Imagine this: You’ve just eaten dinner and crave a fresh, cold dessert. You grab a room-temperature aluminum pod, about the size of an energy drink can. You then insert it into your countertop ColdSnap machine; a QR code on the top of the can scans what the product is and, in approximately 2 minutes, you have a ready-to-enjoy frozen treat that’s made with real dairy!

It really is that simple, thanks to ColdSnap in Billerica. And what they’re churning up is a revolutionary new way to enjoy frozen treats in minutes.

ColdSnap creates everything from premium ice cream to frozen smoothies and protein shakes. It also makes frozen cocktails, boozy ice cream (Bourbon is most popular), non-dairy frozen desserts and what they call a Snappucino®, according to entrepreneur Matt Fonte, whose team includes Methuen native Dan Melvin.

The concept originated with Fonte and his enterprising daughters. Growing up in Sudbury, Fonte and his brother Nick worked for his father, an immigrant from Italy. They spent 20 years growing their unique manufacturing business and ultimately sold it. They were taught to be scrappy entrepreneurs who offered differentiated products.

Next, along with their childhood friend Rob, they started their own business making orthopedic implants from a unique shape memory metal, Nitinol.

Matt explained, “A whole family of fracture fixation devices where a surgeon, he or she could stretch and implant, lock over a fracture, release it from the delivery device, it shrinks back to its original shape, pulls the bone fragments together. The compression of the fracture causes the bone to remodel and the patient to heal faster. So nobody in the world had ever done that before.”

With this new unique, highly patented technology, they sold the business as well. 

 

The simple idea of having something unique and completely different from your competitors drove the original businesses that led to ColdSnap. I asked Matt what his first thought is from idea, to creating an original prototype for something as an entrepreneur.

“Well even before that step, I look for four different things. I call them the tail winds: Is it a big market? Is it a disruptive technology that it’s protectable, patentable, and is something completely different than all the other competitors in the world? Can you assemble a team that can pull it off? And do you have access to capital to do it all?”

With this basis, and the concept of only freezing something when you need it, and the added benefit of reducing carbon emissions from all the freezers in the world that pollute the environment, they had something revolutionary on their hands.

And by “they,” I mean him and his children. At night, he gives his children what he calls invention journals. Just blank journals that they write down new products in at night. At the time his daughter was 7, and asked him the question, “You think we can make a machine to make ice cream at home?”

Fonte explained to her it already existed, where you have to buy the dairy, make the mix, freeze it, when it’s done it’s the same flavor for everybody so not everyone is happy, then you have to disassemble it and put the parts in the dishwasher, etc. He said she seemed disappointed about it, so he asked her what do you wanna do about it?

She then said, “Well you put your little K-cup in and get coffee. Why can’t I put my K-cup and get my ice cream?”

Fonte thought about it and started researching.

Doing his research method with the four tail winds, he dug deeper, looking up patents and making sure it hadn’t been created already. In which it wasn’t, and the idea took off. He learned about ice cream and how it is made normally with the dasher, which is the piece that churns in the machine to incorporate air producing the right texture.  The concept of putting one in a single use pod, to then produce a frozen product in minutes is what he took to his investors. They liked the idea and backed him.

Today, the facility is home to state-of-the-art machinery that can produce up to 25 million pods per year. And for now, the product is only being sold commercially. ColdSnap employs 100 people; engineers, food scientists, marketers, salespeople, production teams, etc.  While the machines are currently only used in commercial spaces like stadiums and arenas, the hope is that one day they’ll be on your kitchen counter.

While touring the facility, we stopped in the food science lab, where they were in the early testing stages of new healthy smoothies fortified with nutraceuticals, a category they are currently building out.

Part of the staff is longtime family friend and Methuen native Dan Melvin. Melvin worked with the Fonte brothers in his father’s original shop. About 40-odd years later, as Melvin put it, “We got the band back together.”

Having heard about ColdSnap, he gave them a call and asked if they have any openings available for him, in which they did. He was hired to help in the coding process for the aluminum impellers. Melvin, specializing in manufacturing, and Fonte knowing that from them working together in the past, asked Melvin to help out in a few different areas where problems popped up. Making Melvin more or less, involved with a little bit of everything to better the product like reworking the ice cream machines which he does now as the “Pod Component Manager.” Upon asking his favorite flavor, he was in agreement with just about everyone in the room including Fonte, my father, and myself, boozy Bourbon Ice Cream, which has 2.1% ABV of top shelf bourbon.

“Second favorite, salted caramel, third favorite is the other boozy one, Mexican Hot Chocolate,” Melvin said.

We then proceeded into their break room where Fonte made us the Bourbon flavor and also the Mexican Hot Chocolate, and after a small (a whole portion, if we’re being real) taste test, we can confirm that this is some premium stuff. The Bourbon had a very creamy consistency, accompanied by a very pure Bourbon flavor. The Mexican Hot Chocolate, that had a cinnamon spice to it, and a tequila punch. It tasted just like a thick mug of spicy hot cocoa. The ice cream is premium, 14% milkfat like Haagen-Dazs, but served at soft serve consistency, giving you peak flavor and temperature, that results in a delicious product.  The machine makes your ice cream, or frozen treat of choice, then allows you to take it out, recycle it, with zero mess, and no cross contamination.

This visit was truly extraordinary, seeing a world changing way to enjoy frozen treats from Matt and his team. This technology not only can reshape the ice cream and frozen treat industry, but even potentially the frozen product industry. Keep your eye on ColdSnap! It truly can change everything, in a snap.

Visit MethuenLife.com for a video of the Cold Snap machine in action!