This article has been edited since it first appeared in print.
The college experience often follows a pattern: Students decide on a school, choose a major, snag an internship and, fingers crossed, land a job in their field after graduation — perhaps with a little partying squeezed in along the way. But in recent years, higher education has leaned into experiential and even edible territory. Adapting to the demands of students and recognizing a societal shift toward hands-on learning, courses and degree programs that focus on food and beverage entrepreneurship are on the rise at local colleges and universities. From formulating product pitches and building brands to scoring prime real estate on store shelves, students across the region are living their own versions of the “Shark Tank” experience and reaping the benefits of a curriculum revolution.
Changing Course
When Grace Mittl graduated from the University of Richmond in 2022, the Pennsylvania native acquired not only a degree in business, but also the title of CEO. Part of the inaugural Bench Top Innovations course at the school, Mittl is co-owner of Absurd Snacks, a company created in the classroom that offers nut- and gluten-free trail mix, now available at Whole Foods locations throughout the state and along the East Coast — not too shabby for a 23-year-old.
After the food business incubator class was originally announced, Mittl says, she called the course leader. “I said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but as soon as the application is live, I want to apply,’” she says. “I heard ‘experiential’ and ‘hands-on learning’ and ‘autonomy,’ and I thought I’d love to take advantage of having a class like that while still part of the university bubble. I had never heard of a university doing something like that. This was something to build something from the ground up. That was exciting.”
(From left) Bench Top Innovations course leaders Joel Mier and Shane Emmett (Photo by Monica Escamilla)
Bench Top Innovations launched in 2021 through UR’s Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship program and has become one of the most talked-about classes at the university, praised by students for its firsthand learning opportunities and endorsed by professors as a program they wish they’d had while in college.
Open to any major and with no prerequisites, the accelerated program invites students of diverse disciplines to apply, with only 16 spots available. Once class begins, students are divided into groups of four. Tasked with building a food brand, they attempt to break into a cutthroat, saturated industry and bring an idea to market in nine months. The students behind the winning concept — chosen by a panel of food and beverage experts — own the intellectual property and all future revenues and profits.
Our goal is to replicate the real world as much as possible.
—Joel Mier, University of Richmond Robins School of Business
With minimal intervention, professors take more of a backseat approach as the students work to build a business. In Mittl’s case, groups were told to reimagine a healthy snack, in the following year’s cohort, a nonalcoholic beverage, and this year a sauce.
Joel Mier, a Robins School of Business marketing lecturer and program director of Bench Top Innovations, says, “Our goal is to replicate the real world as much as possible, which means you’ll make a lot of decisions and many of them are bad, and the best way to learn that is to skin your knee.”
Along with Shane Emmett, former CEO of Health Warrior (a nutrition bar company founded in Richmond in 2011 and later acquired by PepsiCo Inc.), Mier set out to devise a program that would remove students from their seats and invite them to take risks, but with a safety net. Rather than having the class replicate real-world situations, the class would simply be a real-world situation.
They landed on a culinary focus. “Food is the great equalizer across every field of study. Every person on the planet consumes food — and has opinions,” Mier says. “We’ve already got an entrepreneurship program for those who want it, but what about those who aren’t sure?”
Uncertainty is one of the underlying elements of the program. Students are encouraged to explore and embrace their natural, often untapped curiosity, while professors are pioneering a new frontier of higher education.
Recalling Mier’s words on the first day of class, Mittl says, “He was like, ‘There’s only one right mindset, and it’s that you’ll figure it out as you go.’”
Much like the group dynamic of the course, educators were working together behind the scenes prior to launching Bench Top Innovations. Somiah Lattimore, the first director of Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UR, visited colleges across the country, scouting programs and students like a recruiter. She recalls being asked by a superior, if she was a student, what would she want?
“I said, ‘It would’ve been really cool to have access to, not real agency experience, but something like a design studio, so that you’re not getting that first experience as an intern or that first experience with your first job,’” she says.
