‘NoSpill’ Tray for Delivery Drivers Captures Bull Ring Grand Prize

‘NoSpill’ Tray for Delivery Drivers Captures Bull Ring Grand Prize By Leena Ali, CSUN Today

While making office coffee runs or delivering meals for Postmates and DoorDash, Bretiel Danipour and Stephanie Villa dealt with a growing problem frequently experienced by on-demand food delivery drivers: Driving around with multiple drinks and food containers can be disastrous.

Most personal vehicles don’t have enough cupholders for multiple orders, and auto seats aren’t contoured to hold take-out bags and drinks. One hard brake, and there goes your order — and your upholstery.

This spring, Danipour, Villa and fellow California State University, Northridge students Jenna Flynn and Tammy Nguyen formed an entrepreneurial team to develop a solution to this problem: an adjustable tray that molds to the shape of your front passenger seat, safely and securely holding take-out food and beverage trays.

For their invention, the NoSpill Systems team won first place and the audience choice prize at CSUN’s fourth annual Bull Ring New Venture Competition, hosted by the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics’ Entrepreneurship Program. The prize included $20,000 to help launch their product.

“Our team has put in so much work over these last few months to present a product that we are proud of,” said Flynn, a business honors major and entrepreneurship minor. “Winning Bull Ring was such an exhilarating experience and reinforced our desire to move forward with the development and production of the NoSpill Tray.”

The Bull Ring, modeled after ABC’s “Shark Tank” reality show, encourages students to pitch, launch and grow their original ventures. The competition provides access to mentors, coaching and potential investors.

Team members from NoSpill Systems as well as third place winner Smart Prosthetics are currently enrolled in the Nazarian College Minor in Entrepreneurship.

The Bull Ring gives Nazarian College students a chance to build on their academics to better prepare them to enter the fast-paced world of business, said Chandra Subramaniam, dean of the CSUN Nazarian College.

“We need to produce graduates that can think on their feet, be innovative and resilient. Entrepreneurship requires students to do all these things,” Subramaniam said. (Read the Full Story Here.)