Todd Abrams – no stranger to building young companies – is eyeing a new stage of growth at his start-up, Icon Meals.
The CEO and co-founder of the meal-delivery company said he’s looking to get $15 million to $20 million in funding. Already, Icon Meals has raised roughly $3 million in the effort – and that includes backing from the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), he said. The company is focusing on healthier options for folks looking for convenience when they’re ready for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
For Abrams, it’s a key step after building the company – which also has consumer products for store shelves – for more than five years. Icon Meals has been racking up sales growth – and he wants to expand further.
“I really look at this as ... ‘version 2.0,’” Abrams said in an interview. “We’re excited about the future and where we’re going.”
Amid the effort to raise funding, the company is looking to add about 25,000 square feet next door to its existing site in Dallas which covers roughly 33,000 square feet.
The start-up specializes in meals that are ready to eat quickly – a couple of minutes in the microwave – while providing options attractive to people wanting to eat healthier. The choices online come with clearly displayed counts of calories, protein and carbohydrates, among other data points. Also, there’s a focus on doing more to prepare the food, Abrams said. While the company could buy meat that’s already cut up, it does that itself.
Abrams previously was involved with a couple of technology companies. That includes Layered Technologies, a North Texas company he co-founded that provided cloud and hosting services. It landed backing from KKR-Accel and was sold to Datapipe in 2014 before that owner was acquired by Rackspace.
With Icon Meals, the company is looking to pull in about 40% growth in revenue during 2022.
The new money effort would go toward hiring executives, the facilities, technology, additional marketing and logistics.
Abrams gave other thoughts in an interview.
What is what your company is focused on? What are you trying to tackle?
For us, it’s that healthy lifestyle. One is you have to have residual, recurring revenue. And that's really what I believe food is. People eat not just once a month – you're going to eat every single day. And then the second thing is, you've really got to have a solution to a problem.
When I started this company, people were like, ‘What the hell are you doing with food? Your background is technology, blah, blah, blah.' It's a passion project for me. I used to be the fat kid. And I truly believe food is a tool and a resource. If people know how to use it, It can change your life. It’s the element of convenience that we were looking at.
What happened with COVID in early 2020?
We had one day in March – when everyone was talking about the shelves being bare and stuff – we did double our biggest day that we've ever done.
What has it been like to run this company?
In my other companies, I was able to grow my first couple businesses to a certain level -- myself and with the team. Then it's what I call the “law of the lid.” You’re smacking up against that lid. You need more expertise, more experience in different areas to build a team – grow it to the next level. And I think that's where we are now. And that's why we look to taking capital and bringing on people.
-Edited for clarity and grammar.
