Wolffest is Back! UH Entrepreneurship Students’ Pop-up Food Stands Compete for Customers

Photo of young women serving tamales at the festival
At last year’s Wolffest, volunteer Amanda Fernanda Diaz served tamales from her family restaurant. Competing teams work with food vendors to feed the crowd and sometimes put on a show. Having high sales, alone, will not win the day. Aside from profits, judges consider the capital a team raises from donations, their branding and marketing choices, and the team culture.
Crowd scene at last year’s annual Wolffest event
Every year around this time, Wolffest invites the UH community and their friends and family to Butler Plaza, where entrepreneurship undergraduates compete to win business. The event provides real-world experiences for students. It also offers leadership opportunities, tests abilities to operate a business and provides volunteers a glimpse of what it takes to be a Wolff student.
Photo of man in space suit cooking barbecue
At Wolffest, barbecue needs to be done just right. At last year’s Wolffest, this guy did his bit at the smoker to keep the ’cue up to standards. The mystery man inside that jumpsuit? Wolff Center student Bryan Medrano of the Space Cowboys team. There’s no record of him leaving behind recipes for what he’s tending under all that smoke.

University of Houston entrepreneurship students are stepping up like bosses to outsell their classmates at Wolffest 2023. The annual three-day competition features pop-up food stands created by students of the top-ranked Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship at the C. T. Bauer College of Business. It is their final class project before earning an entrepreneurship degree.

The winning team will be named on Saturday, April 15, during the Wolff Gala 2023, which also will feature an auction. Click for details on tickets, donations and auction items.

“This is a big project for the Wolf students and a very popular event on the UH campus. In past years, we have raised as much as $325,661. Every dollar from Wolffest helps fund scholarships and learning opportunities for students,” said Danna Ceron Jaramillo, program manager of the Wolff Center.

The project has another purpose, too: Spinning lessons into real-life tests. Since committing to the project last fall, students have been working hard on putting together plans, bidding on locations, developing products, lining up vendors and brand partners, creating marketing plans, setting prices – all while keeping their competitors in mind. But despite their best plans, issues can pop up on the fly, just as real-life bosses constantly must fix nonfunctional equipment or soothe spats among team members.

For visitors, Wolffest features events, raucous sales pitches, giveaways, lots of good food and the chance to get to know the Wolff Center’s newest entrepreneurs.

Who: Students at the UH Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship

What: Wolffest 2023

When: Tuesday–Thursday, March 28–30. Opens 9 a.m. each day. Closes 5 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, and 9 p.m. Thursday.

Where: UH Butler Plaza in front of M.D. Anderson Library (Map)