ColdSnap Transforms an Ice Cream Dream into Reality

While most children hear stories before bed, serial entrepreneur and engineer Matt Fonte’s two daughters, Sierra and Fiona, brainstormed new products—at the request of their dad—before they went to sleep. “When my children were younger, I'd given them invention journals,” remembers Fonte. “Before bedtime, we'd invent new products.” One night the girls came up with the idea of a countertop-size ice cream machine that quickly produced soft-serve ice cream without mess, essentially an ice cream version of a Keurig single-serve coffee maker.

Fonte thought his daughter’s idea was brilliant and founded ColdSnap® with a team of a few entrepreneurial engineers in October 2018. The company’s objective was to transform the way frozen confections are produced, transported, purchased, and enjoyed. By June 2020, the company had moved into a 25,000 square-foot manufacturing facility just northwest of Boston. “We have a company with over a hundred people now,” enthuses Fonte. “It’s pretty exciting.”

Miniaturizing Refrigeration

ColdSnap is a countertop appliance that rapidly freezes—within two minutes—and dispenses individual single-servings of frozen treats from liquid ingredients contained in shelf-stable (nonfrozen) pods.

Vice President of Appliance Engineering Ben Fichera wanted to come work at ColdSnap because the company was doing something that's literally never been done before. “My background is heat transfer and refrigeration. When the opportunity came up to miniaturize this cooling system and bring something totally new to the market, I jumped at the chance," recounts Fichera. "We had to come up with some pretty innovative designs for the cooling system and evaporator, including how we make all that happen in two minutes or less."

In creating the machine, ColdSnap engineers had to basically reproduce the cooling capacity of a standard refrigerator in a countertop appliance. They also had to create the pod that would contain the ingredients from which the ice cream would be made. One of the primary requirements was that food would never come into contact with the machine, ensuring no preparation or machine cleanup was needed.

Collaboration is Key

Fichera continues, “We [now] have the cooling of an entire refrigerator in the space of a countertop appliance. [Dassault Systèmes]  SOLIDWORKS® enabled us to get through those iterations quickly, collaborating between the different engineers [design, manufacturing, electrical, and software] working on the project, along with our contract manufacturer."

The countertop appliance uses dynamic freezing to create exceptionally smooth ice cream with 30-40% smaller ice crystals than store-bought ice cream. It eliminates the need for traditional static freezing, ensuring a fresher and creamier texture. The product also introduces a completely new category of ice cream to the market; it contains 14% milk fat and is served at the same temperature as soft-serve ice cream. Pods also come in many flavors, including frozen lattes, protein shakes, smoothies, and more.

Minimizing Noise and Heat while Maximizing Sustainability

The machine needed to run as quietly as possible, therefore, noisy vibration during operation had to be overcome. Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS helped the engineers optimize material conditions, clearances, and tolerances between parts to ensure proper fit, function, and manufacturability.

“It takes us two minutes to freeze the product, and people want it faster,” says Forte. “They want it in a minute or less. So, our challenge was: “How do we get this refrigeration system to pull as much heat out of the pod [as possible], effectively freeze the liquid ingredients, and do it all in the fastest time possible.”

Because the pods are shelf-stable and can be shipped at ambient temperature, the engineers created a system that is independent of the expensive, unreliable, and environmentally unfriendly “cold chain” used to bring most factory-frozen ice cream to market. ColdSnap pods are also made from recycled aluminum and the ColdSnap team is working to ensure that the pods are infinitely recyclable.

The Right Tools Enable Innovation

Through numerous digital iterations, Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS enabled ColdSnap engineers to refine and optimize the machine's design, including the mechanism for opening the pod, the movement of a small metal impeller that mixes ice cream at an impressive 3,000 RPM under high torque and load, and the dasher system that dispenses the product into a serving cup, all while ensuring food never comes into contact with the machine.

ColdSnap is disrupting the frozen dessert market by combining advanced engineering, sustainability, and consumer convenience.