Payam Lavi is finding inspiration in a task he dislikes. The former waiter saw more than just tedium rolling cutlery into napkins. He saw an opportunity. Now, he is turning the mundane into money.

Lavi has designed a machine, called Nap Wrap, that automatically wraps silverware into cloth napkins. Although not on the market yet, it is already attracting attention from the restaurant industry.

Lavi began waiting tables after he was laid off from his marketing job in 2003. His first night at the restaurant, his boss told him to do 100 “roll-ups” – wrapping a fork, knife and spoon in a cloth napkin -- before going home. That one experience was enough.

“At the end of the day, I’m tired, I’m exhausted, I want to go home,” he said. “Instead, I had to do rollups. I was just so pissed off about it the whole time. I went home that night and did a patent search. ” A couple of weeks later, Lavi launched Nap Wrap’s parent company, Convenience Enterprises.

“I saw a need, I saw demand, I saw a big gap,” he said.

Nap Wrap’s potential market is enormous. The National Restaurant Association estimates there are 925,000 restaurants in the United States. Lavi will initially target casual dining chains, casinos and hotels, and later move to cruise lines. He will focus sales on the West Coast, where labor costs are
highest.

The machine works like this: employees put dishwasher-clean cutlery into one cartridge, napkins into another and bands in yet another. Nap Wrap sanitizes the utensils with ultraviolet rays, drops a set onto a napkin, wraps the napkin around the cutlery and then bands it all together. The bundle is then dropped into a basket. The machine does roughly 300 wraps an hour. An efficient person can do 100. He projects that the machine will save the average West Coast restaurant $7,000 to $15,000 in labor costs per year.

Lavi hopes to start beta-testing the machine in early 2007. A Las Vegas restaurant with 5,000 customers per day has already expressed interest in testing the prototype, Lavi said. Other eateries and industry distribution companies, including one with a client base of 75,000, have also expressed interest.

Lavi was not the first person to invent a utensil-wrapping machine. The Canadian Burlodge released a silverware wrapper in 2003, primarily targeting the health care industry. But Burlodge ’s machine is 40 square feet – the size of a large bedroom - while Nap Wrap is about the size of a commercial dishwasher.

“It’s like comparing an old, expensive typewriter to a new, affordable laptop,” Lavi said.

The biggest challenge so far, Lavi said, has been raising capital. He has successfully attracted private investors, and he is now targeting the food service industry to raise more. Lavi is banking on restaurant owners to support a machine that he predicts could change the industry forever.

“We’re setting up a new standard for the industry,” he said. P