On Wednesday, Oct. 14, the founders of five food companies took the stage at Storer Auditorium to tell students what building a brand really takes.
“The Taste of Entrepreneurship,” presented by the University of Miami Business School’s Entrepreneurship Program in partnership with the Campus Creator Club and UStart, featured Antonio Ellek of Poshi, Will Nitze of IQBAR, Luis Mata of Meat N’ Bone, Aidan Friedson of BANH and Ben Barrocas of Chillbar.
“[This event is] just really a celebration of all the hard work that these founders who are taking the stage have done,” said Susan Amat, associate professor of professional practice at the Department of Management, who organized the event and mentors entrepreneurship students at the Business School.
The evening included two panels. The first, “No Shelf Life,” paired Friedson and Mata, whose businesses sell directly to consumers every day. The second, which included Ellek, Nitze and Barrocas, focused on founders who rarely meet their customers face to face. The night ended with guests sampling Barrocas’s Chillbar to celebrate the brand’s launch in Miami.
What it really takes to build a food brand
The Entrepreneurship Program has hosted five food events in five years. This year’s event was inspired by several of Amat’s food-business students, who were preparing to launch their ventures at the start of the summer.
Food, she has learned, is especially demanding. “It’s just so much more complex than people think,” Amat said.
Founders often overlook finding the right people, quality, shelf life, distribution and marketing, she said. Even the best product won't matter if customers never hear about it, and because so much of the food industry comes down to taste, the third, fourth or fifth best product can win simply by being better funded or better connected.
Amat’s message was blunt: “The product is easy, and it's a long, long road after that.” Her advice for students: “Figure out what [goals] matter to you and [focus on] nothing but that.”
For that reason, she wants students to hear from entrepreneurs at every stage of development.
“It’s seeing [founders] at different stages of their journey and saying, ‘That can be me,’” she said.
Aidan Friedson, BANH: A $0 start and a viral sample
Alumnus Aidan Friedson has been starting businesses since childhood. As an undergraduate student, he ran a meal-prep company, Reliables, which grew quickly but profitability did not materialize.
His next idea came from conversations with his current business partner, a Vietnamese chef who had always wanted to open a sandwich shop. BANH opened inside Books & Books in October 2025.“I was working 12-hour days every day in the beginning to get us over the hump,” Friedson said. Free samples drove the marketing: “One out of every three people that tried our samples would purchase something.”
When a customer’s video of her sample went viral, food influencers flocked. BANH has since earned 2026 Miami New Times Editors’ Choice Winner for Best Sandwich.
Luis Mata, Meat N’ Bone: A brand in a category with none
Luis Mata spent his career in finance, rising from financial analyst to CFO and CEO, before launching Meat N’ Bone during the pandemic. The company aims to be best in class in quality and convenience, selling directly to consumers online and through eight retail locations, two steakhouses and a quick-service restaurant.
In December 2024, a fire destroyed the company’s warehouse and fulfillment center as it was opening four new locations. “It almost drove us out of business,” Mata said. “We’re still living with the consequences of that fire, but we’re working our way through it.”
Today, with a team that now runs much of the day-to-day business, Mata focuses on fundraising, strategy and relationships, a long way from the early days of moving boxes in the morning and pitching for capital in the afternoon.
His advice for aspiring founders is not to wait for perfection.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just start something, put yourself out there. Failure is just another lesson in life,” he said. Meat N’ Bone has taught him more in five years, he added, than the previous 20 combined.
Ben Barrocas, Chillbar: From a Ninja CREAMi to dry ice delivery
Ben Barrocas, a second-year student, grew up playing basketball and tennis and, by middle school, was frustrated that protein snacks forced a trade-off between protein, clean ingredients and taste. Last December, he set out to make a better protein bar, then asked himself, “Why does the world need another protein bar?”
Protein ice cream pints existed, but no one had yet made a bar.
His early home experiments did not meet his standards, so he found a formulator at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, and the two spent months refining the recipe. Manufacturing was more challenging. Ice cream co-packing is concentrated among a handful of facilities, and the team faced several roadblocks before finding a suitable partner.
Following the official launch during “The Taste of Entrepreneurship” event, the bars are now available online and ship across the country on dry ice through a fulfillment partner.
Build your future
The Entrepreneurship Program hosts multiple events each year, and student entrepreneurs are already building their futures on campus. Applications for the program’s Elevator Pitch Competition are open through Oct. 29, and a fashion entrepreneurship pop-up showcasing student-run businesses follows on Nov. 5.
