Smart Hospitality, Now Open in Downtown Dallas

Following proof-of-concept testing at The AT&T Exchange food hall and One Victory Park office tower in Dallas, and The Sound at Cypress Waters apartments in Coppell, Venduni has opened its flagship Smart Café at Plaza of the Americas (POTA) in Downtown Dallas on August 8th, 2026.

The POTA location represents the next stage of Venduni's Smart Hospitality model: a purpose-built, 24/7 retail environment combining chef-driven food, premium beverages, trending products, automated specialty treats, and smart retail technology in a labor-light operating model.

The Venduni Advantage

● Better Food — Award-winning chefs and restaurants. Real ingredients. Real recipes.

● Trending Finds — Social-media-driven food trends identified on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube — many featuring products that are difficult to find in most local markets.

● Better Convenience — 24/7 access when most food locations are closed — no waiting, delivery fees, or minimum orders.

● Better Technology — Smart refrigerated, frozen, and ambient cabinets; autonomous coffee and beverage systems; robotic specialty machines; frictionless checkout; and intelligent inventory management for demand forecasting, freshness monitoring, and waste reduction.

● Better Marketing — Affiliated media, sister-brand audiences, email reach, and 25+ signed chef partners supporting awareness, product discovery, and customer acquisition.

● Better Economics — Limited on-site labor, a compact footprint, extended operating hours, and equipment that can be adapted or redeployed across locations.

The Problem and the Solution

Consumers seeking fresh, high-quality food on the go, including nights and off-hours, face a persistent trade-off. They can have quality, immediate access, or a reasonable price, but they rarely get all three. Traditional restaurants also face rising occupancy and ingredient costs, labor shortages, uneven staffing quality, peak-hour production constraints, and operational inefficiencies that make premium food and beverages harder to deliver consistently.

Venduni combines smart retail technology, automation, and self-service to deliver award-winning, chef-driven food and beverages in purpose-built storefronts. We call it Smart Hospitality. Think Snap Kitchen meets Goldbelly: open 24/7, labor-light, and no wait. Great food does not keep business hours. Venduni is open when most kitchens are dark.

Plaza of the Americas Flagship Smart Café

Venduni's POTA flagship occupies a suite directly adjacent to the Dallas Marriott City Center entrance inside Plaza of the Americas. The space provides more square footage, more machines, and greater capacity, with a full glass storefront, dedicated back-of-house storage and operations, and multiple cabinet positions.

Plaza of the Americas is a Class A mixed-use complex in the Arts District of Downtown Dallas with a built-in hotel, office, arts, transit, and pedestrian audience. Two connected downtown hotels provide roughly 2,250 rooms combined; two 25-story Class A office towers provide approximately 1.1 million sq. ft.; and the DART Pearl/Arts District Station is immediately adjacent to POTA.

The POTA flagship is designed to demonstrate how one compact footprint can support multiple food concepts, dayparts, and product categories.

Inside the Café — Five Curated Zones

● The Café — Coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. Premium beverages, 24/7.

● Duni Goodies — La Duni's iconic pastries, desserts, and baked goods — the award-winning flavors that built a Dallas institution, now available around the clock.

● As Seen on Screens — A rotating, curated selection of food and beverage trends from across social media, refreshed as trends evolve. BonBon Swedish Candy is an early example of a social-media-driven product stocked at POTA.

● Bot Treats — Robotic specialty machines serving La Duni ice cream and freshly made cotton candy.

● The Chef's Corner — Chef-prepared meals and signature dishes from Venduni's Culinary Dream Team — no reservation or delivery required, available 24/7.

Business Model & Labor-Light Operations

Venduni storefronts generate revenue primarily from food, beverage, and product sales across multiple curated zones: chef-prepared food, La Duni baked goods, premium beverages, and curated packaged items identified through social-media trends, sold through smart cabinets with frictionless checkout, 24 hours a day.

Venduni locations are built around a labor-light model utilizing centralized culinary and operational support, automated checkout, and intelligent inventory signals rather than full-service staffing. On-site labor focuses on restocking, cleaning, servicing, sampling, sales, and customer support rather than food preparation and cashiering.

Participating culinary partners prepare, cook, and package approved items. Venduni coordinates collection and distribution to its locations, supporting freshness, consistency, and quality control. The product mix can be tailored by location using sales data and customer feedback.

