Class of 2025 graduate Maya Centrella, co-owner of Newark’s newest restaurant, Wrapd.

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Article by Artika Casini Photos courtesy of Maya Centrella November 13, 2026

2025 graduate Maya Centrella parlays marketing and entrepreneurship degrees into restaurant that brings her viral recipes to life

Maya Centrella doesn't mind her nickname.

“Hey, chicken caesar!” strangers call out, a nod to the viral sandwiches that will soon make their brick-and-mortar debut.

Opening later this fall off Main Street, just a stone’s throw from the classes Centrella attended as a marketing major and entrepreneurship minor, Wrapd is the culinary culmination of her education and the Blue Hen networks she built along the way.

She is also opening a frozen yogurt shop, Spoon’d, next door.

Real estate agent by day, viral chef by night, Maya Centrella has built a social media brand around her passions.

“The people I met are because of UD,” said the 2025 graduate, referring to her business partners at the M2O Restaurant Group, which owns such local favorites as M2O Burgers and Bab’s Hot Chicken.

She caught their attention as an undergraduate, when her food reviews for local businesses garnered upwards of a million views. But it was her more recent cooking reels — interspersed between real estate listings — that intrigued them as investors.

(If townhomes and turkey wraps seem an unlikely combination for her Instagram account, consider Centrella’s other Blue Hen connection: her mother, Peggy Centrella, Class of 1992, a longtime real estate agent who encouraged her daughter to join the business after graduation.)

Selling homes by day and cooking wraps by night, Centrella quickly optimized the algorithm in her favor, mixing content with authenticity, originality and click-baity humor.

Her variety of wraps, inspired by everything from Big Macs to Cheez-Its, are as massive as they are mouth watering. But it’s Centrella’s signature slice, in which she cuts the sandwiches unnervingly close to her index finger, that often garners the most comments.

And, as any savvy social media user knows, comments beget views, which beget likes and shares, which remain precious currency in the digital economy. In just months, Centrella’s contacts at the M2O Restaurant Group became investors, launching Wrapd and Spoon’d as the company’s newest brands.

Born into a family of Blue Hens, including her parents and older siblings, Centella credits her entrepreneurship coursework with instilling a sense of creativity and purpose. Pictured from left: Maya, Class of 2025, with her mother, Peggy, Class of 1992; her brother, Nick, Class of 2024; her sister, Jillian, Class of 2022; and her father, Lou, Class of 1991.

It can often resemble a Cinderella story, even for Centrella, who admits, “It feels like just yesterday I was applying to jobs I didn’t want.”

Instead, she finds herself on the cusp of her first business, a success story much like the ones she’d hear in Professor Vince DeFelice’s class. The instructor would often bring alumni to campus to share their journeys and insights.

Soon, Centrella might find herself back in his classroom, speaking to budding entrepreneurs not much younger than herself. It’s a thought that makes her smile.

“I’d tell them, ‘Take the risk,’” she said. “Don’t let your fear of judgement or failure ruin your chance of success.”