Where Is IncrEdible Eats From Shark Tank Today?
There is an incredible amount of waste associated with American eating habits. Consumers in the United States toss out nearly 120 billion pounds of food on an annual basis. Furthermore, Americans use more than 561 billion single-use plastic utensils every year. It's easy for your lunches and dinners to become exercises in excess.
Fortunately, many entrepreneurs have identified areas of the food market that are prime candidates for innovation and have taken their products to the "Shark Tank" investors. Pulp Pantry, a company that makes flavorful vegan chips out of the solid produce remains generated by juice companies, earned a whopping $500,000 investment on "Shark Tank," while Prime 6 and its revolutionary sawdust charcoal pellets, which is a more efficient, less chemical-laden alternative to traditional grilling charcoal, took home a respectable $200,000.
IncrEdible Eats, a purveyor of strange silverware, is also a champion of sustainability, and the Sharks ate up its remarkable product.
Sporks and spoons inspire a feeding frenzy
You probably use plastic utensils casually — the flimsy fork in your takeout bag fulfills its purpose and it's discarded shortly thereafter. However, your utensils don't just vanish after you toss them in the trash — plastic can sit in a landfill for hundreds of years before it decomposes.
Dinesh Tadepalli, the founder of IncrEdible Eats, created a new way to circumvent the need for single-use plastic. How? Essentially, his company makes edible silverware. The spoons, sporks, and chopsticks are made of mildly-flavored wafers and slowly dissolve with time inside your food. When he pitched his unique utensils on "Shark Tank," Tadepalli asked for $500,000, which would come with a 7% share of the company.
Despite the high initial asking price, the Sharks leaped at the opportunity to invest in Tadepalli's innovative company. First, Kevin O'Leary offered $500,000 for a 35% stake, which Mark Cuban quickly lowered to 20%. Though Daniel Lubertzky also threw his hat in the ring, at 25%, IncrEdible Eats ultimately went with Lori Greiner's offer of $500,000 for a 15% share.
IncrEdible Eats after Shark Tank
Despite the overwhelming enthusiasm that IncrEdible Eats inspired in the titular tank, the company hasn't had a completely smooth business journey since appearing on the show. Only a few months after founder Dinesh Tadepalli's successful "Shark Tank" pitch, the deal between Greiner and IncrEdible Eats fell apart. "They changed the deal terms," Tadepalli said to North Carolina's WSOC-TV.
In a 2022 talk that is available to watch on the Research Triangle Park YouTube channel, Tadepalli talks about a failed deal between IncrEdible Eats and a fast-food company, which he intentionally doesn't name, that would have seen IncrEdible Eats products replacing the chains' annual supply of more than 70 million single-use plastic spoons. However, according to a January press release, IncrEdible Eats did secure a deal with the frozen dessert franchise Dippin' Dots. The intense science that helped create Dippin' Dots earned the treat the moniker "The Ice Cream of the Future," and partnering with a forward-thinking company like IncrEdible Eats can only serve to further that reputation.
Additionally, IncrEdible Eats has expanded its product line to include edible straws. This is undoubtedly a response to the recent push against plastic straws, which companies like IncrEdible Eats' fellow "Shark Tank" alum Final Straw also sought to address.