Meet the Culinary Dream Team

Venduni collaborates with award-winning and established chefs, restaurants, and gourmet producers in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. More than 25 chef partners have signed Collaboration Agreements to join the Dream Team since March 2025. Led by founding chefs Taco and Duni Borga of La Duni — an established Dallas brand with 75+ awards and recognitions and 25 years of customer loyalty — the network includes David Holben, Pascal Cayet, Fernando Barrera, Tom Fleming, Richard Chamberlain, Abraham Salum, and other leading DFW chefs and restaurateurs.

Affiliated Media & Audience Network

Venduni benefits from awareness, product discovery, and customer acquisition through affiliated, sister-brand, and partner relationships, including Dish & Dining's radio and podcast audience through KRLD 1080 AM in DFW, the Audacy app, and major podcast platforms; Eat More Chocolate's social media channels; La Duni's approximately 10,000-person local email list and social following; and the audiences and reach of participating chef partners and guests, restaurants, and product manufacturers.

Note: These platforms, brands, lists, accounts, and partner audiences are not owned or controlled by Venduni. Venduni's access to them depends on its continued relationships with affiliates, sister brands, and partners.

Market Opportunity

While Venduni is not a traditional vending concept, the vending and unattended-retail market provides one useful benchmark for the broader shift toward automated, self-service commerce. The global vending machine market is projected to grow from approximately $20.1 billion in 2023 to $41.4 billion by 2033. (Source: Market.us, 2024.) Within that broad market, Venduni targets a specific niche: premium, chef-driven food in high-traffic, captive-audience locations.

Expansion Strategy

Venduni storefronts are designed for high-traffic, captive-audience environments, including hotels and resorts, office buildings and corporate campuses, residential complexes, airports and transit hubs, hospitals and retirement communities, entertainment and sports venues, and retail centers. Venduni is designed to refine and replicate its model using insights from its test locations, strategic partnerships, standardized operating processes, and location-level sales data. Each distribution point may require a tailored build-out and equipment mix; the modular format is intended to limit fixed location investment and allow equipment to be redeployed if a site underperforms, reducing disruption and sunk costs.

POTA is operated directly by Venduni. As Venduni expands, locations are expected to be run by independent Operating Partners — rather than franchisees, licensees, or corporate staff — who are responsible for day-to-day upkeep of the location and compensated through an agreed share of location profits. Venduni retains ownership and control of the location agreement and equipment, consistent with the redeployment approach described above.

Management Team

Taco Borga — Co-CEO & Co-Founder. Executive chef and entrepreneur with decades of restaurant and hospitality experience. Founder of La Duni, he previously built ZuZu Handmade Mexican Food into a successful multi-location concept that was acquired by a large restaurant operator. Career highlights include pioneering the use of computerized restaurant POS systems in the early 1980s and recognition by CNN for operating one of the first restaurants in Texas to utilize robots.

Duni Borga — Director & Co-Founder. Executive Pastry Chef and co-founder of La Duni Baking Studio. Duni was the sole pastry chef featured at the 2004 James Beard Awards dinner and, in 2008, was nominated for a James Beard Award for Best Pastry Chef, Southwest. Duni and La Duni have received recognition from publications and organizations including Gourmet, Texas Monthly, Esquire, D Magazine, and the James Beard Foundation.

Joe Harberg — Co-CEO & Co-Founder. Entrepreneur and business executive with four decades of experience growing and expanding retail, hospitality, entertainment, real estate, and media ventures across the United States. Joe has served as an investor, operator, board member, real estate advisor, and consultant, including work with The Sharper Image, Restoration Hardware, House of Blues, Warner Bros., Sunglass Hut, Chico's, and Apple Computer.

Why Invest Now

Venduni is raising to accelerate a business that is already in motion.

● Open and operating — The POTA flagship is live in the Dallas Arts District, adjacent to roughly 2,250 hotel rooms, 1.1 million sq. ft. of Class A office space, and DART light rail.

● Award-winning chef network — A signed roster of DFW chefs and restaurants, led by La Duni. Chef-developed recipes create real differentiation.

● A 24/7, labor-light model — Venduni operates when many competitors are closed. That's a structural advantage, not a feature.

● An established affiliate and relationship network — Venduni has access to media, sister-brand, and chef-partner audiences that many startups spend years building, although it does not own or control those assets.

● Experienced founders — A team with decades of experience building, operating, and expanding hospitality, food, retail, and related ventures.

What's Next

Venduni is building a new category of Smart Hospitality: chef-driven food, curated discovery, and premium beverages delivered through labor-light storefronts that can serve customers around the clock.

The proof-of-concept stage has informed the model. The POTA flagship is now open. The next phase is to validate repeatable unit economics, deepen the product and chef network, and expand carefully into additional high-traffic locations.