Go-Getter 

Michael Adelberg wanted more control over his life. So he and an old Stanford classmate served up [Waiter.Com], an on-line service that allows customers to place restaurant take-out and delivery orders from their computers. 

Michael Adelberg 

Age: 30 

Residence: Los Altos 

Title: Vice president and co-founder of [Waiter.Com] in [San Jose] 

Education: Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University. 

Career Turning Point: After completing his MBA in 1993, Adelberg went to LEK/Alcar Consulting Group in Los Angeles to work as a management consultant in the media and entertainment industry. "Wanting more control over my life," he left the job in July 1995. "My personal life came second to the needs of the clients. I felt a lack of control over what I was doing." 

What He Did: Adelberg joined Craig Cohen, a childhood friend and fellow MIT and Stanford classmate, in launching [Waiter.Com] out of his Los Altos home last December. Using $200,000 that they raised through their friends and family, the two entrepreneurs developed an innovative on-line restaurant ordering service that allows customers to place takeout and delivery orders from their computers. Customers can access the service through the World Wide Web (http://www.waiter.com) at no charge. The menus of about 120 Bay Area restaurants are listed on the service. Customers specify exactly how they would like their food prepared and when it should be ready for pickup or delivery. Orders are then sent to restaurants via fax. Customers can also store previous favorite food orders for future reference. Charges are billed to the customer’s credit card. The service also provides other information, including hours of operations and a map to the restaurant.  

The service is free to customers, but restaurants must pay a fee for every order placed through [Waiter.Com]. Although he wouldn’t reveal revenue figures, Adelberg said the business will break even by next year. Orders placed through the service have increased 30 percent to 40 percent each month. 

Ambition: To expand the service’s listing to other geographic locations. Adelberg would like to make [Waiter.Com] into "the ATM of the food world." 

In His Own Words: "What people don’t realize when building a Web site is the amount of marketing you need to make your site stand above the crowd," Adelberg said. "Think hard about how you can market and attract people to your site." 

--Sherri Eng