All food tells a story—of biology, trade, labor, capital, culture.

For Keya Wingfield, founder and CEO of Keya’s Snacks, food is a personal history—a family tree. Her recipes are a map of relationships, spanning across her career as a pastry chef, recipe developer, entrepreneur and winner of the seventh season of Food Network’s “Spring Baking Championship.”

Now, she says she’s primarily focused on leading a company that aims to inject the typical American snack aisle with Indian flavors. And with being a mother to her daughter, Uma. But before Keya’s Snacks and food competition fame and the founding of her own custom desserts company, Wingfield’s story began in Mumbai (previously known as Bombay), India.

“Bombay is exactly like New York, but on steroids,” Wingfield says. Amidst the city’s vibrancy, she grew up watching her parents actively engage with their community and witnessed her mother, Daksha, use food to connect with those around her.

“My mother was a fantastic cook,” she offers. “She knew how to make food taste phenomenal, so people were always coming to our house to eat. We had family over, friends over—random strangers she met that she’d invite over for dinner. [My parents] always had doors, hearts, arms open to people.”

It would be some time before Wingfield made food her career. Still living in Mumbai, she began working a job at a call center for Circuit City—a choice that, through a series of rom-com-worthy twists, would lead to both to her arrival in Richmond and her marriage, now going on 19 years. The meet cute with her future husband, Dave, was virtual; he worked at the call center’s US headquarters, and they would see each other during conference calls. Over time, they started chatting through the company’s instant messaging system, until Wingfield got fired for “fraternizing.” The next day, Dave called her.

“He goes, ‘Did I get you fired from your job?’,” Wingfield says. “I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ He’s like, ‘Do I have to marry you now?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah!’”

In reality, Wingfield first flew from Mumbai to Richmond to meet her online suitor in person on a K-1 visa, also known as the visa used in the reality TV show, “90 Day Fiancé” (as if there wasn’t enough TV material in their story already). By the end of the 90 days, they decided to get married.

She went on to work a number of odd jobs while acclimating to the culture of the United States, a country she never previously visited. Beyond the much slower pace compared to the nonstop energy of Mumbai, Richmond in 2005 was also largely devoid of the ingredients and food culture Wingfield was accustomed to.

“In India, food means family and comfort and home to us, and we make everything from scratch,” she explains. “I kind of lost that connection when I moved here, and I had to find my way back to it.”

This was the turning point. With newfound access to an oven (a practically nonexistent appliance in Mumbai) Wingfield began baking. Her husband had been using the oven in their house for storage; until she specifically asked what it was, she assumed it was just another cabinet. As her passion grew, she decided to pursue a professional career in pastry, graduating from culinary school in 2010 and opening the dessert studio that would become known as Keya & Co Baking that same year.

She started off making traditional American favorites, focusing on smaller, portion-controlled desserts. But in 2020, the pandemic changed her business model. She began offering Indian meals to-go, which also led to her creating desserts featuring traditional Indian ingredients. She says this was the first time people realized she was Indian. That same year, the Food Network reached out and invited her to compete in the “Spring Baking Championship.”

The competition was challenging, not only because of the intense filming hours and required quarantining, but also because she was four months pregnant with her second child—a son, Daksh, whose name is an homage to Wingfield’s mother. Given the nature of television, the public announcement of her win would come months later. What should have been a celebratory moment was eclipsed by overwhelming tragedy: Daksh was born with a rare respiratory illness, and would pass away 55 days after birth.

Wingfield has remained open about her experience publicly, and believes telling her story was both inevitable and important for other mothers to hear, particularly in a cultural landscape where the more vulnerable aspects of motherhood are often left unspoken.

“When you go through something of that stature, there’s no way of keeping it to yourself,” she says. “It’s like trying to hold the ocean in your palms; you can’t hold it. I have changed in ways I can’t describe since losing him…[but] I had a daughter to take care of. It would not have been fair to her had I allowed my grief to consume me.”

As she processed her grief, she began to create recipes designed to comfort those going through difficult times, like “bad news brownies” and a “coping cake.” She has plans to create a cookbook that collects these recipes in one place. In the future, she wants to be able to give the book to her daughter, who she says saved her life.

Over time, Wingfield has increasingly integrated her family and culture into her work. In 2024, she launched her consumer packaged goods (CPG) company, naming it Daksh Foods in honor of her son. Under this umbrella, she introduced the brand Keya’s Snacks and debuted its flagship product: the Bombay Spice chip.

The brand name’s four-pronged letters were inspired by the four arms of Annapurna, the Hindu goddess of food. The pattern on the back seam of the bag is pulled directly from the sari worn by Wingfield’s mother, who passed away in 2012; the female icon on the front of the bag wears a bindi, something Wingfield’s mother wore daily. A poem surrounding the icon, written by her husband, encapsulates the brand’s spirit: the wish to nourish every human.

Seasoned with a custom masala blend made from single-origin spices, the chip—originally a prototype from Wingfield’s to-go meal business—offers a unique taste for those seeking something new, or familiar. It also uses a recognizable favorite to introduce newcomers to the flavors of Indian cuisine.

“The reason the chip exists is because of my white husband,” Wingfield jokes. “He did not like Indian food.” After creating a spice mix to season her own food, “One day I had the idea [to put] this blend on his snack and see what happened, and he loved it. That was such an ‘aha’ moment for me; realizing that his palate represents the American landscape. This is how I can leverage my heritage on a beloved snack.”

Today, Keya’s Snacks has expanded to two flavors—Bombay Spice and Black Salt— with more products in the works. The brand is available in 50 stores and online. In addition to Keya’s Snacks, Wingfield continues to grow the various arms of her business portfolio, from her baking studio to her work as a content creator. Unifying it all is a desire to relate to others by offering parts of herself.

“This is my way of uniting us in flavor and uniting us in food—which, we already are, we just don’t know it.”