We started with trivia.
We built something bigger.

It started with a microphone.

Quizzoholics didn’t start as a tech company.

It didn’t start with a business plan, a round of funding, or a team sitting around a conference table deciding how to disrupt the hospitality industry.

It started with a comedian, a microphone, and a trivia night at a bar in Bordentown, New Jersey.

In 2009, Quizzoholics founder Matt Sorrentino was performing stand-up comedy and producing live comedy shows when he came across an opening for a trivia host at Dublin Square in Bordentown.

It sounded like another gig.

One night a week. A little extra money. Something fun to do between comedy shows.

Then people started showing up.

A lot of people.

One Trivia Night Became Two. Then Two Became a Business.

Dublin Square’s trivia night quickly became successful enough that when the company opened another restaurant in Voorhees, New Jersey, Matt began hosting there too.

Before long, trivia nights were regularly outperforming Friday and Saturday business.

That got people's attention.

Other restaurants began approaching Matt with a pretty simple question:

Can you do this at our place too?

The answer was yes.

Quizzoholics began expanding throughout New Jersey, eventually reaching the point where one person physically couldn't host everything anymore. Megan and Rob became the first additional Quizzoholics hosts, followed by a growing team of hosts, writers and support staff.

What had started as a side gig had quietly turned into a company.

There was never really a moment when Matt sat down and decided, "I'm going to make trivia my full-time career."

It happened almost by accident.

Demand kept growing, venues kept calling, and eventually there were two options: stop growing or run with it.

We ran with it.

Fun First. Always.

The name Quizzoholics comes from Quizzo, the Philadelphia-area name for the traditional pub quiz.

And while our games have always been rooted in that pub-quiz tradition, we learned early that there was a big difference between giving people a test and giving people a night out.

We chose the second one.

From the beginning, Quizzoholics focused on trivia that was challenging without taking itself too seriously.

Fast-paced. Funny. Familiar. Creative. Competitive.

Most importantly, fun.

Over the years we experimented with formats, game lengths, scoring systems, categories and everything in between. Thousands of live games taught us what keeps a room engaged, what makes people order another round, what makes teams stay through the end of the night and what gets them talking about the game on the ride home.

Our content philosophy became pretty simple:

Trivia should feel like entertainment, not homework.

We aren't trying to build a room exclusively for the niche group of people who have been waiting all week to prove they remember the 14th president of Uruguay.

We're trying to build a room full of people.

Our games are designed for everyone from 21-year-olds to the person who just got out of the house for the first time since the new hip came in.

That wide appeal became one of the biggest reasons Quizzoholics worked.

And it still is.

Then Everything Stopped.

By early 2020, Quizzoholics was operating approximately 36 weekly trivia nights.

We had a writing staff.

A hosting staff.

Office support.

More venues were coming.

And then COVID happened.

At first, like everyone else, we didn't really understand what was coming.

Restaurants closed. Events stopped. New Jersey shut down.

For a few weeks there was still an assumption that maybe this would pass quickly.

It didn't.

As the reality of the shutdown began to set in, so did the realization that the company we had spent more than a decade building might simply be gone.

Many of our restaurant partners never reopened. Others were eventually sold or changed concepts.

By the time the dust settled, Quizzoholics had lost nearly 80% of its weekly venues.

Our staff was gone.

In many ways, we were back at the beginning.

And Quizzoholics came very close to ending there.

The Games That Kept Us Alive

During the shutdown, we started running virtual trivia nights three times a week.

They were open to anyone with an internet connection, but they were really created to give the regulars from all of our different bars somewhere to go when nobody could actually go anywhere.

People logged in from their living rooms.

They played with friends and family.

And they donated.

Those donations became the only thing keeping Quizzoholics going.

Without them, there is a very real chance this story ends in 2020.

There were moments when Matt seriously considered walking away from trivia altogether.

Then, slowly, the world started opening again.

And two restaurants called.

Starting Over

Nardi's Tavern in Long Beach Island and Pilsener Haus in Hoboken were among the first venues ready to bring Quizzoholics back.

At the time, Matt was driving from LBI to Hoboken twice a week just to start getting the company back off the ground.

