winston
Location: Tilburg
Employees: 2
Activities: Hospitality industry innovations
Website: www.mrwinston.nl