“Food chemistry”: High-stakes experiential entrepreneurship education in a pop-up restaurant project

In response to ongoing philosophical and pedagogical debates in university-based entrepreneurship education (EE) research, this study offers a cross-disciplinary perspective of how hospitality management students experience a high-stakes, experiential entrepreneurship project. We present vignettes of dialogues, experiences, and interactions among “student-manager” members of a small group engaged in developing and implementing a real-world, fine dining pop-up restaurant. By triangulating our analysis of classroom observation data, social network maps, and student artifacts, we chronicle four vignettes of how students experience learning during ideation, design, launch, and evaluation modules. Theory–practice gaps, coping humor in load–overload states, and complex affective–cognitive interactions emerge as salient elements of high-stakes experiential EE. We discuss implications for learners and educators and put forward recommendations to inform and improve the design of cross-disciplinary models of experiential EE.