Innovative Houston couple designs wine-cooling device

drink this in

An innovative, Houston-created tool instantly chills wine and spirits. Photo via thecoldcork.com

Great inventions reveal their value within due course, but there are those creations that tell their worth almost immediately, with a first look, image, or mere mention.

The Cold Cork, a malleable pouring device that instantly chills wine and spirits, falls into that category.

It seems like such a simple idea, but that’s the thing about inventions, isn’t it? Anyone can come up with an idea, but it’s the ones that can execute that idea that make it to the finish line and etch their names in the annals of creative glory.

“I had come home from the grocery store, right at the onset of COVID, and I wanted to have a glass of wine that I bought, but it was already room temperature, and I didn't want to put ice in it,” says wine-lover and former healthcare worker Michelle Kurkiewicz. “So, we started doing some research and came up with the idea for Cold Cork.”

Timing is everything, and because the nationwide pause caused by the COVID-19 pandemic offered Michelle, 33, and her husband Tyler, 30, plenty of free time, the dutiful duo was able to flesh out their labor of love.

Tyler and Michelle Kurkiewicz came up with the idea of the Cold Cork. Photo via thecoldcork.com

As it turns out, Tyler, a mechanical engineer by trade, had recently purchased a 3D printer back in January 2020, so he was able to use it to build hundreds of prototypes in-house to eventually arrive at a final design, which is based on the couple’s wedding champagne flutes.

So how does the Cold Cork work? Picture this: the wine-lover takes the Cold Cork out of the freezer (after a recommended 24 hours to thoroughly freeze), places it on top of the open bottle of wine and begins to pour.

As the liquid funnels through the stainless-steel coil, which is surrounded by a proprietary, food-grade cooling medium, the wine or spirits is chilled by 20 degrees in just 20 seconds.

To achieve the best results for red wine, pour the entire bottle through the Cold Cork into a decanter and enjoy.

And the best part? Not one part of the Cold Cork’s signature process alters the taste or composition of the drink in any way.

The device, priced at $64.95, chills liquids 20 degrees in 20 seconds. Photo via thecoldcork.com

“At first, we thought about whether the product should be inside the bottle or outside the bottle,” remembers Tyler. “But we quickly realized that there’s simply not enough room to do that amount of chilling inside a bottle. And we didn't want to have to pour any wine out. But we needed to make space to put some sort of chiller in the bottle. And so, we immediately started looking outside the bottle, and just with all the other wine gadgets, being bottle-topped and plugging in with a rubber stopper, that's immediately the direction we sort of drifted to.”

According to Tyler, the first couple of prototypes were made of a 3D filament. Initially, the idea was to focus on creating a cooling gel to compliment the coil, but that got a bit messy and, of course, there were too many wine taste-testing sessions to count.

“We definitely went through a lot of bottles of wine,” says Michelle. “But one of the first people that used our product was a sommelier and she loved it. We also gave one of our first production-level prototypes to a friend who is a manager at a restaurant. She used it on several occasions and said it was perfect for what she needed and seeing our product be used at a place that we frequented was extremely validating.”

Armed with the validation they needed to go to production, the wine-loving public could now have the product they needed to keep from having to throw all their wine in the refrigerator.

“The Cold Cork is really good for the people that maybe don't have those multi-zone fridges,” says Michelle. “We found a good niche with entry-level wine drinkers that don't have a wine fridge, but they want to drink their white wines still without being over-drank with ice cubes.

“That's really who we've been going after, and who we've seen has found a lot of value in the product. It's really the people that maybe aren't so prepared or maybe looking just for some more accessible solutions, whether it's because of the space in their apartment or financially, you know, it might be cheaper than a wine fridge. That's why we came up with the Cold Cork ourselves, because that was us, and so we kind of made a product that worked for us and found that there are a lot of people like that.”

