It’s almost noon on a recent Wednesday in downtown Boston, and mechanical engineering alum Matt Minichiello ’21 is working briskly on one of the most delicious assembly lines you’ll ever see.

As the lunchtime crowd starts to grow outside the window of Paisani, the Italian food truck that he and fellow UMass Lowell alum Ryan Palmer ’20 started last year, Minichiello races to keep up with orders for Drunken Parm, Caprese Melanzana and Sloppy Paisani sandwiches.