More Than a Meal: How a TU Father–Son Team Is Redefining School Lunches

It’s said necessity is the mother of invention.

Ahmed Satti might add a quirk of fate and a heavy dose of optimism help too. When his daughter’s school’s lunch provider abruptly quit, Satti and his son Tamsir, a TU junior, saw an opportunity and took it.

What resulted was Meal Mode, a school meal provider focusing on scratch-made, nutritious options for Maryland students.

The venture has been growing steadily since its founding in 2023 and received a boost when the father–son partnership won TU’s College Cup this past spring, taking home $10,000 and a place in the Student Accelerator. The Towson University Student Accelerator is an intensive eight-week, cohort-based fellowship where ventures collaborate with each other and community business owners to accelerate their ventures.

When I start talking about school lunches, people are so passionate...Whether it's, ‘I never have time to make food for my kids’ or people talking about the trauma they've had from school lunches, it was a very relatable issue and business.

Ahmed Satti

“We already had a model that was working. It was impressive [for the judges] to see we had been in business for a year and were already making revenues of over $100,000,” Ahmed says. “But I think more than anything is that the whole school lunch concept rings a bell with so many people. When I start talking about school lunches, people are so passionate.

“Whether it's, ‘I never have time to make food for my kids’ or people talking about the trauma they've had from school lunches, it was a very relatable issue and business.”

About the Business Owners

Ahmed Satti ’25

Geography and environmental planning M.S.

I am from an entrepreneurial background. Meal Mode is probably the fifth business I've started in three different countries, including Ghana, where I grew up.

When I was looking for a master’s program, Towson University spoke to me because I knew I wanted to be in the geography and environmental planning/urban planning space. I liked their program a lot—the mix of practical and theory.

What I also like is that your level of effort is commensurate with the benefits you get: I was working hard, and I got graduate assistantships and scholarships. A lot of it was through the support of my professors, especially Jeremy Tasch, who's the head of the graduate program.

When I came to Towson, I was done with business. I wanted stability. But we had this opportunity [to start Meal Mode], and everything came together. I'm a logistics person. It was nice having my son involved, since he is into computer science.

[Tamsir has]  learned a lot and gotten a certain level of maturity and confidence from doing this program. He's also really motivated now. Anything you say, he can do. He's like, ‘Oh, I can find a solution for that.

Ahmed Satti

My son saw the College Cup ads all over campus. At the time, I was graduating, and I had so much coursework. I was like, "Why don't you take this on and let's see how far we get?" He would come occasionally and say, "Hey, how does this look?” Next thing I knew, he was like, "Hey, we're finalists." I thought, "Now I have to start taking this a little bit more seriously."

I was even more impressed because a month after the competition, he partnered with another master's student for the data analytics competition and won first place for that too. It was really nice having those back-to-back wins in a period of a month.

I'm so amazed about how much I've learned in the Student Accelerator. It’s allowed me to be in touch with the community through networking events with companies’ CEOs, CFOs and around other entrepreneurs. It's nice to see you're not alone and there's ways to get help.

I'm used to entrepreneurship where any opportunity that comes your way you jump on it. There're so many distractions, but the accelerator has taught me, "Focus on your core business, your mission and your vision, and you'll go farther than trying to spread yourself thin.”

Tamsir Toure ’27

Computer Science B.S.

I failed to be grateful for the benefits I was given having entrepreneurs as parents when I was younger. Growing older, I’ve learned you can create your reality. You don't have to tick boxes off a checklist. You can define the checklist. That's been powerful. And I'm eternally grateful for that lesson.

Entrepreneurship is really all I've ever known. Making the best out of your situation and making something work given the resources you have is something that is our family to our core.

I was at the University of Amsterdam for about a year and a half studying economics. But Amsterdam was going through a bad housing crisis, and my family was moving to the States. It made sense to move too.

Looking at Towson, I think you get insanely high value for your investment. A lot of the tutorials and the teachers are very high quality. Any path that you desire, you can chart it. It's up to you.

Being at Towson with my dad was interesting for sure. I would be in classes or club meetings and find out people knew my dad because they had taken a class with him. We didn't bump into each other too often, but it was nice when we did.

What I appreciate about my dad as a business partner is that he is extremely reliable and responsible and responsive—truly a rock that you can depend on. And it makes it easier to operate when you have someone in your corner that you can really trust to be there with 100% certainty.

Tamsir Toure

I saw the advertisements for the College Cup and the $10,000 [prize] looked pretty nice. I also felt that doing something like this would give us exposure to the community and access to resources to help build us into a more cohesive unit.

The really nice thing about being involved in Meal Mode with my family is we collaborate. It's allowed us to build a different relationship, which is cool. We all have our areas of expertise and strength. When it comes to my areas, I feel that I'm treated with respect and listened to.