5 Houston lifestyle startups changing the way you live, work, and play

Companies to watch

From restaurant finding apps to a healthy food startup — these are the lifestyle startups to watch in Houston. Getty Images

While sometimes it seems like a lot of the Houston innovation landscape is energy and medical tech companies, there are several lifestyle-focused startups that fly under the radar. Whether it's a fizzle cocktail creator — or a cure for a hangover from said fizzy cocktail — these five Houston startups are ones to watch.

Cheers

Cheers, which has its office out of The Cannon, serves up pre-drinking pills to prevent any day after regrets. Courtesy of Cheers

While the sharks on Shark Tank didn't bite, Brooks Powell's Houston-based startup, Cheers, went on to close a $2.1 million seed round lead by NextView Ventures, which has the likes of TaskRabbit, thredUP, and Letgo among its portfolio. The new investment, Brooks says, has been helping the company rebrand from Thrive, its original moniker, to Cheers.

Powell thought up the company when he was a sophomore at Princeton University. He came across the science surrounding his product's key ingredient, Dihydromyricetin, a natural extract — like caffeine to coffee — that had been identified as an anti-alcohol treatment in 2012 following experiments on the effects on rats.

"I started working with some of my professors and asking them if it was safe and would it be effective," Powell says. Read more about Cheers' growth and origin story here.

Work & Mother

Work & Mother gives new moms a save, stylish place to pump during the workday. Courtesy of Work & Mother

Abbey Donnell has been advocating for new mothers long before she had any babies of her own. Though, as of a few weeks ago, the founder of Work & Mother claims a new title of mom to her newborn son.

While laws regulate employers to have private nursing rooms available for new moms, most either offer sub-par conditions or worse — none at all.

"There were constant stories about [women] being told the use the IT closet, or the conference room, or the bathroom or their cars," Donnell tells InnovationMap. "Some of them were pretty big oil and gas firms companies that should've had the resources and space to do better than that."

Work & Mother offers a solution that solves the problem on both sides: A suite of nursing rooms in a downtown office building where business can purchase memberships for employees — and new moms can have a stylish, relaxing place to pump. Read more about Work & Mother here.

Crityk

Crityk's main goal is to be a marketing asset to restaurants. Getty Images

What started as Sumit Sikka's mission to find the best Moscow Mule in Santa Monica has turned into a restaurant locating tool that doubles as a marketing platform for eateries. Houston-based Crityk launched last fall and now serves Houston and Austin restaurants.

"That was kind of the first big pivot," Sikka says. "First, we had an app based on user content. Then we pivoted to have content curated by the restaurant. For the first time ever, the restaurant gets to create their own profile."

There are hundreds of restaurants from Houston on the app now. Read more about Crityk here.

My Drink Bomb

What started as an idea to get her kids to drink more water has turned into a profitable party favor company. Courtesy of My Drink Bomb

Chloé Di Leo was just trying to encourage her kids to drink more water is now by creating fizzing, flavored drink mixes. She sent some extras to school with her kids, who then came home that day with $40.

"Our kids took some to school and came home with some pocket change," Di Leo tells InnovationMap. "They weren't supposed to sell it, but the kids liked it."

Di Leo realized there was a market for these mixes — specifically for adult beverages. She launched My Drink Bomb LLC in Houston at the beginning of summer 2018 and tells InnovationMap that the product was inspired by bath bombs, fizzing once added to a beverage. She created the company with her husband, William Roberts. Together, they own a few local businesses, and Di Leo also is also a jewelry designer at her own store, Chloé Di Leo & Co. Read more about My Drink Bomb here.

The Blonde Pantry

The Bayou City has its own Blue Apron-style startup with locally sourced produce. Courtesy of The Blonde Pantry

While Marla Murphy, a local entrepreneur and nutritionist, has helped Houstonians make healthy decisions with her food blog and consulting company for years, she wasn't sure she was doing enough. Now, the Houstonian has expanded from her meal delivery service to her own store front for locally sourced meals and meal kids.

Murphy relaunched her company, The Blonde Pantry, in March of last year she says to create the only local meal delivery service for the greater Houston area. She opened her store at 2800 Kirby Dr. in February. Read more about The Blonde Pantry here.

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Houston Nobel Prize nominee earns latest award for public health research

Prized Research

Houston vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez can add one more prize to his shelf.

Hotez — dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics — is no stranger to impressive laurels. In 2022, he was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his low-cost COVID vaccine.

His first big win of 2025 is this year’s Hill Prize, awarded by the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology (TAMEST).

Hotez and his team were selected to receive $500,000 from Lyda Hill Philanthropies to help fund The Texas Virosphere Project. The endeavor was born to help create a predictive disease atlas relating to climate disasters. Because the climate crisis has ushered in changes to the distribution of diseases, including dengue, chikungunya, Zika, Chagas disease, typhus and tick-borne relapsing fever, it’s important to predict outbreaks before they become a menace.

Rice University researchers are collaborating with Hotez and his team on a project that combines climate science and metagenomics to access 3,000 insect genomes. The goal is to aid health departments in controlling disease and informing policy.

