Lauren Hooks
Kitchen Manager- Wharton Food Innovation Lab
Owner/Consultant- Seedling Project Management
Lauren has been a Chef for over 13 years. Her goal is to be a catalyst for change within the food industry and beyond. She currently runs the Food Innovation Lab at Wharton (University of Pennsylvania), advising students on how to develop their business ideas. She also consults on programming for the Quaker Kitchen at UPENN with the goal of building community through food.
Lauren’s career has been a mix of launching restaurants, starting food lines, executing countless events, overseeing food safety compliance, and helping to fight food insecurity. She was an early advocate for the plant-based movement and spent the beginning of her career expanding vegan businesses to maximize social impact. During her 5 year stint as the Director of Kitchen Operations for Vedge Restaurant Group, she opened 4 restaurants. One of them was Fancy Radish, which received the honor of being listed in the Michelin Guide, on the Bib Gourmand List, and was named one of the best new restaurants by the Washington Post. When the pandemic hit, she spent a year cooking with a nonprofit making 500 to 700 meals per week that went to Philadelphians in need. She also facilitated a partnership between Sunday Love Project and World Central Kitchen which brought in another 38,000 meals to the city.
In addition to her current work at UPENN, she is consulting on a kitchen build out for Sunday Love Project that will be put in a building to serve the community in the second poorest zip code of Philadelphia.