The Cold Cork is available now and can be purchased directly from the company’s website for $64.95. In the future, more cork sizes and different colors will be offered, and more brick-and-mortar stores will carry the product. The couple pitched the idea and received investment from Trend Ventures at the 2022 Build Up Buttercup, an initiative that featured small business pitches for a select group of investors.

“We’ve gotten a lot of feedback directly from customers saying they use it a lot more than they thought,” says Michelle. “But then there are those people that are skeptical about how it works. That’s why I love to demo the Cold Cork in person.”

For a couple that met at a bar one night in downtown Houston, the Cold Cork is almost a poetic destination as a business endeavor and one that they both really relish.

“We both have our strengths, and we give each other a lot of support,” says Michelle.

“I’m very mechanically inclined, so I develop and invent, and Michelle is great with the marketing aspect and working with people to purchase the product,” adds Tyler. “In addition to the Cold Cork, we do have a couple of early projects that we are working on. I think there is a lot of opportunity with our technology to take what we have learned and fit that into different product lineups moving forward.”

Cold Cork Thermometer Test

From Your Site Articles
Dede Raad of Dress Up Buttercup created a unique pitch series — completely fueled by her social media community — that gave a spotlight to eight businesses. Photo via dressupbuttercup.com

Houston fashionista fuels fresh brands with pitch series

money moves

After growing her audience to over a million followers on Instagram, Houston fashion blogger Dede Raad felt the pressure to expand her business — but she didn't feel inspired by any particular line of business to grow into.

"In the blogging world, which I've been doing for about seven years, everyone's next step is to start a brand and to start something of their own," Raad, founder of Dress Up Buttercup, tells InnovationMap. "I just don't have anything in my heart that I was really passionate about. I know once you start something, you have to give it your all."

But what Raad realized — after a year of thinking about her next move and a chance viewing of Shark Tank — was that tons of business founders were passionate about their own brands, and there was an opportunity for Raad use her community to support them instead of coming up with something of her own.

She put the call out to her followers to find founders with growing brands. Raad launched "Build Up Buttercup," an initiative that featured small business pitches for a select group of investors, with her husband, Ted. The event, which happened last October, resulted in eight business pitches across four episodes uploaded to Dress Up Buttercup's page that garnered hundreds of thousands of views. The initiative also resulted in a handful of investments and cash prizes.

"It was a crazy four days, but it was so cool to see the brands and the passion behind it and for Ted and I to help in both a financial and advising way," Raad says.

Raad was joined at the event with fellow investors, which included Houston-based investment firms Curate Capital and Trend Ventures, the investment arm of influencer management company Trend Management, founded by Ted Raad.

Of the eight that pitched, four companies received investments. Dress Up Buttercup invested in Houston-based jewelry company Burdlife and children's clothing brand Poppy Kids. Trend Ventures made investments in Cold Cork and Houston-based tech startup, AIM7, which closed its seed round in December.

Raad tells InnovationMap that she'd be interested in hosting another edition of "Build Up Buttercup" in the future, but for now she's focused on her two new brands. Her role within both of the companies is very hands on, she explains, and meets with the founders at least once a week. She also markets both brands to her Instagram community.

"We're not just sending you a check — we want to be involved," Raad says. "I've worked with brands for the past seven years, and I've seen what people are buying. I have such a power in my community, and I know what they like."

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Texas still ranks as No. 1 in U.S. for inbound moves, but growth dips

by the numbers

Texas continues to be the country’s No. 1 magnet for newcomers from other states, giving a boost to the state’s economy. However, Texas’ appeal weakened in 2024 compared with the previous year, due in large part to spiking home prices.

An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by self-storage platform StorageCafe shows Texas saw net interstate migration of 76,000 people in 2024. Texas’ net interstate migration dropped nearly 50 percent from 2023, according to the analysis. Net migration refers to the number of incoming residents minus the number of outgoing residents.

California remained the top source of newcomers for Texas, sending nearly 77,000 residents to the Lone Star State in 2024, the analysis says. Florida ranked second, followed by New York, Colorado and Illinois.

