Food Hackathon students turn their ideas into delicious reality

The Cornell Food Hackathon, to be held Nov. 7-9, is an annual innovation challenge bringing together more than 150 undergraduate and graduate students from across Cornell. Working in multidisciplinary teams, students explore real-world food system challenges set by industry partners, collaborating to develop and pitch creative solutions in areas such as food innovation, health and wellness, and sustainability.

But then what?

Students win prizes and make connections with mentors, faculty and maybe even potential employers down the pike. But what happens to all those tantalizing food ideas? With the world population expected to exceed 9 billion by the middle of this century, and nearly a billion people around the world currently suffering from hunger and poor nutrition, novel food system ideas are vital. Also, there might be some tasty snack ideas.

Rajni Aneja, managing director of the Cornell Institute for Food Systems Industry Partnership Program (CIFS-IPP), has a new plan.

"In the last year we started offering, in addition to cash prizes, opportunities for students to explore moving their hackathon pitch concepts to prototyping and building a more robust business plan with the idea of ultimately working for or launching a startup," Aneja said.

And students are starting to take this pathway.

From last year's hackathon, she said, three of the teams received support for applying to the Dairy Runway Program, with one being accepted into the current cohort. Graduate students have now reconsidered their career plans, applying for and receiving Cornell entrepreneurial assistantships to support forming their own food startups. And one student has joined an ice cream startup directly related to the product innovation skills she learned at the hackathon.

"I believe that this is the first time that any of the hackathons have taken this quasi-structured approach, offering students next step entrepreneurship exploratory pathway opportunities," Aneja said.

Amanda Pitman, the program manager for Dairy Innovation with the Center for Regional Economic Advancement, worked with one of the student hackathon teams on their Dairy Runway Program application.

"The program was previously open mostly to dairy farmers," Pitman said. "Now it is available to people who are entrepreneurial in spirit and interested in creating a dairy value-added product. They can go through Dairy Runway, learning the customer discovery process and the sometimes-painful exercise of testing a hypothesis. The teams that get thorough that course and finish successfully advance into the kitchen incubator and work toward a prototype."

She said this is a rare opportunity for a student team to go from a hackathon, where they spend 72 hours in a swirl with other student groups developing an idea, into a more real-life setting with a cohort largely comprised of working people.

"They may be in a cohort with a dairy farmer who has been working for 20 years, realizing that some of the assumptions they have made are incorrect," Pitman said. "Bravo to Rajni for having the students understand all the entrepreneurial resources the university has to offer."

The team Pitman assisted, Fermentastic Four, was admitted to the program and has been prototyping their product, a protein kombucha drink, this fall at the Seneca Foods Foundation Pilot Plant.

"I saw a market for clear beverages using protein, because I don't like the chalkiness or thickness of protein drinks," said Fermentastic Four member Christina Marie Pitacco-Rivera '28, an aspiring food scientist.

"I really like kombucha, so I said what about a protein kombucha product?" said teammate Sofia O'Keefe '27, who is studying applied economics and management. "Feasibility was the trickiest part. What is going to happen on a chemical level? And will it blend and can we mask it with flavors?"

They have been working with Roger Morse and George Howick from the Seneca Foods Foundation Pilot Plant and Bruno Xavier of the Cornell Food Venture Center to determine the process and safety requirements for their product, said teammate Allie Lin '27, as well as "talking to people who are our target audience - people who go to the gym and who are interested in buying more natural foods."

Austin Montgomery, a doctoral student in the lab of Gavin Sacks, professor offood science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, was part of the grand prize-winning team at the 2023 Food Hackathon. Inspired by the hackathon, he began thinking about broader food entrepreneurial ideas, winning a Home Market Foods Annual Graduate Entrepreneurial Assistantship (EntrA) graduate entrepreneurship award that funded work on a new food business idea.

"I was exploring recreating craft beer styles mixed by hand on a benchtop, kind of like the Coca-Cola Freestyle machines," he said. "It turned out to be something that required a lot more time and product development."

He said the food hackathon set him on a course to find what he wants to do and "explore different paths - the coolest thing is to meet real food scientists and to be able to ask them what their jobs are like."

Even if the craft beer dispenser remains a pipe dream, continued opportunities for food entrepreneurship will pay dividends, said Aneja.

"Based on initial outcomes from last year, I'm now expanding our work with both Cornell food innovation programs and external support to make this a regular, more structured part of the food hackathon program," she said. With the help of Ami Stuart, the director of the Cornell hackathon office, she aims to generate a robust pipeline of new student entrepreneurs, new products and student-led startups.