Lattimore, an internationally recognized design educator, award-winning creative director and former small-business owner, would eventually bring that experience to fruition. After landing a $1 million gift within six months at UR, Lattimore helped unveil Bench Top Innovations. She says that between 2012 and 2018, about 10 other Virginia universities established entrepreneurship centers.
“In typical fashion, academia is following industry. They’re going, ‘Hold on, students are seeing this, they’re watching “Shark Tank,” let’s do that and show up,’ and I think that’s where you saw the programming and centers [come from],” she says. “The whole premise was, how does the state of Virginia and its higher [education] institutions and the various ecosystems support students that are coming out of these pipelines?”
Lloyd Young, director of innovation and design for VCU’s da Vinci Center for Innovation and Shift Retail Lab (Photo by Jay Paul)
A Successful Shift
A force in the regional entrepreneurial education landscape, Lattimore also had a hand in programming at Virginia Commonwealth University. During her role as experiential learning director for the school’s da Vinci Center for Innovation and with work related to its Shift Retail Lab, she collaborated with the program’s co-founder and Executive Director Garrett Westlake.
Making its debut in 2021, Shift Retail Lab operates as an incubator for students and entrepreneurial community members to test ideas. A playground for product potential, it provides a physical space for thinkers to immerse themselves in the commercial journey.
“You can wake up with an idea and bring it into Shift the same day. You don’t have to have a business, have a proof of concept or prototype — anything from an idea to stuff that is out in the market and anything in between,” says Lloyd Young, director of innovation and design for the da Vinci Center and Shift Retail Lab.
Along a wall at the Broad Street facility is a display of product designs from aspiring entrepreneurs, including a spirit-free beverage, vegan charcuterie with compostable packaging and a choose-your-own-ingredients, Chipotle-esque acai bowl concept. As part of The Shelfie Program, during a four-week business bootcamp the entrepreneurs behind the ideas will work to pinpoint their goals, set up an interactive display and gain feedback. After completion, they can sell their products at the lab for up to a month.
It’s real stakes, it’s real life, and it’s still class.
—Somiah Lattimore, Senior Director of Creativity, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the University of Richmond
“We want to plant the seeds, let them go through the process and see the process,” Young says. “This is that training ground. This is just where we want to give you the muscle memory, a little experience and great connections. We think taking risks is the quickest, fastest and best way to get you from Point A to your goal.”
Throughout the year, Shift Retail Lab hosts happy hours, pop-up markets and meetings where products developed there receive free exposure. Young says that the in-house events attract larger agencies such as Hatch Richmond, a hub for food entrepreneurs complete with a commercial kitchen and co-packing machinery, and Startup Virginia, a nonprofit that supports fledgling businesses and innovators through programming and resources.
“People from Hatch, local entrepreneurs, meet-up groups — they want to see what the next generation of entrepreneurs are,” Young says. “It’s become a cool mentoring opportunity.”
Although Shift Retail Lab wasn’t founded strictly for food and beverage businesses, Young says there is no denying the appeal of that category. “Food has been something we weren’t really looking for when we opened it, but it has been a big theme,” she says, noting one of their most successful Shelfie participants was a vegan jerky product, Jacked! Jackfruit Jerky. “It’s become so popular that my next project is expanding the Shift brand.”
Young says the vision is for Shift Labs to function as a multifaceted umbrella program with food, beverage and retail labs and a test kitchen. They also hope to partner with Virginia Union University and The Kitchens at Reynolds on entrepreneurship-focused projects.
‘Real Stakes’
Introducing an element of competition into the Bench Top Innovations course adds an extra layer of incentive for participating teams. Just ask Absurd Snacks’ Mittl.
“We really wanted to win. We were determined to win,” she says.