But live trivia couldn't simply return the way it had existed before.

Events initially had to be outside.

Paper menus were gone.

Paper answer sheets weren't practical either.

Everything was moving onto customers' phones.

So we did the same thing.

Our first "digital trivia platform" was hardly a platform at all.

Players submitted answers through a basic form on the Quizzoholics website connected to a Google Sheet.

At the end of every round, everyone had to refresh the page so the form would reset.

Our normal game format was temporarily reduced to five rounds of ten questions, with a different winner each round, largely because tracking an overall score using the system Matt had cobbled together was beyond his technical abilities at the time.

It wasn't elegant.

But it worked.

And something unexpected happened.

We realized we didn't want the paper back.

The Accident That Changed the Company

For years, hosting trivia had meant collecting stacks of answer sheets, deciphering handwriting, manually grading every answer, chasing teams that hadn't turned their sheet in yet, dealing with late submissions and occasionally trying to rescue an answer sheet after somebody knocked a beer onto it.

Suddenly, all of that disappeared.

Teams stayed at their tables.

Answers came directly to the host.

The staff had fewer people wandering through the restaurant.

Rounds moved faster.

Scoring became easier.

The entire experience was smoother.

The digital format wasn't just a workaround for COVID restrictions.

It was better.

We decided almost immediately that even when the restrictions went away, the digital game wasn't going anywhere.

That decision would eventually change what Quizzoholics was as a company.

Building Something Better

For the next several years, we continued improving the digital experience.

Eventually our own technical abilities hit a ceiling, so Quizzoholics began using an outside trivia platform that charged on a per-player basis.

At first, the numbers worked.

Then restaurants reopened.

Attendance grew.

More venues returned.

And the better the business performed, the more expensive the technology became.

About a year and a half into using the system, it was clear the model wasn't sustainable.

We explored building our own native application.

The quotes came back around $40,000.

That wasn't happening either.

So, much like the beginning of Quizzoholics itself, we decided to figure it out.

Matt connected with developer Kyle, and throughout 2025 the two worked side by side building, testing, breaking, fixing and improving what would become the current Quizzoholics digital quiz system.

This wasn't software designed in a vacuum.

Every decision came from years of actually standing in restaurants and running games.

We knew what hosts needed because we were hosts.

We knew what frustrated players because we'd watched thousands of them play.

And most importantly, we understood what restaurant owners actually needed the night to accomplish.

Once the platform became operational, Matt began testing it exclusively at his own weekly events while the rest of the Quizzoholics team continued using the rented platform.

Every live game became another test.

Every issue became another improvement.

In December 2025, the Quizzoholics platform officially rolled out across every one of our venues.

It hasn't stopped evolving since.

Updates, improvements and new features continue almost every week.

If You Can Send a Text, You Can Play Quizzoholics.

When we built the system, we had three audiences in mind.

The player.

The host.

And the restaurant.

For players, it had to be ridiculously simple.

No complicated hardware.

No special knowledge.

No learning curve.

If you can send a text message, you can play Quizzoholics Trivia.

For hosts, the platform needed to do the heavy lifting.

Scoring, submissions, leaderboards and game management should help the person running the room focus less on paperwork and more on actually hosting.

But the biggest change was what we built for the restaurant.

Because after more than 15 years in this industry, we came to believe most trivia companies were solving the wrong problem.

Restaurants Don't Need Trivia. They Need Results.

Trivia companies tend to think about trivia.

Restaurants have to think about restaurants.

Those are not always the same thing.

The goal for a venue is straightforward:

Bring people through the door during an otherwise slower period.

Keep them engaged.

Give them a reason to stay.

Turn that additional time into additional spending.

Give them a great enough experience that they come back next week.

Then get them to bring somebody else.

Repeat.

For years, the industry has largely asked restaurants to pay for a weekly trivia night and then judge its success by looking around the room.

"Looks busy."

"We had 14 teams."

"People seemed happy."

That's not enough.

Restaurant margins are too thin.

Competition is too high.

And operators deserve to know what they're actually paying for.

So we rebuilt Quizzoholics around giving them that answer.

From Trivia Company to Restaurant-Growth Platform

Today, Quizzoholics is a restaurant-growth platform built around trivia nights.

