We recently connected with Dinesh Tadepalli and have shared our conversation below.
Dinesh, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
Back in 2018, our family visited a local and famous ice cream shop. After enjoying the ice cream for few minutes, I took our cups and spoons to throw them in the bin. A question struck like a lighting – I was completely aware of the plastic pollution being the second biggest threat to humanity. But why didn’t I think twice before using a plastic spoon just for a few minutes of convenience while it will stay in the planet almost forever??
My biggest worry was my my knowledge of plastic pollution didn’t convert or apply during my daily actions. I was just “normally” using plastic cutlery while eating out or during take outs. This in-action startled me and made me ponder on how can we change our biased daily habits without leaving a tough footprint on the planet.
What I learnt later, scared me even more. Humans are already consume a credit card sized micro plastic every week – in the water/food we drink/eat and in the air we breathe. And microplastics were even found in the placentas of unborn babies!! As a young dad, I was worried about how bad the future will be for our kids.
Dinesh, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
About me: I was born and raised in India and came to do my Masters in Science at USC back in 2007. I always had passion for electronics, physics combined with love towards nature and ancient mythology. Few things, my parents and grand parents thought me while growing up made a huge impact on me. First, always leave 10-20% of your earnings for the greater good, help people in need and deposit good karma for the greater good. This helped me reach my life goal of helping 10,000 people before I turned 35. Second, always stay humble and grounded, helps to keep me at peace. Learnt how to only buy what we need and live in sync to nature. Finally, my love towards hiking the great outdoors, made me very careful on what I buy, use and then dispose. I still have only 2 formal suits since 15 years, helps me keep in shape as well. As throwing away many clothes is the leading cause of microplastics p0llution.
Most of the my life experiences helped me and my startup. For example, I started thinking in Rupees instead of dollars for all my expenses which made the expenses look very expensive (almost 80x). This helped me find whacky marketing practices thus giving me the best ROI. My positivity and being happy no matter what life throws at you, helped me win 30 plus million views on YouTube for my successful shark tank pitch. And my love to nature, made sure all our products of incredible eats from the beginning are carbon and plastic negative certified.
About my business: incredible eats innovated edible cutlery to replace the use and need of single use plastic utensils. We aim to reduce 100 Million single use plastic by 2025 – 100 Million, being daily average plastic disposal just in the US.
Our edible spoons, sporks and straws are vegan, made with non-gmo grains and come in both sweet and savory flavors. They can stay firm for up to 20 minutes in hot foods and more than 60 minutes in cold foods.
Did you EAT your SPOON or STRAW today?
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When we introduced the product in 2019, we were hyper focused on getting traction at food service market segment. We had great traction with a famous ice cream with one successful trial. But due to Covid in early 2020, all our foodservice efforts came to a big halt! We used the down time to gather feedback, further improve the product and pivot to retail and e-commerce till early 2023. Now, we are focusing back in foodservice and with consistent follow ups from the last 3 years, still have great connections and continued partnerships.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
After we realized we had to find the best alternative to single use plastics, where edible cutlery can work because it’s fun, innovate and unique. People would buy this similar to a cone instead of a cup, with or without inclination towards sustainability but finally reducing single use plastics!
In 2019, to introduce the product in the market, I went to the first trade show with just a few samples and paper printouts. No fancy booths or any tradeshow spend! We got our first order of 150,000 spoons from a caterer in Canada. This is our first sale of any edible cutlery since we started.
I asked for 5 months to fulfill the order, went back home and aske my wife to sell the home! We used the sale proceeds of our home along with our lifelong savings, 401k and invested all we had in quickly setting up a manufacturing unit with our patent pending machinery. We fulfilled the order in 5 months, sealing the deal and the future of edible cutlery.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://incredibleeats.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/ecoincredible
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ecoincredible
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/incredible-eats
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ecoincredible
Image Credits
Max Milla, Nathaniel Nyugen