The Frozen Farmer
The Frozen Farmer is a company from Bridgeville, DE, that sells a line of ice creams made from damaged or misshapen fruits in order to minimise the amount of food waste from her farm while maximising the amount of fresh fruit each carton contains.
The founder and entrepreneur behind The Frozen Farmer had won the crown for the Ms Delaware pageant and went to college before she married her husband who was a third generation farmer. She saw the food waste that happened due to food not meeting the cosmetic standard and vowed to figure out a way to reduce that.
The way she figured out was a line of ice creams, sorbets, and "nice creams" that all make use of fruits that would otherwise be cosmetically rejected. She turns wasted fruits into "tasty profits."
The sorbets are a very reasonable 200 calories.
Currently The Frozen Farmer products are sold in seventy grocery stores, but, honestly, most of them are Giant Foods. And that is because the family had been partnered with the store for produce previously.
A pint of The Frozen Farmer costs $1.75 to manufacture, wholesales for $3.30, and retails for between $4.49 and $5.99. In the previous year, the business saw $310,000 in sales. 15% of those sales are in grocery markets representing $46,000 in sales. The rest of the sales are wholesale or through the family farm.
The entrepreneurs are in the tank because the family had been worried about losing the farm while growing up and wants a shark to help guide them toward a copacker who can remove some of the risk.
Making A Deal
Barbara says that she believes the entrepreneur's enthusiasm but has other concerns and is out.
Mark says that ice cream is a super competitive space where they need to work with retailers in order to gain top shelf position. But he also says that, right now, they have "home court" advantage since they're mostly in local stores.
Before he can make the deal everyone is expecting, Daymond says that he "sees issues with the business" and says that a friend made him promise never to get involved in refrigerated goods. He says he believes the entrepreneur will do well herself but is out.
Mr. Wonderful says that he loves the concept of what to do with "strange" fruit but thinks that the structure of the deal is hard to invest in. He also says that "every" business has an ice cream and that he's not sure that's a segment he wants to be in.
Lori states that she's not exactly a big ice cream person but that she thinks The Frozen Farmer product is among the best she's had. With the proviso that the packaging should be changed to represent the "misfit fruit" idea, she offers $125,000 for 30% equity in the business with the promise that she will help re-do the packaging. The deal is contingent, though, on landing a major "natural" chain.
The entrepreneur says that she has already been in talks to this end and, because of it, is willing to jump in with Lori. This makes sense given that Lori's 30% ask is only a third over what was originally offered and Lori's bite being only $208,333 off the original value.