South Jersey businesses make up the fabric of our communities. The owners may be your neighbor or simply someone you say hello to each time you visit their establishment. But for every person who decides to take that risk, to see if their dream can come true, there are challenges and milestones and roadblocks and successes. They persevere, and they work harder and harder to keep that dream alive.

It’s why we say again and again: Buy local. Support your neighbor. Support South Jersey. 

Participants:

Bonnie-Lynn Schneider General Manager/5th generation family member, Pic-A-Lilli Inn
Bill Webb Partner, Saratoga Benefit Services
Sam Thevanayagam Founder & CEO, Parts Life
Meggan Ciaccia Shareholder, Ciaccia CPA

Their business

We have 2 businesses: Saratoga Benefit Services, and I started our Medicare division, which is actually my company, Saratoga Medicare Advisors. We are an insurance broker, and we work mostly in the health insurance space with small to mid-sized businesses, anywhere from around 10 employees to about 250 employees.
Bill Webb

We are a family restaurant. We’re known for our wings and our crab soup. My great-great- grandfather started the restaurant in 1927, so we are at 98 years. What I sell is not only good food, but an atmosphere where you can feel comfortable, and you can feel at home.
Bonnie-Lynn Schneider 

We provide full service financial services – from bookkeeping to strategic CFO services. Simply put, we protect our clients’ wealth and grow their businesses. We’re a family business, and you could say we do business differently. We take more time. When somebody gives me their finances, whether it’s for a personal or business tax return or a financial statement, they’re being very vulnerable. We understand that, and we make sure we connect with our clients.
Meggan Ciaccia

I started Parts Life in 2007 in Cinnaminson. We serve the Dept. of Defense in all 5 domains – air, land, sea, under sea and space. As assets get older, they need parts that the original equipment manufacturer is not able to supply. That’s where we come in. We do a reverse engineering process, create the technical data package, go to production and then supply that item for the life of the asset. We created a niche, and we do a very good job with it.
Sam Thevanayagam

Latest developments

The most new and exciting thing at the Pic-a-Lilli is our Polar Pavilion outside. We still have part of our building that we’re refurbishing, so without being able to utilize that part of the building, we built a little wonderland of lights and bubbles and tents that you can eat in with a special menu and special drinks. Each one has an oscillating heater. It has a Bluetooth speaker so you can listen to your music, and you have a host that comes in and waits on you. No one else in the area has this. Sometimes we take the tops off, and you get to see the stars. The lights are out, music is playing, the fire is lit and there are s’mores. There’s a whole bunch of things for the kids. It’s turned into a lot of fun.
Bonnie-Lynn Schneider

We moved into a new building in Moorestown. But the building itself isn’t what’s big – the big news is we are growing, and we’re adding people. In addition to working on land, sea, under sea and space applications for the military, our latest project is the nuclear submarine program. We’re starting to do quite a bit of work on that, so we’re going to add quite a few people. I have a real passion to grow and transform people, so I get to do that by hiring more people.
Sam Thevanayagam

The family business

I was here for 17 years before I bought out my dad in 2021. I had helped to grow the firm. I brought clients in. So there was never a question of if it would happen. The only question was timing. But that first year was so different than what I thought it was going to be. Everything that happened now came down to what I was doing. That was a huge shift. But even though my dad had been the majority shareholder, I always treated this business like it was my business and my future.
Meggan Ciaccia

Because we’ve had generations after generations, we’ve learned to work well with each other. Some like it, some don’t. It’s not an easy business, so the ones who want to be here are here. The others help support us in different ways. I always feel safer knowing when my family is in the building, because I like referring to them. I like saying, “That’s my uncle. He’s fourth generation. I’m fifth. My daughter’s here. She’s sixth. Oh, there’s my sister. She’s also fifth.” We now have 4 who are in the seventh generation.
Bonnie-Lynn Schneider

My mom started Saratoga Benefit in 1998 so when school would end, I would come here and do my homework. I worked for a large insurance brokerage firm right out of college, but I always wanted to have my own business. I knew what my mom had created here, and there is plenty of room for this business to grow. I can transition the business into the modern era.
Bill Webb

Growing a business & networking

Our main business development tool is referrals. We work with a lot of payroll companies, 401k providers, financial advisors and fortunately we get a lot of referrals from them. We also give seminars for a lot of employers. Being able to prove we have expertise in this area has been a great way to draw new business. Health insurance is something that’s changing and very dynamic year over year. Being experts on health insurance gives us some clout to say we know what we’re talking about, and we’re a good resource for your employees’ health insurance needs.
Bill Webb

Networking is probably one of the biggest parts of my job, because I feel like we’re located so far out. Not everyone knows where Shamong is. I do my best wherever I go to say, “Please come and visit. Come see us. Come hang out. See what it’s like.” There are plenty of people who’ve said they’ve driven down Rte. 206, and they don’t stop. They’ve driven by a million times. I’m hoping the new look gives them a reason to pull in. I always feel like once we get them in, we can hook them.
Bonnie-Lynn Schneider

