A Boulder food-tech startup walked away with a $100,000 check after winning the University of Colorado Boulder’s New Venture Challenge Final Showcase, a multi-event entrepreneurial competition.
FoodWise won the grand prize after going head-to-head against four other finalists last month. The startup, co-founded by four CU undergraduates, is a software platform designed to help restaurants save money and reduce waste.
“The NVC was a surreal experience,” Emma Bonerb, CEO and co-founder of Foodwise, told Colorado Inno. “We came up with FoodWise only four months ago, so seeing it grow from a concept on the whiteboard to onstage at the Boulder Theater was really exciting for us," she said. "We knew that the challenge was going to be a lot of hard work, but we had no idea just how much we would learn and grow as a team. The experience introduced us to so many valuable mentors and connections that will last for a lifetime.”
New Venture Challenge Final Showcase 2024
FoodWise’s platform uses factors like historical sales and weather to predict food demand in real time.
Co-founders Bonerb, Hashirr Lukmahn, Byron Patten and Jennifer Bundrant began working on FoodWise in November at CU’s 2023 Sustainability Hackathon.
The inspiration for FoodWise came from Bonerb and Patten’s experience working in restaurants. During the NVC final showcase, Bonerb said she began questioning the scale of food waste in the restaurant industry. After interviewing more than 30 restaurants, Bonerb and Patten learned that over-prepping food was the main cause of food waste.
“We went into the competition with no expectations aside from wanting to absorb as much knowledge as possible and genuinely see how viable FoodWise could be,” Bonerb said. “So, actually winning first place was shocking and incredible for us. We were also the only team of undergrads, so I guess we sort of took on an underdog mentality, which drove us to push ourselves even harder to try to match the competition.”
This year’s competition included startups founded by undergraduates, CU professors and community members.
Bonerb said she and the FoodWise team plan to focus on getting its product ready for market.
Other NVC finalists this year included
- Affix, a residential real estate investing company geared toward increasing homeownership opportunities
- BioSensor Solutions, which uses a 2D printed sensor to measure microbial activity of soil
- PricingService.AI, a software subscription company that aims to increase hotel revenue by providing artificial intelligence-powered and dynamic pricing tools
- Refr Sports, an end-to-end referee management platform that allows referees to find games in their areas, choose which ones to work and get paid promptly
BioSensor Solutions and Affix came in fourth and fifth place, respectively, each winning a $5,000 prize. PricingService.AI won a $10,000 third-place prize.
Refr Sports, which the co-founders describe as Uber for referees, won the audience choice award, the second-place prize and the 14 Founders award. The three awards combined to grant the startup $45,000.
NVC calls itself CU Boulder’s entrepreneurial “flight simulator” that connects the college campus and its students to the Boulder community. More than 1,000 CU Boulder startups have participated in NVC since the university began offering this program in 2007.
The school launched a similar version called HSNVC for high school students in 2023. The high school program partners with Front Range schools to help students at under-resourced schools and rural districts see a pathway to entrepreneurship or higher education.