The Hill Prize, which is being awarded to six innovators for the first time, thanks to a $10 million commitment from the philanthropic organization, is intended to back ideas that are high-risk and high-reward. Each of the projects was chosen for its potential real-life impact on some of Texas's — and the world’s — most challenging situations. Hotez’s prize is the first Hill Prize to be given in the realm of public health. The additional winners are:

  • Hill Prize in Medicine: Kenneth M. Hargreaves, D.D.S., Ph.D., The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  • Hill Prize in Engineering: Joan Frances Brennecke, Ph.D. (NAE), The University of Texas at Austin
  • Hill Prize in Biological Sciences: David J. Mangelsdorf, Ph.D. (NAM, NAS), UT Southwestern Medical Center
  • Hill Prize in Physical Sciences: James Chelikowsky, Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin
  • Hill Prize in Technology: Robert De Lorenzo, M.D., EmergenceMed, LLC
Read about other Houston-area researchers recognized by TAMEST here.

How Houston's cost of living compares to other major Texas cities in 2025

Calculating Costs

A new cost-of-living index yields a result that many Houstonians will find surprising: Houston is not the most expensive place to live in Texas. Dallas and Austin are costlier.

Numbeo’s cost-of-living index for 2025 shows Dallas ranks first in Texas and 24th in North America, landing at 65.8. The cost-of-living index compares the cost of living in New York City (which sits at 100) with the cost of living in another city. Austin is at 61.7, Houston at 60.6, and San Antonio at 58.8.

Houston ranks 40th overall in North America, out of 52 cities in the index.

Numbeo’s cost-of-living index takes into account the cost of items like groceries, restaurant meals, transportation, and utilities. The index excludes rent.

When rent is added to the cost-of-living index, Houston is still third among Texas cities. Dallas grabs the No. 21 spot in North America (57.1), one notch above Austin (56.6). Houston ranks 35th (51.4), and San Antonio ranks 42nd (34.6).

Rent index
While Dallas holds the top Texas spot on Numbeo’s overall cost-of-living index, Austin faces the highest rent prices. Numbeo's rent index for Austin sits at 50.1, putting it in 12th place among major cities in North America and highest in Texas, above the indexes for Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Houston lands at 27th.

The rent index in New York City, which tops the list, is 100. As Numbeo explains, the rent index estimates the cost of renting an apartment in a city compared with New York City. If the rent index is 50, for example, this suggests the average rent in that city is 50 percent below the average rent in New York City.

Around Texas, the rent index is:

  • 46.2 in Dallas
  • 39.8 in Houston
  • 34.6 in San Antonio

Restaurant index
In contrast to its showing on the rent and cost-of-living indexes, Houston outranks Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio on Numbeo’s restaurant index. This index compares the prices of meals and drinks at restaurants and bars to those in New York City.

Houston sits at No. 25 on the restaurant index, at 68.9. Dallas comes in at No. 32 (67.1), Austin at No. 34 (66.6), and San Antonio at No. 36 (65.2).

The National Restaurant Association reported in December that menu prices in the U.S. had risen 3.6 percent in the past 12 months, outpacing gains in grocery prices and the federal government’s overall Consumer Price Index. Fortunately for diners, that was the smallest 12-month increase in menu prices since August 2020, according to the association.

Toast, which provides a cloud-based restaurant management system, says the higher menu prices reflect higher food prices.

“Food prices have been increasing due to inflation, labor expenses, fuel costs, and supply chain disruptions, all of which impact restaurant profitability, Toast says. “While raising menu prices is one option to combat rising food costs, some restaurants have introduced service charges and simplified menus to avoid passing all costs onto customers.”

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This story originally appeared on our sister site, CultureMap.com.

Houston startup taps strategic partner to produce novel 'biobased leather'

cleaner products

A Houston-based next-gen material startup has revealed a new strategic partnership.

Rheom Materials, formerly known as Bucha Bio, has announced a strategic partnership with thermoplastic extrusion and lamination company Bixby International, which is part of Rheom Material’s goal for commercial-scale production of its novel biobased material, Shorai.

Shorai is a biobased leather alternative that meets criteria for many companies wanting to incorporate sustainable materials. Shorai performs like traditional leather, but offers scalable production at a competitive price point. Extruded as a continuous sheet and having more than 92 percent biobased content, Shorai achieves an 80 percent reduction in carbon footprint compared to synthetic leather, according to Rheom.

Rheom, which is backed by Houston-based New Climate Ventures, will be allowing Bixby International to take a minority ownership stake in Rheom Materials as part of the deal.

“Partnering with Bixby International enables us to harness their extensive expertise in the extrusion industry and its entire supply chain, facilitating the successful scale-up of Shorai production,” Carolina Amin Ferril, CTO at Rheom Materials, says in a news release. “Their highly competitive and adaptable capabilities will allow us to offer more solutions and exceed our customers’ expectations.”

In late 2024, Rheom Materials started its first pilot-scale trial at the Bixby International facilities with the goal of producing Shorai for prototype samples.

"The scope of what we were doing — both on what raw materials we were using and what we were creating just kept expanding and growing," founder Zimri Hinshaw previously told InnovationMap.

Listen to Hinshaw on the Houston Innovators Podcast episode recorded in October.

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