A lot of people say you ought to look at the list of who’s going to a networking event and key in on 1 or 2 people. I don’t necessarily do that. I start to meet people and build relationships, and then really take it from there. It’s important when you are talking to people, that you get to the deeper conversations. If you keep the conversations extremely casual, it doesn’t allow people to have a memorable experience. And it’s important, as people meet you, that they actually remember you.
Sam Thevanayagam

If someone is just starting out and they’re thinking, How do I build a network? It’s really about putting yourself out there. There are so many different networking events. Just keep showing up. It’s not easy. You might go to an event and not really meet anybody. But keep putting yourself out there. You just need to find where the right people are to connect with.
Meggan Ciaccia

Why customers come back

Something new I came up with is line of sight. If you think about when you purchase pizza, you can track a Domino’s pizza when it goes in the oven, when it is out for delivery, and when it is delivered. If you can do that on a $15 pizza – what we are doing for our customers is much greater than that. So even before they ask, we are providing them line of sight, if you will. We’re telling them exactly when what they are expecting will arrive, and if there are issues with it, we tell them early. We want to make sure we are taking the variability out of the process. That’s the foresight and the vision I’ve created for my organization, and it’s something we are now doing for all our customers.
Sam Thevanayagam

Our clients know the quality of our work, and it doesn’t break the bank for them. Our clients include restaurants, bars, retail, medical offices, salons, every single industry you can imagine. And what I love the most: we take any worry off their plate, because we make sure everything is done the way it should be done.
Meggan Ciaccia

We’re a local institution. We are coming up on 100 years. We’re pretty consistent. Our staff has remained mostly the same. I’m fifth generation here, so other than the building changing, not a whole lot changes around here. I love when I see someone who maybe celebrated his birthday here, and he’ll say, “Oh, you gave me a t-shirt back when I was 6.” And now he’s here with his son, and their grandfather is also sitting at the table. That’s pretty awesome. It means a lot to me.
Bonnie-Lynn Schneider

What people don’t know about running a business

Most people don’t know about all the back-end work. When I first was starting the Medicare business, I knew what I was doing on the front – I knew what I had to do to enroll someone in a Medicare plan – but I didn’t understand everything else that goes into it: the accounting, licensing, even the insurance side of it, like for cyber operations. The back end ends up being as important as the front end. In my first year in business, I was not as prepared for tax season as I should have been, and since then, I’ve gotten a lot more organized. But it was definitely a shock. It takes some time to get organized on the back end so you can focus on what you’re delivering to clients.
Bill Webb

It takes faith. If you think about myself, I’m somebody who was a naturalized American, who didn’t have a lot of money. When I started my first company, I had to sell my home and move into a smaller home in order to bootstrap the company in 2017. When I bought the company, DeVal, I had to do that again. I put my entire house up as collateral. It takes a lot of risk, and there are a lot of unknowns. Sometimes the resilience is built as we walk the walk. That’s why I say it takes faith.
Sam Thevanayagam

Most people don’t realize that running a restaurant isn’t just about the food and the vibes. There’s a lot of working parts, and food prices have skyrocketed in some aspects, not in others. Fortunately for us, some of our staples have remained consistent. But it all has to work together, and it can sometimes be chaotic.
Bonnie-Lynn Schneider

Challenges in business

The number-one challenge running a restaurant is it never stops. You’re on all the time. It’s tough to work all weekend – Friday, Saturday and Sunday – and be there for everyone in the front of the restaurant, everyone in the back of the restaurant, everyone who’s calling out for the next day, and everyone who didn’t do what they needed to do for whatever reason. It just is 24 hours a day. It’s not a party.
Bonnie-Lynn Schneider

You start to second guess yourself as a business owner a lot of times. I went from a multi-generation ownership to second generation – I had a partner for 10 years before I bought my dad out, and then I was solo. It can be lonely when you’re a solo business owner and you don’t have a partner to really bounce those ideas off and make those decisions with. I have a great team, but it’s still just me as the owner of the business. That can be challenging at times.
Meggan Ciaccia

I would say making sure we have the right people in the right place. And sometimes we have to make difficult decisions – that can be a challenge. Many decisions are difficult, but tough decisions need to be made. So even though you may be second guessed, you need to make those decisions based on the information Monday-morning quarterbacks, we can be critics, but the important thing is to get enough information to be able to make a decision.
Sam Thevanayagam

For our business, staying on top of the new rules, topics and trends can be challenging. With healthcare being in limbo as far as subsidies, all of that is driving changes to both employer group health plans and individual health plans. We have to manage that change and stay on top of legislative changes on the federal and state level, as well as the different rules that come down from the carrier. Plans are constantly changing. Networks are constantly changing. Managing all that can be a challenge.
Bill Webb

