Interview: Waitr CEO on Failure, Persistence and Delivery

It’s 11 a.m. on a Wednesday morning and Waitr CEO Christopher Meaux is in tears. Meaux traveled to New York City from Lake Charles, Louisiana, where Waitr is headquartered, to ring the Nasdaq opening bell and commemorate Waitr’s new chapter as the second publicly traded food delivery company in the U.S. (Waitr began trading under the symbol WTRH on November 16). His family—wife, parents, kids, in-laws, siblings, nieces, and nephews—stood beside him for the big moment, as well as his co-founders, early investors, and dozens of Waitr employees, some of whom had paid their own way to be there. We sat down with Meaux at a café around the block from the Nasdaq building later that morning. (He brought his son, Logan, a 20-year-old sophomore at Louisiana State University, to the interview as well.) Meaux was still choked up from the day’s events. A serial entrepreneur, he’s more used to failure than success in his ventures and Waitr represents, by far, the most success he’s