Cheers To Six Years!!!

Today completes the first six months of 2021 and the first six years of Ice Age Meals!!!

It seems like June 30th, 2015 was only a few days ago. The fire department signed off on our final checklist item and we received our certificate of occupancy. What this really amounted to was our ability to fire up the walk-ins, the ovens and the stock pot burners and get cooking! We had three weeks to deliver 21,000 meals to The 2015 CrossFit Games at The Home Depot Center in Carson, California. 

It was three weeks of long days with little sleep. We had Paleo Nick Knutzen fly in from Minneapolis and Chef Jay Phelan join us from Jacksonville. On the final day, we made a push to make 6,000 of our Chipper Ice Cream Sandwiches, we loaded them into the reefer truck and we hit the road!

While it was an accomplishment to be headed south, the real work had only begun. We battled for seven days, arriving to a dirt parking lot that had turned to mud due to a rare SoCal rain storm. Our smoker started on fire and turned 1,000 half-pound grass fed burgers into “Fire Burgers”. They were dark on the outside and rare in the middle! 

The experience proved once more that disproportionate amounts of effort are necessary to give birth to anything. Be it a baby, a garden of vegetables, a skyscraper or a business, the amount of energy it takes to start them is enormous. We put in the work and the Ice Age Meals kitchen was born.

Here we are six years later embarking on a building project that will be completed early next year. I wish I could say that things have been easy and that we’ve had the wind at our back since The Games Of ‘15, but that’s not the case. 

Success takes massive amounts of hard work. It takes waking up day after day and leaving things better than you found them. It means facing hardship with a stalwart smile and an undefeatable desire to seek solutions. Albert Einstein said it best,

“Beware of negative people, they have a problem for every solution.”

It’s no wonder that negative people are seldom successful. It’s nearly impossible to accomplish great things with a poor attitude.

As we celebrate six years, I encourage you to dream big, think positive and shoot for the stars. When things get tough, remember that “the hardest thing to get is going” and always keep your nose to the grindstone. While the challenges will never cease, I guarantee you will create some amazing memories in the process. True success is a journey, not a destination.

Thank you for joining the journey with me. I can’t even dream of where we’ll be six years from now...

Each minute of your life is a treasure, so treasure each minute. And… “Keep It Paleo!”

Your Pal,

Paleo Nick

PS: Meet my new dog, Wally!