“These trends reveal Texas’ continued pull from both high-cost coastal markets and other large Sun Belt states, resulting in a mix of affordability-driven and job-driven relocation,” StorageCafe says.

Putting a damper on the influx of new residents: a roughly 124 percent surge in Texas home prices over the past decade, according to StorageCafe.

“While the state remains significantly more affordable than California, its top feeder state, the once-wide pricing gap has narrowed,” says StorageCafe. “For many movers, Texas is still a relative bargain, but no longer an undisputed one.”

Nonetheless, Texas keeps attracting young, highly educated people, which bodes well for the state’s long-term economic outlook, StorageCafe says. More than half of new arrivals to Texas in 2024 held at least a bachelor’s degree, and the age of newcomers averaged 32.

Where are most of these young, highly educated newcomers settling?

Lloyd Potter, former Texas state demographer, tells StorageCafe that population growth in Texas is happening most rapidly in suburban “ring counties” at the expense of slowing growth in urban cores. Ring counties are on the outskirts of major metro areas.

“Many people are moving from urban cores to suburban rings seeking lower costs, newer housing, better schools, and more space,” Potter says. “Typically, a move to a suburban county will be within commuting or hybrid‑commuting distance of major metro economies.”

Artemis II makes historic call to space station with help from Houston Mission Control

History in the making

Still aglow from their triumphant lunar flyby, the Artemis II astronauts made more history Tuesday, April 7: calling their friends aboard the International Space Station hundreds of thousands of miles away as they headed home from the moon.

It was the first moonship-to-spaceship radio linkup ever. NASA's Apollo crews had no off-the-planet company back in the 1960s and 1970s, the last time humanity set sail for deep space.

"We have been waiting for this like you can’t imagine,” Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman called out.

For Christina Koch on Artemis II and Jessica Meir aboard the space station, it marked a joyous space reunion despite being 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) apart. The two teamed up for the world's first all-female spacewalk in 2019 outside the orbiting lab.

Koch told her “astro-sister” that she'd hoped to meet up with her again in space “but I never thought it would be like this — it's amazing.”

“I'm so happy that we are back in space together,” Meir replied, “even if we are a few miles apart.”

Houston's Mission Control arranged the cosmic chitchat between the four lunar travelers and the space station's three NASA and one French residents.

Koch described being awe-struck by not just the beauty of Earth, “but how much blackness there was around it.”

“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she told the space station crew. “The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized” when viewing the home planet from the moon.

By late Tuesday afternoon, the Artemis II astronauts had beamed back more than 50 gigabytes' worth of pictures and other data from the previous day's lunar rendezvous, which set a new distance record for humanity. The highlight: an Earthset photo reminiscent of Apollo 8's Earthrise shot from 1968.

"While they are inspirational and, I think, allow all of us to really feel a little bit of what they were feeling, there's also a lot of science hidden inside of those images," said Mission Control's lead lunar scientist Kelsey Young. “The conversations and the science lessons learned are just beginning."

During a debriefing with Young, the astronauts recounted how they spotted a cascade of pinpricks of light on the lunar surface from impacting cosmic debris. The flashes lasted mere milliseconds and coincided by chance with Monday evening's total solar eclipse.

Young said it was too soon to know whether the crew witnessed an actual meteor shower or more random, run-of-the-mill micrometeoroid hits. Either way, there were “audible screams of delight” in the science operations center, she said.

Koch described being awe-struck by not just the beauty of Earth, “but how much blackness there was around it.”

“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she told the space station crew. “The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized” when viewing the home planet from the moon.

The first lunar explorers since Apollo 17 in 1972, Wiseman and his crew are aiming for a splashdown off the San Diego coast on Friday to wrap up the nearly 10-day test flight. The recovery ship USS John P. Murtha left port Tuesday for the target zone.

