Incredible Eats Before Shark Tank
Plastic products are a big, damaging issue that the environment is facing daily. Every year, one type of plastic product is frequently found lying around on the ground or piling up in landfills. Those products are plastic utensils. Many households and even restaurants often use plastic utensils due to the convenience; it’s much quicker to eat and toss the cutlery into a trash can rather than washing silverware each time. However, those utensils are not always properly disposed of, causing harm to our environment. With the goal of reducing the use of plastic utensils, a few companies have begun to develop environmentally friendly alternatives. While some companies have created alternatives such as biodegradable utensils, a company in California has taken a new approach to solving this problem. That company is Incredible Eats.
Incredible Eats is a company that creates edible utensils that can be eaten after being used to finish a meal. This company makes its edible utensils without any source of dairy; they’re also completely vegan-friendly. The only ingredients used in the making of these utensils are chickpeas, wheat, corn, brown rice, and oats. Due to this, these products can be stored in the pantry for up to six months. Incredible Eats cutlery can be used while eating any food, both hot and cold. The utensil will not begin to lose its form until after about half an hour. Additionally, Incredible Eats’ utensils come in a variety of flavors, such as black pepper, oregano, chili, chocolate, vanilla, and more. These products are being sold on the Incredible Eats website, as well as on Amazon, for $9 to up to $25, depending on the number of spoons or sporks in the package. 
Incredible Eats was founded by Dinesh Tadepalli, an entrepreneur from India who has a passion for helping to reduce the amount of plastic causing harm to the planet. Before he started Incredible Eats, Dinesh graduated from Anna University with a bachelor’s degree in engineering, electronics, and communications. He also attended the University of Southern California, where he graduated in 2008 with a master of science degree in electrical engineering. In April 2009, Dinesh got his first job at VeriEZ Solutions, Inc. as a technical staff trainee. During this time, he also started working as a design engineer for SanDisk. When that position ended, the founder moved on to a job with Marvell Semiconductor before returning to SanDisk to be their staff design engineer. Once more, Dinesh left SanDisk in June of 2015 and became the ASIC design and implementation engineer for Altera for two years.
In December 2018, Dinesh invested in a business called Kulfy, which is a GIF company. According to his LinkedIn, the founder is still a present investor in this company. Though he is also currently a design manager for Intel Corporation, Dinesh officially started Incredible Eats in February 2019, where he is the co-founder and the chief spoon seller of his edible utensils. Ultimately, he got the idea for this environment-friendly company when he was out and about getting ice cream with his daughter. While they were there, he realized that the business was giving out plastic spoons to each customer, which led Dinesh to think about how much plastic was being disposed of just from this business alone. This is what led him to want to create a more appropriate solution. Unfortunately, he had to sell his own home in order to fund Incredible Eats. Due to this, Dinesh has decided to apply to appear on Shark Tank, hoping that a shark will want to invest and help his business expand. 
Incredible Eats on Shark Tank
During season 13, episode 3, Dinesh Tadepalli entered the Shark Tank hoping to gain an investment of $500,000 in return for a 7% stake in his environmentally friendly utensil business, Incredible Eats. Given the amount the founder is asking for, it’s assumed that this business was valued at $7.1 million at the time of filming. He begins with a brief introduction of himself before going on to tell the sharks what Incredible Eats is all about. The sharks have a chance to taste the edible utensils, which they all appear to like. Lori Greiner even makes comments about how she could see herself purchasing these products sometime.
Before sharing his sales thus far, Dinesh mentions that the utensils can be manufactured for just $0.10, and he sells them in multi-packs for between $9 and $25, depending on the size of the package being purchased. That said, Dinesh did $170,000 in sales in 2019; however, that’s his only report of lifetime sales thus far. This is because Incredible Eats got shut down for some time when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. This is when Dinesh started looking into starting to do only direct-to-customer sales. At the time of filming, Dinesh had not yet spent any money on marketing his products.
Kevin O’Leary begins questioning the estimated valuation of Incredible Eats, as well as expressing his concern over how much it would take to help people understand that they could eat the utensils. Meanwhile, Barbara Corcoran backs out first. She praises Dinesh for his determination to help the environment; however, she doesn’t think it will be easy to get restaurants to want to sell his edible utensils. Guest shark, Daniel Lubetzky, quickly disagrees with Barbara’s concerns before sharing that he is more concerned about the valuation. He doesn’t believe that Incredible Eats has hit that valuation of $7.1 million yet; hence, he isn’t willing to invest. Kevin once more expresses his concern with the valuation by agreeing with Daniel’s statement. Nonetheless, he chooses to offer the founder $500,000 in return for a 35% stake in the business.
Mark Cuban quickly interrupts to offer Dinesh $500,000 in return for a 20% stake. He states that the founder should be thinking bigger in terms of where to retail his products—specifically, Mark believes that they can get them into stores, ice cream parlors, and restaurants. This leads Lori to speak up, saying that she thinks Mark is thinking too small. She thinks Incredible Eats can be a game changer on the market, and that’s something she can help the founder achieve, which is why she offers him $500,000 in return for a 15% stake. All of these fantastic offers eventually prompted Daniel to respond with an offer of $500,000 in exchange for a 25% stake in Incredible Eats.
By this time, Dinesh has been offered four great deals; however, he will have to decide which one is worth it for Incredible Eats. Given that, he counters with all the sharks, asking them to adjust their stakes to 12%. Unfortunately, they all declined. This counter led Mark to think that his offer wasn’t being valued enough, so he backs out. The founder takes the loss of Mark’s offer as a sign to quickly decide on an investment to take. Ultimately, he ends up accepting Lori Greiner’s offer of $500,000 in return for a 15% stake in Incredible Eats.
Incredible Eats Now in 2024 – The After Shark Tank Update
There’s no doubt that Dinesh Tadepalli’s appearance at the Shark Tank was an incredible success. Of the four offers the founder received, he accepted a deal with Lori Greiner. As of February [this year], there is no evidence of this deal closing yet. Since getting this deal with Lori, Incredible Eats has seen a spike in new orders, resulting in a busier business. This had led Dinesh to hire employees to help with the workload. Now, the company has about 50 employees working at the Milpitas, California, location. 
In 2021, Dinesh received an investment of $200,000 from a company known as Big Idea Ventures. In 2022, the company was recognized by the Dippin’ Dots ice cream company, with which Dinesh ended up partnering to retail Incredible Eats further. Aside from that, the edible utensils are still available on Amazon and the company website. So far, the company has replaced more than 5 million plastic utensils with their edible utensils, and they’ve reached an annual revenue of $1 million.
