Meals to ‘Krave’

Offering curry-covered tater tot bowls, Baja tacos with fried hearts of palm, a barbecue chili crunch black bean burger (right) and more, Kraveworthy Kitchens is a plant-based micro-food hall now operating at the University of Maryland.

It’s the first tenant at DeliXious Labs, a new food incubator created by xFoundry@UMD and Dining Services to give restaurant startups an opportunity to test dishes and prices at the University of Maryland for up to one year.

“We want every part of this building to live and breathe entrepreneurship and innovation—everywhere you look, touch, see,” said xFoundry Associate Director of Ventures Projects Phillip Alvarez.

xFoundry is an entrepreneurship initiative based at the IDEA Factory that recruits students from all disciplines to solve grand challenges. Its flagship program, called Xperience, is a 15-month training program that culminates in an annual competition for up to $2 million in investments for the winning team that converts into a startup company. After the building opened last fall, the xFoundry leadership team put out feelers and connected with Kraveworthy Kitchens.

Some of the biggest barriers to opening a restaurant are the cost of renting kitchen space and finding qualified cooks—and that’s where Dining Services comes in. Through the incubator, Kraveworthy was able to bring in recipes it’s licensed from other vegan ventures (that’s what makes it a micro-food hall) and train UMD staff on how to prepare those dishes before the opening of DeliXious Labs this fall.

“The UMD Dining team is phenomenal in terms of the caliber of people they have,” said Miheer Khona, founder of the Cactus Holding Corp. that operates Kraveworthy Kitchens. Working with them has been “just so easy and efficient, and that’s important because as a startup, we have to be extremely cautious and diligent in our capital expenditures.”

While Dining Services runs major franchises on campus including Chik-fil-A and Panera, the opportunity to work with a vegan startup was intriguing, said Associate Director of Retail Operations Dave Bullock.

“The ‘do good’ message got me excited,” he said. Eating plant-based food is “better for the planet, in most cases it’s better for you. … Over the last 10 years, there’s more people willing to try non-meat items, so there’s a place for this on campus.”

It’s been a quiet launch; as UMD community members have offered feedback via Dining Services’ forms or simply by purchasing certain items, Khona has gotten a sense of what’s working or not. He and his team have tweaked recipes, adding more curry to the popular tater tots dish (left) and making the cauliflower nuggets crispier, and bumping prices up and down to see what people are willing to pay.

The first few months have been a good opportunity to do some beta testing and work out operational glitches, said Alvarez. Soon, xFoundry will ramp up marketing, adding electronic signage to better tell the story of DeliXious Labs and its tenants and create easier ways to offer on-the-spot feedback.

Later in the school year, he also hopes to bring in xFoundry student teams to deploy some of their innovations in the kitchen, such as an AI camera system to track food temperatures for safety, or robotics to assist with food prep.

These types of innovations excite Khona; his goal isn’t just to open a plant-based restaurant, but to become a platform to bring a wide variety of plant-based dishes to a broader audience. He hopes one day to operate at universities, sports venues and airports—all high-foot-traffic areas—in order to make it easier for more people to access plant-based meal options and nudge the food system down a healthier and more sustainable path. Gathering data at UMD for about a year will help take his business to the next level, he said.

As the program grows, xFoundry will bring in other food startups (not necessarily vegan, but sustainable in its own way) through an application process.

“If you want to get a hands-on taste of food innovation, this is the place to do it,” said Alvarez.