PYA named PrepWizard the 2022 Tom Ballard Innovation Award winner Wednesday, March 9, 2022, during a special ceremony at PYA headquarters.
Numerous applications were received. Award winners were selected by a distinguished panel of area business leaders and entrepreneurial mentors, including: Mark Deathridge, Owner, ETMC Corp.; Nadim Jubran, President, InLieu; Misty Mayes, CEO, Management Solutions; Lisa Stowers Rottman, President, Stowers Machinery; and Wayne Wilson, CFO, Malibu Boats.
PrepWizard has developed an innovative, automated food prep label system that can not only help restaurants with food expiration accuracy, but also save them time and money. As the first-prize winner, PrepWizard receives a combination of $50,000 in capital and in-kind services from PYA.
Winter Innovations, a company that helps improve the speed and quality of stitching used in ligament and tendon reconstruction surgery, won second place; and RegScale, a business that mitigates risk by automating systems to ensure compliance, won third. Second- and third-place winners received $10,000 and $5,000 in-kind strategy support, respectively.
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The award is the largest combination of cash and in-kind services available to East Tennessee start-ups. It recognizes early-stage companies that demonstrate great promise and an innovative focus, and reinforces the “HELP” mantra embodied by PYA, also a start-up launched nearly four decades ago.
“PrepWizard is a growing company, with an expanding client base, founded here in Knoxville. It recognized a ‘pain point’ within the restaurant industry, then developed a technological solution that is already creating efficiencies for thousands of restaurants,” said PYA President and CEO Marty Brown. “The Ballard Innovation Award enables us to recognize the entrepreneurial spirit of companies like PrepWizard, helping them to continue to grow and thrive in our community and beyond.”
Brown added, “We want companies that start here to stay here, and those that move here to love here. This year’s honorees represent both sides of that formula.”
Founded in 2019, PrepWizard is a father-and-sons operation. University of Tennessee Computer Science alumni Eli Harris (son), Chief Technology Officer, and Doug Harris (father) started the business. UT Accounting graduate Cole Harris (son) serves as president, leading daily operations. Doug Harris has spent three decades as a restaurant franchisee and operates 27 restaurants. Together they use their combined skills in computer science, marketing, and accounting to find solutions the restaurant industry can use to improve business efficiencies. Employing industry technology, PrepWizard replaces hand-written restaurant food labels with printed ones, saving staff hundreds of labor hours annually. Because the system is automated, expiration dates on the labels are also more accurate than handwritten ones. The PrepWizard app is available through Apple and Android stores on an annual subscription basis. The company is currently in the final phase of software development for two new apps set to launch in 2022.
“The restaurant industry has been slower to adopt technology, but that is changing quickly, and our company is on the front end of this wave,” said Doug Harris. “As the recipient of the Ballard Award, we look forward to PYA’s strategic support and business advisory resources, as we prepare to launch other industry solutions this year and in the future.”
The award is named in honor of PYA’s Chief Alliance Officer, Tom Ballard, who has spent decades working on creating relationships and supporting the East Tennessee region’s entrepreneurial community. He is also publisher of Teknovation.biz, which focuses on innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship.
For more information, visit PYAPC.com/Ballard.
