Winds Of Change At Ice Age Meals
March 31 2022 – Nick Massie
Hello Awesome People,This is Nick, the Chief Culinary Ninja at Ice Age Meals, writing to you with some important news. We will soon embark on the start of our 8th year in business. While the whole adventure has been amazing, the past two years have been especially exciting. And by exciting, I mean scary, challenging and educational. Life is so much that way, isn't it? Anyhow, here is a quick list of the things I'd like to update you with today:New Packaging - We have begun the process of transitioning from Styrofoam to a recyclable insulation for our box liners. All shipments of 12 and 16 packs will feature this new product and we will soon transition our 30 packs as well. We've never been excited about Styrofoam, so this is a positive change for us and we think it will be for you, too!
Pack Size Changes - As of April 1, 2022, we will no longer offer a 56 pack. With increased costs across the board, including UPS shipping, it will be more cost effective to order two 30 packs than it will to order one 56 pack. This will also help us by reducing the amount of inventory that we will need to warehouse. The next change we will make is to transition our 16 pack to a 20 pack, which will give us an offering of 12, 20 or 30 meals. We will update you when we are ready to roll that one out!!!
New Shipping Methods - As mentioned above, costs are increasing in every area. UPS is no exception and we are doing our best to keep our meals and shipping prices as competitive as possible. Some of you may have noticed a change from Next Day delivery to Two Day delivery. This is a change we recently implemented and will always do our best to get the meals to your doorstep in good shape and at the best price. As summer comes, we will reintroduce our space-age thermal insulation liner to add an extra layer of protection and make sure your meals are icy cold when they land at your door.
Storefront Change - Early this month, we made the decision to remove our storefront and dedicate the space to a more efficient production facility. If you've been by in the meantime, you've seen our counter and glass-top freezers replaced with pallets of oak firewood (for our smokers), organic canned tomatoes, and large amounts of sheet pans and Cambro containers! We were pumped to offer a storefront to our customers for nearly seven years and will potentially do it again at some point. However, in order to take the next step as a business, we felt it was necessary to make this change. We now have the Ice Box parked out front and hope to have that operational as a storefront as soon as we get caught up on meal inventory (see below for explanation). Reno Locals Page Change - As of April 1, 2022, we will no longer offer a Reno Locals Page. If you are local to Reno, Nevada (our hometown, yay!!!) you will be able to order by using the regular build-a-box page. In an attempt to streamline our operation, we are paring down our website. We will do our own local deliveries as long as it still makes sense, but we will begin charging a delivery fee. Don't worry, you are still dear to us and we will offer local deals on occasion, so be sure to keep an eye on your inbox for more messages like this one!
Cleaver Kit - We successfully launched our Cleaver Kit Meat Boxes last week. This product has been in the works for the past year and we look forward to expanding the selection. Right now, we have the Beef Bison Box, which includes over 30 pounds of high-quality ground beef and bison. It's the same meat that we use in our meals, but it's available to you raw so that you can chef it up at the grill over the summer! Ice Age Snacks, Sauces and Spices - After a year of supply chain challenges, we invested in our own label printer. It's an Epson, it's beautiful and it will allow us to print labels for sauces, spices and snacks on demand. This will give us great flexibility in new product creations and seasonal recipes. It will also allow us to incorporate our branding across all items instead of having a separate look to our sauces and spices as we have in the past. We have begun bottling our updated sauce recipes and will add them to the site after we give all of our IAMFAMily members a chance to taste test them for us. Stay Tuned!Menu Changes - We will be dropping The Sausage Scramble With Rice and the Sausage Scramble With Yams from our menu within the next month. Not to worry, we are drumming up something better and we trust that you'll welcome this change.We will soon offer Chorizo and Eggs with Rice and two other breakfast options. Additionally, we have a limited edition meal coming up called "Big Nick's Burnt End Brisket Chili". We will have a Paleo option and Chili + Rice option. This is one of the best meals we have ever produced. It's got some kick as we used Poblano Chiles instead of green bell peppers and the overall experience is something that's never been offered in the world of fast frozen food!We've got Smoked Bison Burgers in the pipeline as well as Grass Fed Burger with Yams and Grass Fed Burger with Rice (both smoked!). We are now mixing kosher salt into the burgers before smoking them instead of only sprinkling it on the surface. You will notice and love the change, we promise!
Whew!!! Lots!!! Get me talking about business and food and I'm like a the old 227 out of the Missile Range headed for Duluth, Minnesota full of taconite pellets - HARD TO STOP!!! Ha Ha!But seriously, I could keep going with all of the changes that have been necessary to keep going. You see, in mid-November, we ran into our greatest challenge as a company. We ended up going 6 weeks without the black plates that we serve our food in. It was a nationwide shortage and there was no immediate solution to the problem. We kept our team working and turned out orders for the Holiday Smokehouse, but in the end, going six weeks without stocking our freezer with any meals put us in a difficult position. The blessing came in the fact that our meals are frozen and we had a supply of them in our freezer. Having 46 menu items to choose from, we have like to keep between 500-1,000 portions of each one in stock at all times.We were able to hold on and ride it out, but ran out of several meals and nearly sold all of our inventory before we were able to get plates again. Yikes! Could you imagine trying to make large quantities of 40 different meals all at once? It was like herding cats while spinning plates!!!
Anyhow. I say all of this in order to be transparent. We love what we do, but we are not without challenges at Ice Age Meals. It would have been very easy to give up, but we pressed in. We explored all of our options and we kept grinding. The result? We now have a more efficient operation with more production space that will allow us to serve even more cool people like you! We love our customers and appreciate your endless support. Can you believe that we now have some customers who have spent over $100,000 on Ice Age Meals? If each meal adds one day to your life, those people are going to live forever!!! Right now, we can use your support more than ever. As get our par levels topped up across the board, we are also improving our recipes and delivering more value than we ever have. You guys are our best allies when it comes to selling our meals. We would love it if you would tell one person you know about Ice Age Meals. Give them your best sales pitch and tell them about how we are committed to changing their life one meal at a time. Tell them how good our meals taste and how healthy they are. Let them know about the convenience of having them in the freezer at all times, ready when you are!I'll leave you with a cool quote and a link to a video that you should watch about the ship at the top of this email. "The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist hopes it will change; the leader adjusts the sails."I've been doing a lot of adjusting lately! Just like they did on the Hjemkomst! (click link and watch video)Thank you for reading and for being amazing and for your support.Your Pal,Paleo Nick