Ice Age Meals Shark Tank Update

“Culinary Ninja” Nick Massie hopes to cook up a deal for Ice Age Meals, his line of healthy frozen meals, in Shark Tank episode 802. Nick’s been cooking for 20 years and prepares all his meals as if he were cooking for his family. He and his team whip up tasty, healthy meals with grass-fed and organic meat and organic veggies in small batches, then they freeze and ship them.

All Ice Age Meals are microwavable. Massie calls them”convenient, delicious, athlete-friendly food.” Massie is a fitness enthusiast who is also a high-end chef. He even did a stint as Lance Armstrong’s personal chef. Each meal is imagined and prepared by Massie, then they amp up the batch size and test it for “freezability.” If the recipe still tastes good after freezing, they produce it. He claims frozen food reduces waste and tastes just as good as freshly prepared food.

The business operates out of a Reno, NV strip mall. Nick started in January, 2016 and sells around 5000 meals a week. A recently acquired freezer should allow him to ramp up to 5000 meals a day. Items like Butternut Squash Lasagna, Thai Meatball Curry, and Grass-fed Tri-Tip with Yams sell for $10.99 per meal with 12 meal sampler packs running $129. Eventually, Massie wants to produce 100,000 meals per day.

Will a Shark take a bite out of this frozen food business?

Ice Age Meals Tank Recap

Nick enters seeking $1 million for 10% of his business. Then he launched into a poetic description of what he does. After the pitch he gives out samples of his butternut squash lasagna and the Sharks like it. Then, the questions come. The Sharks want to know sales numbers because of the valuation. When he tells them he did $1.5 million last year, they are impressed. They like the margins, too: each meal costs $3 and sells for $10.

Next he tells them about his background. When asked about the $10 million valuation, he tells the Sharks to believe in him. That never goes well in the Tank. Kevin is the first to go out – he does so with a poem, mocking Nick’s pitch. Mark goes out next. Robert went out with this little rhyme: “I love the story, love the name. But I hate the value, it’s insane, I’m out.” Daymond was next. Lori, the last Shark still in went out while cautioning Nick on his over valuation.

The Shark Tank Blog constantly provides updates and follow-ups about entrepreneurs who have appeared on the Shark Tank TV show. The night the original episode aired, the company did over $100,000 in sales in three hours. They did over $1 million in a month!

Nick upgraded his kitchen to handle the volume, but the company ran into trouble. This was posted on their website in October, 2022:

Two things happened on Tuesday:
We informed our staff that we will be closing our kitchen on November 11, 2022.
We filed our 2021 business taxes with a loss of $494,154.00. Yikes!
After 8 years of providing high-quality frozen meals delivered to your door, we are on the cusp of closing our doors. But, with your help, there’s hope! In golf, they have the “Bounce Back” statistic. It shows a player’s ability to bounce back to good performance after a bad hole. If they score over par on one hole, can they score under par on the next to make up for it?

We knew 2021 was a rough year. While there was a higher demand for direct-to-consumer goods, Ice Age Meals faced a multitude of issues. We worked through them, but we didn’t come out unscathed. We’ve battled back this year, but shot par when we needed birdie.

Resurrecting the Business

After that posting, Nick reached out to his customers and asked them to help the business by ordering more food. People responded and he managed to save the business! In early 2023, they moved everything to one facility. Previously, they had a production kitchen and then shipped the meals 20 miles to their freezer facility. Now, he has an “all in one” location.

In January 2023, he launched Ice Age Culinary, a 21 recipe cooking course “that will change your life.” He’s since added paleo jerky and spice blends to his reperatoire. As of July, 2024, this company is still open and doing $3 – $4 million a year in revenue – twice what he was doing before Shark Tank.

***Editor’s Note: I’ve ordered these meals seveal times over the years and I enjoy them.***