Snack Startup Cramp Bites Wins Hospitality Business Plan Competition

Armita Jamshidi ’25 and a friend were moving a fridge into Jamshidi’s dorm room her sophomore year when she suddenly felt a wave of sharp pain and could barely move or speak. Seven hours later, after losing consciousness in the hospital, she was released from the emergency room and told to take some ibuprofen — for an extreme case of menstrual cramps.

That experience led Jamshidi, a computer science and women’s health major, to launch a new business that offers an alternative to relieving period pain: Cramp Bites, sweet date snacks adapted from her Iranian grandmother’s recipe, which soothed her monthly cramps while she was growing up in North Carolina.

Cramp Bites moved a step closer to commercial production when Jamshidi’s startup, Aunt Flo’s Kitchen, won the $25,000 first-place prize at the 2025 Hospitality Business Plan Competition, hosted on April 26 in Statler Auditorium by the Leland C. and Mary M. Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship at the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration.

Jamshidi’s award will allow her to start manufacturing the snacks containing analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties, which until now have been produced by her parents in a commercial kitchen in her hometown.

“I think a lot of women just kind of resent taking medicine constantly,” Jamshidi said after the awards were announced. “And so when women tell me that this has helped with their pain, I realize that all the work is worth it.”

Aunt Flo’s Kitchen received an Epperson Entrepreneurial Grant from W.E. Cornell in 2022 and was selected as a participant in Entrepreneurship at Cornell’s 2023-24 eLab, a student-business accelerator. Afterwards, Cramp Bites launched online and in several retail stores in Ithaca, including GreenStar Cooperative Market and Gimme! Coffee and has earned $30,000 in revenue, Jamshidi said. Post-graduation, she plans to work on the business full time along with her teammate, Monica Lee ’26, a junior in the Nolan School. Once the snacks go into production at a facility in the Poughkeepsie area later this year, Jamshidi plans to introduce them at Columbia University, Wegmans grocery stores, and several boutique hotels in upstate New York.

Scalable vision and strategic planning

The four alumni judges who selected Aunt Flo’s Kitchen as the winner said it was a close competition but agreed that Jamshidi’s startup stood out because it included a complete business plan. Five student teams competed in the semifinals, presenting their business proposals before a crowd of about 200 people during Hotel Ezra Cornell, the Nolan School’s annual student-run industry conference.

“I think ultimately we were impressed with her understanding of the target market and particularly the diverse, thoughtful board of advisors that she had assembled,” said Tony Capuano ’87, president and CEO of Marriott International and one of the event’s judges. “It’s a very scalable business.”

Another judge, Meli James ’00, cofounder of Mana Up, a venture fund and accelerator based in Hawaii, said Cramp Bites aligns with the growing focus on women’s healthcare products worldwide. “I think there are a lot of tailwinds happening with the interest in women’s health and this fits in nicely with some of those trends,” she said.

Learning through pitching and feedback

The judges for Hospitality Business Plan Competition used a rubric to select the winner that factors in the quality of the team’s written business plan, the market opportunity for the proposed venture, the feasibility of the business model, and the oral presentation.

“It’s really trying to give them a meaningful learning experience because whether it’s this business or the next one, they’re going to be pitching like that again,” said Brad Treat, the faculty chair of the event who teaches entrepreneurship in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

This year’s competition, open to all Cornell students, started last fall when 32 teams with students from 10 schools across campus submitted video pitches to a panel of semifinal judges. Ten top teams were invited to submit business plans, which they developed after attending a series of workshops, and the field was narrowed to five semifinalists in March.

“The feedback and insights provided by the judges in each stage of the competition play an invaluable part in motivating students to further refine and develop their entrepreneurial pursuits,” said Christina McDowell, interim academic director of the Pillsbury Institute.

The competition’s second-place prize of $7,500 was awarded to BoatCape, a boutique boat charter experience founded by Nolan School senior Hayden Earl that serves Cape Cod and its surrounding barrier islands.

The third-place prize of $5,000 went to Hermit, a startup that enables travelers to park for free at an airport and earn money by renting out their cars. The team included Akhil Damani ’25, a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences senior; Matthew Puzzini ’25, Nolan School senior; and Jacob Berchtold ’25, a senior in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.

Honorable mentions were given to Flaps, a platform that connects private jet travelers in China to private jet charter companies in minutes; and Deal Sprint, a last-minute hotel booking platform that allows business travelers in India to bid for rooms.