A Cornell Food Safety Startup

Built by Operators Who’ve Solved This Problem Before

FreshDot was founded by two Cornell MBAs with twenty-plus years of combined experience commercializing technology in environments where errors are expensive and frontline execution decides whether a system actually works.

The hospitality industry has spent decades engineering the front of house. The back of house has been left to make do with handwritten labels, fading day dots, and tribal knowledge that walks out the door with every line cook who quits.

That gap is not a labeling problem. It is an execution problem. When the right way to do something is also the slowest way to do it, a busy kitchen will work around the system every time.

FreshDot exists because the kitchens we admire most deserve a labeling system as disciplined as the rest of their operation.

We’re building FreshDot for fine dining, chef-driven concepts, hotel kitchens, multi-unit scratch operators, and commissaries — the operations where premium ingredients, narrow service windows, and brand reputation make sloppy labeling expensive in ways that show up on a P&L months later.

The Founders

Two Cornell MBAs, One Operating Philosophy

If a frontline worker can’t do it correctly under pressure, the system isn’t finished.

Fox Holt

CEO & Co-Founder

Fox is also the founder and CEO of Vigilant Software, where he has helped clinicians safely deliver more than five million medications across 24 of the top 40 U.S. health systems. Vigilant is the proof point that color-driven, frontline-first labeling works in the most demanding compliance environment that exists — the hospital. FreshDot brings the same operating philosophy to the kitchens of premium hospitality groups.

Earlier, Fox founded Orthogonal Inc., a Cornell-licensed semiconductor company with operations in Ithaca and Shanghai, and partnered with display manufacturers including Samsung, LG, and Sony. He started his career at Lexmark and Morgan Stanley.

Fox on LinkedIn

Cornell MBA, Finance Centre College, BS

Brad Treat

Co-Founder

Brad has spent more than two decades building Cornell-rooted technology companies. He was founder and CEO of SightSpeed, acquired by Logitech in a transaction that returned capital to investors, founders, and employees, and was founder and CEO of Mezmeriz, a Cornell University spinout.

Brad teaches entrepreneurship at Cornell — including in the SC Johnson College of Business and adjacent to the Nolan School of Hotel Administration — and at Ithaca College, where he has helped launch an average of six student companies a year. He is the lead instructor for the NSF I-Corps Interior Northeast Hub and an Entrepreneur in Residence with both the Southern Tier Startup Alliance and Rev: Ithaca Startup Works.

Brad on LinkedIn

Cornell MBA, Entrepreneurship NC State, BS

Why Cornell Matters for FreshDot

Rooted in the most influential hospitality program in the world

Cornell’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration sits at the center of the global hospitality industry. Its alumni run many of the restaurant groups, hotel companies, and food service operators FreshDot is built to serve.

That network is not a marketing claim. It is how we pressure-test what we build, how we recruit early operating partners, and how we make sure FreshDot solves real problems in real kitchens — not problems imagined from a desk.

What We Believe

Discipline in storage is what protects discipline on the plate.

Frontline-first, always

If a line cook on the eighth hour of a double can’t do it correctly without slowing down, it’s not a system. It’s a wish.

Color is information

Reading takes time kitchens don’t have. A label that communicates priority at a glance is the difference between rotation that works and rotation that doesn’t.

Compliance is a byproduct

Audits pass when the daily workflow is right. We optimize for the daily workflow first. The audit takes care of itself.

Want to talk about your kitchens?

We’d like to hear about your operation, where labeling friction shows up today, and whether FreshDot is a fit.

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