Solar Kitchen
Company description
Solar Kitchen develops low-cost, non-electric indoor cooking appliances powered by concentrated solar power (CSP) rather than photovoltaics — using lightweight, non-electric lenses and reflectors to focus direct heat onto a cooking surface, with roughly 1 kilowatt of cooking heat per 10 square feet of collector. The target market is small restaurants, bakeries, food trucks, and micro commercial kitchens looking to cut fuel and electricity costs. The company's current website describes an expanded scope beyond the original solar-oven concept, now covering "commercial kitchen solutions using concentrated solar power, on or off-grid," including bio-fuel alcohol drop-in stove burners. Solar Kitchen applied to the 2021 Startup Texas Pitch Summit, sponsored by the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC).
Founder Laura Arroyo Miniel is a Brownsville native, Cornell University graduate, and published clinical research author who spent nearly a decade researching solar oven design and off-grid cooking technology before founding the company, building and testing multiple working prototypes along the way. Her original business model funded this research through a green-energy-themed Brownsville bed & breakfast she started in 2017 — one built around birding, the natural Rio Grande Valley environment, and live solar-cooking demonstrations for guests, with proceeds funding solar hardware and R&D. When the pandemic made it unsafe to keep hosting out-of-town guests, she shut the B&B down and founded Solar Kitchen LLC in October 2020, ten weeks before her Startup Texas application, specifically to seek outside funding for commercializing the cooking technology. She holds a provisional utility patent and has successfully registered "SOLAR KITCHEN" as a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (Serial No. 90330253).
Founder: Laura Arroyo Miniel
Program: 2021 StartUp Texas Pitch Summit
Website: solarkitchen.com
Email: lauraminiel@yahoo.com