HOME / ENTERTAINMENT / TV

After ‘Shark Tank’ rejection, chef grows shrimp burger brand to $5 million — Mark Cuban regrets saying no

Chef’s shrimp burgers were rejected on ‘Shark Tank,’ and now his business is making $5 million a year, and Mark Cuban admits he missed out

‘Shark Tank’ investors can usually gauge a product’s potential, but sometimes they’re proven wrong. Success stories that prove the 'Sharks' wrong often gain massive traction. This was the case with the founder of Chef Big Shake. In 2011, Chef Shawn Davis appeared on the show and pitched his shrimp burgers, but they didn’t resonate with the investors. As a result, Davis left empty-handed, but surprisingly, his business soared. His sales doubled and then tripled within a year, a level of success none of the 'Sharks' foresaw. But how did it happen?

It all started when Davis’s 10-year-old daughter came home and decided to stop eating meat after classmates showed her animal cruelty content. “First, I tried to convince her it's okay to eat some meat, but she wasn't going for it,” he said, as reported by Delish. That’s why he started making seafood patties, and the shrimp patty became his daughter’s top choice. What started as an experiment became a popular party snack and eventually a business product. He went around town selling the product, and many local restaurants agreed to put it on their menus. Although he figured out how to sell directly to customers, he couldn’t find the right market fit.

“I called hundreds and hundreds, and they'd just hang up,” he added. Luckily, ‘Shark Tank’ was accepting applications from budding entrepreneurs. His friend picked up a form and applied on Davis’s behalf, and to his utter surprise, he received a call from the producers. “I thought it was a joke at first, since I'd completely forgotten my friend had applied for me,” he recalled. Davis was required to send in a video audition, giving a quick overview of himself and his company. The entrepreneur had been preparing his pitch ever since the idea first came to him.

So he certainly nailed the audition and made it to the ‘Shark Tank’ stage. The investors liked the product, but not enough to bet their money on it. Unfortunately, the outcome was far from what he had hoped. But fate clearly had different plans for Davis. The day after his pitch aired, he was flooded with calls from “a bunch of weirdos” asking about his company. He eventually found a serious investor who helped him scale his business to the next level. Within a year, his sales skyrocketed from $30,000 to $5 million, according to the outlet.

In an interview with Good Morning America, investor Mark Cuban admitted he regrets not investing in the business. He said he passed on the deal because shrimp sandwiches weren’t his area of expertise. “One of the things in business is you have to try to stick to what you know, and I don't know shrimp sandwiches,” Cuban said. But he admitted Davis was a “great” entrepreneur and that he missed a big opportunity. “I passed, and now he went from 200,000 sales just a year ago to over 6 million in sales,” the investor added.