The trivia is still incredibly important.

So is the host.

So is the atmosphere.

But now they're part of something much larger.

Our platform can show venues how many teams participated, how many players were in the room, how long those players actually remained engaged with the game, how many were new, how many returned, and how attendance is trending over time.

If a venue enters its average guest check, we can translate attendance into estimated revenue and show what trivia contributed over a night, month, quarter or year.

We can identify players who haven't returned recently and create opportunities for restaurants to reach back out.

We can help build marketing audiences from participating guests.

We provide weekly reporting along with dashboards that allow operators to understand their trivia business whenever they want.

And every venue has access to support focused on improving the night — not simply sending over trivia questions and hoping for the best.

The result is a very different relationship.

We're not asking restaurants to hire another piece of entertainment.

We're giving them a system designed to help grow a slow night.

The Content Still Matters. A Lot.

Technology didn't replace what made Quizzoholics successful in the first place.

Great trivia did.

And it still does.

Every week, a significant amount of time and resources goes into developing new content.

Because the questions are the experience.

We want people laughing about something we asked.

Arguing over an answer at the table.

Texting their friend afterward because they couldn't believe they missed it.

Coming back next week because they want another shot.

There seems to be a new trivia company popping up every 30 seconds these days, and creating a "trivia night" has never been easier.

You can dust off some old Trivial Pursuit cards.

You can type "write me a history round" into ChatGPT.

Technically, you've got trivia.

But that isn't what we do.

Quizzoholics isn't a test you take at a bar.

It's an experience.

Our content is professionally developed to appeal to a broad audience, move quickly, generate conversation and keep the entire room engaged.

The technology supports the experience.

It doesn't replace it.

Built in Bars, Not Boardrooms

One thing hasn't changed since 2009:

We still run trivia nights.

Quizzoholics continues operating live events every week, and Matt still hosts regularly.

That matters to us.

Our platform isn't based on what somebody thinks should work inside a restaurant.

It's based on what actually happens inside one.

Every week we see players use the product.

Hosts use the tools.

Restaurants see the results.

And all of that continues feeding directly back into what we build next.

We didn't create a piece of restaurant software and add trivia to it.

We spent more than 15 years learning how successful trivia nights work and eventually built the technology we wished we'd had the entire time.

Now We're Opening the Floodgates.

For a long time, Quizzoholics was a New Jersey trivia company.

We're proud of that.

But keeping what we've built limited to the bars we can physically drive to stopped making sense.

The platform, content, reporting, marketing support and operating system behind Quizzoholics can help a restaurant whether that restaurant is ten miles away or a thousand.

We've taken the lessons from thousands of live trivia nights and turned them into a service that a venue can operate affordably, effectively and — most importantly — measurably.

We've already done the heavy lifting.

The content is built.

The technology is built.

The systems are built.

The experience is there.

Now restaurants can put it to work.

Where We Go From Here

We think thousands of bars and restaurants across the country — and eventually around the world — will operate Quizzoholics Trivia.

And we don't think trivia is necessarily the end of the story.

The bigger idea behind Quizzoholics is simple:

Entertainment shouldn't just occupy space on a restaurant's calendar.

It should produce measurable results.

Whether that's trivia today or entirely different live entertainment experiences tomorrow, we believe operators should have the tools to understand what their programming is doing for their business.

Because restaurants are fighting for every guest.

Margins are thin.

Customers have more choices than ever.

And creating another "event" isn't enough.

You need to give people a reason to choose your place.

You need to give them a reason to stay.

And you need to give them a reason to come back.

That's what we've spent more than 15 years learning how to do.

Quizzoholics exists because people love trivia.

People love discovering that some completely useless piece of information they've been carrying around for 20 years finally has value.

They love competing with their friends.

They love being right.

They occasionally even enjoy finding out they're wrong.

But Quizzoholics also exists because restaurants need an edge.

They need ways to turn slower nights into profitable ones.

They need customers who return.

And they deserve to know whether the programs they're investing in are actually working.

We built Quizzoholics to do both.

Make trivia nights people want to come back to.

And give restaurants the data to prove that they do.