Philanthropy in business

Philanthropy is a really big deal for us. A few years ago at Thanksgiving, one of our customers who is a pastor said to us, “Listen, we have turkeys and we have nowhere to store them, and there are families that need them.” Well, we had extra storage, so we put them in our freezers. And then he said, “Hey, what time do you open?” And we said 11. He asked if he could use our kitchen to bake meals that are delivered by the state police to families in Atlantic City or Egg Harbor City. So it’s a church, a bar and the police. It’s kind of crazy, but it feels really good to be part of it.
Bonnie-Lynn Schneider

My mom has always been very involved in philanthropy. She instilled that in both me and my sister. For us, philanthropy is not something we’re doing as a way to grow the business. It’s our civic responsibility to give back to our community. It’s something that’s very important to us as people. Anything we can do to give back to our community or the broader South Jersey community, we’re happy to do it. It’s kind of rolled into the fabric of the business here.
Bill Webb

Growing up in Sri Lanka, I grew up in a middle class home where we didn’t have a lot of money, but we could share what we had. What is it that you have in your hand? What is it that you can do with your time? What can you do with your touch? We need to be those hands, we need to be those feet. We need to be a good neighbor. My challenge to somebody who feels they don’t have a lot of money: What is it that you have in your hand, and how can you share it?
Sam Thevanayagam

Creating a culture

I went to a store yesterday and got a very sticky dessert – it’s probably the stickiest dessert I could find. That’s the way I would like to think about our culture: all the ingredients come together, and it’s sweet but also sticky. It’s a culture where people come and want to be part of it. You have to be extremely intentional about what ingredients you put into the culture. I run a meritocracy in both my organizations, but it’s a meritocracy that has created diversity. Part of how we do that is things like allyship. We walk beside people who don’t have a voice. We train them to be extremely successful. Because my personal mission statement is to create an environment where others can achieve their God-given potential.
Sam Thevanayagam

We’re a small family business, and I would say family is the way I would describe the culture here. We certainly have a long employee tenure: Kim has worked with us 16 or 17 years. Bonnie has been with us for about 7 or 8 years. And Laura is our newest employee. She’s been with us for almost 5 years. We try to be as good to our employees as we can, because if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be able to do our day-to-day job. So we treat everybody like they’re family.
Bill Webb

The employee culture at Pic-a-Lilli is pretty classic. Some people don’t think working in a bar is a good thing. That it’s a bar atmosphere, but we’re a family atmosphere. We’re a family restaurant that also sells alcohol. The people who work here are a team. You kind of know right away if someone new is going to fit in or not. And one of the reasons they fit in is they’ve come here before. They’ve eaten here, and they love it here. That is part of the hospitality.
Bonnie-Lynn Schneider

To be successful

There are standard qualities you need to be successful, like determination and grit, but you also have to be able to do the work, and that includes work you may not necessarily be good at or work you may not want to do. You need that drive to learn and understand everything and be the expert on your business so you can spend more time with your client.
Bill Webb

Understand your customer. When people come to the Pic-a-Lilli, they come for 2 reasons: to eat or drink. It’s pretty basic. So when people arrive, they’re probably hungry or they may have had a bad day. The bottom line is you still have to be nice to your customer and appreciate the fact that they’ve come into your business. If you don’t, they’re not coming back.
Bonnie-Lynn Schneider

Advice to entrepreneurs

For anyone thinking of joining a family business, I think it’s important that I got some experience in the corporate world before I joined the business. That was extremely helpful. I didn’t have a huge learning curve on day one, so I was able to immediately start adding value. I wasn’t drawing resources from the company where, especially in a small business, resources can be limited.
Bill Webb 

I would ask them to take an account of themselves. What are you good at? What have you done so far? If you can’t come up with too many things, then it might mean you should work for somebody else for a season so you can prepare yourself. Now may not be the time. I am 62 years old, and my company is only 18 years old. So even though I was extremely entrepreneurial from the time I was very young, I worked for somebody else for a very long time. Today, as I stand before you, I feel like I lack nothing when it comes to my work life, because God has prepared me in a very unique way, and that happened because I was willing to be humble and work for somebody else.
Sam Thevanayagam

It’s important to have a business plan. Know where you want to be in the next 3-5 years and have a rough idea of how you will get there. You can’t work toward your goals if you don’t know what goals you’re trying to reach.
Meggan Ciaccia

Starting a restaurant right now is difficult. But you can’t give up. The bottom line is customers want to feel valued. And when people don’t feel that, they don’t want to go back. You don’t have to be over the top. Just listen to someone. That’s how simple it can be. It’s not crazy, just be kind. You really just have to value what you have, value the people who are willing to give you a shot and do what you can to make it so they want to come back and support you again.
Bonnie-Lynn Schneider  

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