Tastee Tape Sticks to Success

Marie Eric

Seeking practical solutions to everyday challenges is an instinct for Tastee Tape co-founder Marie Eric. As a middle school student in Los Angeles, CA, she had to invent a solution to an ordinary problem. She chose to create an automatic plant watering system—something she recognized her family could use to help maintain their backyard garden if they went out of town.

“I always had an affinity to science and STEM, but I also found it exciting to think about mundane challenges and find solutions,” said Eric. “This is an ongoing conversation I like to have—how do I approach my day to make things better? It serves both my inventor side and my entrepreneurial side.”

Eric came to the East Coast to pursue a joint undergraduate and master’s degree at Johns Hopkins University in chemical and biomolecular engineering. “I thought I would figure it out along the way, but I expected to work in research and development as an engineer, and to try to find work with a company doing research I cared about,” she said. 

As part of her coursework, she found herself presented with a similar challenge to the one from middle school. “We were asked to use chemical engineering to find a problem and solve it; we could prototype our idea, and I wanted to do that so we could invent and engineer a real solution,” Eric said.

With a team of four female engineers, they thought about experiences of their daily lives that were pain points. One of them frequently made burritos for meals, and was annoyed when they would fall apart. This led to the idea of an edible burrito tape, to prevent the burrito from falling apart, making for a less messy eating experience.

“We were focused on solving the challenge for the class; we weren’t thinking about a larger potential market opportunity,” Eric added. Over the year of the course, her team explored different approaches via trial and error, trying to mimic nature. “We were building in the kitchen and in the lab, and at the end of the year we had a functional burrito tape. We got an A in the class!”

Eric and her team presented their prototype on Design Day, an event that brings together the Johns Hopkins community and alumni to see what students are working on. Local Baltimore news outlets that covered the event included their invention, which they had dubbed Tastee Tape.

“The next thing we know, we find out Jimmy Fallon [host of NBC’s Tonight Show] had mentioned us in his monologue,” Eric said. “It happened organically; one of his writers had seen the coverage. That really kicked things off—media outlets from all over the world contacted us. We were busy with finishing classes and graduating, so it was a little crazy but also a fun experience. We worked together as a team to share in doing interviews based on who was available. We had a good system and dynamic, and I’m glad we could do that together.”

Upon graduating, the team realized they would need to make some adjustments, as two of them were heading off to full-time jobs. They still wanted to pursue a patent to protect their work. “We scraped together enough to pay for a provisional patent attorney and get that process started; we made our own investment and then connected to the entrepreneurship network at Hopkins,” said Eric.

“We had to ask ourselves; how far do we pursue this?” said Eric.  “I was always very enthusiastic that this was a special opportunity—we were learning something new, we built this ourselves, and I wanted to at least try to do it justice.”

Eric and her teammate Tyler Guarino decided to stay on board and see where they could take it. “We had to spend time learning the language of entrepreneurship, “We had to learn how to make a pitch deck, how to establish an LLC, how to get funding,” said Eric. “It was a lot of backtracking to do, but it was also exciting. Gaining knowledge through experience really sold me on entrepreneurship.”

In August 2022, Eric began her master’s at Hopkins, taking classes while continuing to fine tune the product and participating in an accelerator program. “We created a better version of the product and won some grant and business competitions, which gave us more confidence that there could be a broader market opportunity.”

At that point, most of the funding they had secured was going towards protecting the intellectual property of their innovation. “We weren’t paying ourselves yet,” said Eric. “The next step was to figure out how to do this full time, without jobs. We were going to need more funding, and quickly, if we wanted to get it into the market.”

A mentor at Johns Hopkins connected Eric and Guarino with IndieBio, a program of SOSV, a global venture capital firm providing multi-stage investment to support big ideas. “They offered us a grant, which we used for or customer discovery to pivot to a new market focused on sustainable packaging” Eric said.

The core technology behind Tastee Tape has remained consistent, even as the company’s goals have evolved. Initially the team wanted to create a food-safe adhesive. When they explored naturally occurring strong materials, they discovered that a gluten-free grain could offer that opportunity. Going into her master’s program, Eric had the early version of the edible tape but wanted to work on improving its flexibility. The team also determined that a larger sheet, rather than a tape, would open greater market opportunities.

IndieBio connected Tastee Tape with Cira Cardaci, executive manager at the NYC Innovation Hot Spot. “Getting connected to the Hot Spot was critical for multiple stages of our business development,” she said. “When you ask for help, they always have resources that can guide you or that they can point you towards.”

“We had done I-Corps at Johns Hopkins, but that was a short course, just two weeks and 20 interviews,” added Eric. “We knew we had to strengthen our business plan. We participated in the CUNY Regional I-Corps program with the NYC Innovation Hot Spot in Fall 2023—that helped us to confirm the key pivot of developing a sustainable food packaging film.” The program was six weeks and covered lectures on all nine boxes of the business model canvas.

“I-Corps enabled us to do the expanded customer discovery that took us from the original burrito tape concept to more of a sandwich wrap,” she added. “Flexible films, like plastic wraps, are entirely unsustainable and not compostable. We realized a larger problem could be solved by innovating a sustainable food packaging film.”

The Tastee Tape team completed more than 80 customer discovery interviews. They primarily spoke with individuals working in food packaging and food service, including independent and chain restaurants.

“We learned to constantly evaluate and ask ourselves, are we solving a problem for our customer, who are we activating, is it meaningful?” said Eric. “That is essential to get the most out of customer discovery, and we would not have learned that without the NYC Innovation Hot Spot team.”

“With further validation, we were able to get into the IndieBio cohort—that was a big deal!” added Eric. “Now we knew we could survive to the next month and get the opportunity to further develop our innovation.”

Tastee Tape recently hired a full-time employee, Victor Kim, who completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering with a focus on water-responsive biomaterials at CUNY’s ASRC. Eric connected with him through the NY Life Science Network, one of the many resources she’s found through the NY Innovation Hot Spot.

“It may seem obvious, but the NYC Innovation Hot Spot’s access to so many resources that can benefit startups has been incredible,” she said. “It feels like a secret—more people should know how amazing this is!”

Eric also described the value of being part of the NYC Hot Spot entrepreneurial community. “It’s so helpful to talk to others about the kinds of challenges we are going through and learning about what resources we can turn to for help,” she said. “I’ve learned to ask for help even if it feels like the dumbest thing. You are probably not alone, and your questions are probably not that dumb.” 

Tastee Tape is currently applying for an NSF SBIR grant and appreciates the value of the NYC Hot Spot and NYS Empire Corps in helping with that process. “We are continuing to develop our product and scale our technology and hope to be ready to go to market within the next year,” Eric said.