About

Twenty-five years running back of house.

Backbench is a small, deliberate team — a founder, trained back-office operators, and the technical infrastructure to run them. The work it does is the work I've spent my career doing — quietly, in service of someone else's storefront. Now it's a service that other owners can hire.

Why this exists i.

The work that keeps a business alive is the work no one has time to do well.

I spent twenty-five years running the front office during the day and the back office at night — selling and serving customers when the lights were on, then catching up on invoices, follow-ups, and admin long after everyone else went home.

From early years in the Michelin kitchens of Paris, to luxury hospitality across New York and Beverly Hills, to fintech operations in Manhattan Beach — the pattern was the same. The owner-operators I've watched up close — the HVAC shops, the plumbers, the electricians, the 3-to-15-truck businesses that keep the country running — are doing what I did, at a scale where there's no one to hand the night work to.

I built Backbench for them. I know this pain because I lived it. Backbench is the team I wish I'd had.

Where the work came from ii.
1995 — 2002 New York La Goulue & affiliates. Front of house, back of house, every service.
2003 — 2020 Beverly Hills Samuelsons · Zelda Enterprise. Luxury hospitality operations at scale.
2020 — 2025 Manhattan Beach Madison 68. Fintech operations — customer success, dispatch, invoicing at scale.
2025 — now Nashville Relocated 2025. Launched Backbench in May 2026 — the back-office team I wish I'd had, built for owner-operators.
How we work iii.
i.

Operator to operator.

We talk like the people we work for, because we've been the people we work for. No vendor-speak, no enterprise jargon, no "intelligent automation."

ii.

Quiet competence.

Confidence is calm. You should not have to read a sales page to figure out what we do. We answer the calls. We book the jobs. We send the invoices.

iii.

Specific over impressive.

Numbers, names, dates. "$1,499 a month." "Same-day on 34 of 37 jobs." If a sentence would survive a redaction pass with no specifics, we rewrite it.

iv.

AI is plumbing, not a product.

If we use it, it's under the floorboards. You never see it, never log into it, never have to manage it. The interface is a person you can call.

Founder iv.
Anthony Samuel / Founder

Three decades operations across luxury hospitality and fintech. Relocated to Nashville in 2025; launched Backbench in May 2026. The first three pilot customers work with me directly — onboarding, weekly review, every Monday morning report.

Email · anthony@backbench.services
LinkedIn · linkedin.com/in/anthony-samuel

A 60-day pilot,
at no cost.

For the first three Nashville shops. Cancel any time, no penalty. We onboard inside your existing CRM, go live in week one, and you get the full 60 days before you decide anything.

Email Anthony
Direct · anthony@backbench.services