A member of Mittl’s group had a severe food allergy, which led the team to examine nut-free alternatives for trail mix. Mittl, a student-athlete, had been roasting chickpeas for years as a portable snack. Mimicking the texture of nuts and packed with protein, the legumes were a crunchy, healthy treat with untapped potential as an ingredient.
“The purpose of the course is to explore a market and find opportunities,” Mier says. “Absurd Snacks found one within trail mix. How do you innovate trail mix? Well, they did, and they found a unique angle and unique trend that is sizable.”
For the first half of the school year, Mittl and her Bench Top group embodied the scrappy startup mindset, holding late-night, caffeine-fueled bean-soaking sessions in her apartment, methodically testing sweet and savory varieties, and cooking and tweaking those recipes in the school’s commercial kitchen.
Students demonstrating their product during UR’s The Great Bake Off in November 2022 (Photo courtesy Joel Mier)
The climax of the class came during an end-of-the-semester pitch competition dubbed The Great Bake Off (the 2023 competition was held Nov. 15). Attended by hundreds of people, including possible investors and food professionals as well as alumni and faculty, the event is the startup equivalent of a group project presentation. Instead of a grade, there’s a prospective business at stake, with a panel of industry experts selecting the concept that exudes the most commercial viability.
Most funding for Bench Top Innovations is provided by the university’s Creativity-Innovation-Entrepreneurship initiative, with additional financing provided by the Robins School of Business. Once the capital expires, the winning groups own the right to their businesses from recipe to trademark.
“There’s a lot on the line when they’re pitching out to those investors. They have no idea who’s going to win, but they know it’s real-world because investors are picking,” Lattimore says. “It’s real stakes, it’s real life, and it’s still class.”
For the second half of the year, the victorious group is joined by their 12 fellow classmates in a merger that Mier describes as The Great Transition. The students vote on a CEO and other C-suite positions and establish marketing, finance, sales, tech and operations teams. Mittl found herself in a leadership role.
“I’m one of those all-in people, where if I’m going to do it, I’m really going to do it, so from the start of the school year, I always knew I wanted to be [CEO],” she says. “I know the product inside and out, which is especially important in food and beverage.”
With buzz around Absurd Snacks after the competition, the team spent the next four months securing manufacturing contracts, obtaining a business license and navigating an unexpected packaging delay. A handful of sessions doubled as cold calls, with students arriving at area markets and grocers with samples and a selling point.
As the end of the school year approached, Mittl says she began to think about the fate of Absurd Snacks. If she continued pursuing the business, what would that mean? “I felt like I couldn’t just let it go,” she says. “Just to build something people want to enjoy, that was kind of the fire under my butt, because when else would I have an opportunity to continue working on something that already has a really good foundation?”
Within weeks, the school drafted legal agreements and the three fellow Absurd Snacks founders waived their intellectual property rights, granting full ownership to Mittl. She then asked classmate Eli Bank to join her as chief operating officer and co-owner.
Post-graduation, the duo completed incubation experiences and joined Lighthouse Labs, an equity-free, early-stage startup accelerator. They raised money via grant funding through pitch and business plan competitions and were also hired as executives-in-residence by the University of Richmond; the paid on-campus positions allowed them to explore other entrepreneurship programs at universities. Not only were Bank and Mittl teaching themselves how to run a business while simultaneously operating one, they were meeting student entrepreneurs from around the country.
After six months, they rolled out a relaunch. Leaning into their product’s identity as an allergen-friendly snack, they have introduced single-size product bags; secured a local, allergen-free facility for manufacturing; and are currently targeting colleges, universities and hospitals as prime allergen-focused markets.
‘A Safe Space’
Julien Reininger, founder of Jacked! Jackfruit Jerky (Photo by Monica Escamilla)
Jacked! Jackfruit Jerky founder Julien Reininger also founded his business while in college. Adopting a meat-free lifestyle as an undergrad, he spent his senior year at VCU developing a plant-based jerky made from jackfruit. At Shift Retail Lab, he shared samples with visitors, learned which flavor profiles and textures appealed to consumers, and gained feedback that was critical in the product’s evolution.