It sets the stage for next year's Artemis III, a lunar lander docking demo in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV will follow in 2028 with two astronauts attempting to land near the lunar south pole.

As for the Orion capsule’s pesky potty, Mission Control assured the astronauts that no maintenance was required Tuesday. The toilet has been on-and-off limits to the crew ever since last week’s launch, prompting them to rely on a backup bag-and-funnel system for urinating.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told the crew following the lunar flyby Monday night: “We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing” ahead of the next Artemis mission. Engineers suspect a clogged filter in the overboard flushing system.

Aside from the toilet and other relatively minor matters, the mission has gone well, Isaacman noted at a news conference Tuesday, “but I'll breathe easier when we get through reentry and everybody's under chutes and in the water.”

AI-powered Houston startup helps restaurants boost customer loyalty

order up

It’s no secret that restaurant trends move fast and margins run thin. And with the proliferation of platforms like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Easy Cater, customer loyalty is fleeting.

The solution?

How about an AI-powered restaurant technology platform that helps restaurant brands cut back on third-party platforms in favor of driving direct discovery, conversion and loyalty?

Enter Saivory. Founded in 2025 by Stephen Klein, a software investor, and Fajita Pete’s restaurateur Hugh Guill, the Houston-based startup aims to help eateries better understand and activate guest behavior across digital channels as AI increasingly reshapes how consumers discover and engage with brands.

In less than a year, Saivory has partnered with Shipley Do-Nuts and Fajita Pete’s to bring AI-powered ordering to life.

“With Saivory, we were able to answer the question of, ‘what if the ordering process could be reduced to a single step, where customers simply tell us what they want and AI takes care of the rest?’” Klein tells InnovationMap.

The Houston-based startup made such an immediate impact that it was selected as a semi-finalist during Start-Up Alley at MURTEC, the restaurant industry’s leading technology conference, which took place last month in Las Vegas.

“Houston is a great hub for technology innovation, and we were proud to represent the city at MURTEC this year,” says Klein. “We didn’t win, but we were able to talk about some of the work that we have existing in the market for clients right now and a little bit about what we’re working on in the future.”

In the current restaurant technology ecosystem, the third-party aggregators own the customer attention that brings volume to restaurants, while also taking big commissions and having control over the end relationships with the customer.

That can often make it difficult for restaurants to grow loyalty and repeat business from customers. Saivory aims to level the playing field for restaurants, helping them stay more connected to their customers.

Take Saivory’s recent application with Shipley’s Do-Nuts, for example.

Saivory powered the donut giant’s AI-ordering and launched Shipley's website and mobile app to support its over 300 locations in Texas alone.

Shipley’s new AI-powered assistant helps users create personalized order recommendations based on individual or group preferences. And unlike standard chatbox features, the new assistant makes custom recommendations based on multiple customer factors, including budgetary habits, individual flavor preferences and order size. It can also be used for large catering orders.

“They're seeing more traffic to the site and they're seeing when customers use our AI-enabled flows,” Klein says. “And they're seeing higher basket sizes, bigger tickets, by about 25 percent.”

Klein says Saivory’s technology helps strengthen first-party digital relationships, reduce friction and cart abandonment, improve average order value, and delivers personalized, efficient experiences.

“It’s a win-win: the customer gets the right order quickly, while the restaurant gets a bigger margin,” he adds.

Additionally, the technology makes it easier for restaurants to share rewards, loyalty and discounts, ultimately growing more direct traffic and making restaurants less reliant on third-party delivery apps.

Next up for Saivory is adding new components to its platform to enhance the relationship between restaurant and customer, as well as technology around making it easier for restaurants to get found on Google.

“A lot of people are still searching for the best donuts near me,” Klein says. “Or what’s the best Mexican food near me? Customers will increasingly move to AI, where they’re going to ask where they should eat dinner and expect it to just order them dinner. They will eventually expect the technology to know how to do that. So that’s what we’re driving at.”

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