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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Planeteer

Startup Showcase Alumni Incredible Eats Lands Investment on Shark Tank

Dinesh Tadepalli has landed his shark.

Tadepalli, the CEO of Incredible Eats, appeared on Shark Tank last night to pitch his company and ended up getting four offers from various sharks before walking away with an offer from Lori Greiner for 15% of the company. Watch:

Incredible Eats Has 4 Delicious Offers - Shark Tank

Regular Shark Tank watchers will know four offers are a lot, but it’s not all that surprising since Incredible Eats checks many shark boxes: an easy-to-understand product, proven success, and mission-driven.

That easy to understand product is edible cutlery that replaces disposable plastic spoons and forks. IncredibleEats’ edible spoons and sporks come in both sweet and savory versions – chocolate and vanilla for desserts, oregano chili and black pepper for soups and such – and in both large and small versions.

Here at The Spoon, we’re always excited to see food tech innovators on Shark Tank, but doubly so when they are alumni of our own startup pitch contest. Tadepalli pitched his idea for edible cutlery at the Smart Kitchen Summit in 2019, winning the Future Food portion of the pitch session. It was still early days for the company called Planeteer at the time, but the judges loved the idea of cutting down on plastic waste with an edible spoon or fork.

Tadepalli plans to use the money to hire more employees and ramp up production. He’ll need it. With what amounts to millions of dollars worth of free advertising in the form of a Shark Tank appearance and a consumer product expert like Greiner in his corner, there’s no doubt he’ll start selling lots of spoons and sporks through multiple channels very soon. And all that’s before they even get to food service – restaurants and cafeterias – which is likely be an even bigger opportunity than the consumer market.

If you’d like to watch Tadepalli’s award winning pitch at Smart Kitchen Summit 2019, click play below.

SKS 2019: Future Food pitches

If you want to predict who could be the next Incredible Eats, see our post on this year’s finalists for the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase here.

I Tried Planeteer’s IncrEdible Spoon and Ate the Whole Thing

Plastic spoons are a major contributor to single-use plastic waste, and Planeteer is dedicated to providing one solution to this. Winner of last year’s SKS Future Food Award, Planeteer produces flavored, fully edible and compostable IncrEdible spoons.

Dinesh Tadepalli, one of the co-founders of Planeteer and IncrEdible spoon, sent me a variety box of the spoons to try out. As someone who carries around a titanium camping spoon in my purse or glove compartment to reduce my use of plastic utensils, I was excited to give these spoons a try.

The spoons come in a variety of both sweet and savory flavors, including chocolate, vanilla, black pepper, masala, oregano chili, and plain. The plant-based ingredients of the spoon consist of non-GMO wheat, corn, oats, brown rice, and chickpeas. For being made out of such simple ingredients, the spoons were surprisingly sturdy.

I first tried the vanilla spoon with a bowl of cereal. While eating the cereal, I definitely smelled the vanilla from the spoon. I wanted to test its durability, so I let the spoon soak in the leftover oat milk for 40 minutes. To my surprise, it was definitely softer but still functional. When I bit into the spoon, the flavor was reminiscent of Nilla wafers.

For dinner, I used the oregano chili flavored spoon in my bowl of miso ramen. It seemed like the spoon got softer quicker in the hot broth, but it still held up throughout the time it took for me to finish dinner. This flavor reminded me of a crunchy, vegetable cracker with a little kick from the chili flakes. I have yet to try the remaining flavors, but I look forward to trying the chocolate ones.

After trying the spoons, they seem like a unique and functional alternative to plastic utensils. In addition to Planeteer’s IncrEdible spoon, other companies on the market are producing edible and biodegradable utensils and straws in hopes of reducing plastic waste. TwentyFifty produces biodegradable forks and spoons made from wheat, corn, and soy flour that can break down in approximately 10 days. The AVO Beginning straw is made from an avocado pit bioplastic and takes a little less than a year to break down.

Edible and biodegradable utensils seem like a promising solution to plastic spoons, but unfortunately, these more sustainable options have not yet been able to compete with the cheap price of plastic yet. Plastic spoons purchased in bulk can be as cheap as a few pennies per spoon, while each IncrEdible spoon costs around $0.25 per spoon in bulk.

The IncrEdible spoon recently became available on Amazon, and 30 small spoons or 20 large spoons each cost $14.50. The company will also be partnering with some undisclosed restaurants for a trial run of the IncrEdible spoons. In addition to the spoon, the company is currently in R&D for sporks and straws. I hope to see the IncrEdible spoon as an option in restaurant take-out out food or ice cream; I would be happy to pay a few cents extra to replace my plastic spoon with an IncrEdible spoon.