“Shift Retail Lab allowed me to have a safe space to test my concept with the public,” he says. “They allowed for me to establish a proof of concept before dumping money into the business.”
While earning his master’s degree in business, Reininger was doubling as an owner. Working to level up Jacked! Jackfruit Jerky after his first stint in Shift Retail Lab, he rejoined and launched a successful Kickstarter campaign — it ended up paying for his first round of packaging. By 2022, he had established Jacked! Jackfruit Jerky and introduced three flavors: Malaysian Chili, Sweet and Spicy Black Pepper, and Miso Ginger. The bags can be spotted everywhere from Fresca on Addison and Ellwood Thompson’s locally to New York City’s Orchard Grocer, a vegan shop and deli.
“That’s why a lot of them return [to Shift Retail Lab]. … Within one year, he achieved it all,” Young says. “It’s so crucial to have a place where you can play, experiment and fail. It’s huge. Let’s save them all of that pain of being afraid.”
Reininger says that if he hadn’t participated in the program, “I don’t believe that I would have made the same progress that I have made while being a part of Shift.”
This year Shift Retail Lab won Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Award, and VCU was ranked one of the nation’s 20 most innovative public universities in U.S. News & World Report’s 2024 Best Colleges rankings.
A Lifelong Mindset
For many students, regardless of revenue or shelf status, growing an idea into a reality unlocks a rare form of empowerment, inspiring confidence from having faced adversity and moved beyond it. It’s an experience that leaves an imprint.
“Creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship … [it] doesn’t matter what field or what you study, those three things will make you a more successful person,” Lattimore says. “It’s a mindset, and that is lifelong.”
“I think we’re at a crossroads of education and relevance, and professional versus the real world, so having students be able to curate their own pathways seems like the most sense. It used to be bit more siloed, and that’s not the case anymore,” Young says.
Last year, UR had another successful project come out of Bench Top Innovations: TwinTail Brews (see more below). A canned nonalcoholic beverage offering “controlled energy,” the tea relies on the amino acid L-theanine to balance the comedown from caffeine jitters; it gained shelf space in 25 stores across Richmond.
Although operations have ceased, TwinTail CEO Grace Clarke, who will graduate in 2024, says, “It was just the greatest experience. It’s so rare you get the opportunity and resources to start a company in a safe bubble where there’s no risk involved and really jump with a net.”
ECPI University’s College of Culinary Arts has also adopted a firsthand, experiential learning approach. This year, the Culinary Institute of Virginia’s Richmond campus introduced a retail production class held at local hunger relief nonprofit Feed More. There, students work with the organization to cook and package meals to be distributed across the region.
This wave of hands-on instruction is preparing students to meet “the real world” and working life with an edge.
“These students haven’t been limited by bureaucracy, limited by dominant logic — they have none of that,” Mier says. “They have the ability and the energy and creativity that has yet to be tarnished by adulting. [A student] shared with me, ‘I’ve learned that I can do more than I ever thought I could,’ and that hits me every time, because that’s why we do this — to get them ready. If someone thinks they can do more than they can here, they can do that in every part of their life.”
Photo courtesy TwinTail Brews
Thirst Trap
Enter any mini market or grocery store, and you’ll see a wall of beverages from probiotic soda and seltzer to caffeinated options and alcohol. Earning shelf space for liquids is a feat, but UR’s Grace Clarke and her 15 classmates managed to do so within a year of trying.
During their Bench Top Innovations cohort in 2022-23, the college students behind TwinTail Brews developed a one-of-a-kind beverage. Despite early success, they grappled with a name change, over-scaling and, eventually, stepping away from the biz.
Clarke says, “I look back very fondly on the whole experience. I learned just how hard it is to get to the point where you’re profitable. It’s been eye-opening learning the challenges.”
