Truffle Shuffle on 'Shark Tank': What is the cost, who are the founders, and how to cook gourmet food with Snoop Dogg?
The Covid-19 pandemic changed our lives like never before. Thanks to the deadly virus, the entire world had to stay home and quarantine to avoid spreading or contracting the virus. Quarantining at home meant that many people had to forego visits to their favorite restaurants and enjoy some gourmet food.
But at the same time, many people were spending more time in their kitchen than they had ever done before. So the founders of Truffle Shuffle came up with a perfect solution that they felt would not only satiate the cravings of people who were missing gourmet food from their favorite restaurants but also help the many amateur cooks learn how to whip up some restaurant-quality mean in their very own kitchen. Read on to know more about Truffle Shuffle.
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What is Truffle Shuffle?
Truffle Shuffle is a food business that is primarily involved with conducting online cooking classes which includes meal kits and ingredients. "The Chefs conceived and launched Truffle Shuffle as an honest truffle company to provide the finest truffle products and consciously sourced and traced fresh truffles. It is our mission to personally source the best-in-class truffles and create the finest truffle products in the world. We also serve and support our community by volunteering and donating a portion of our profits to 1% For The Planet, with hope of solving the world's problems, one truffle at a time," shared the brand's website.
The cooking classes that are conducted by the brand often feature a celebrity attending the class. In the past Snoop Dogg, Raekwon and Method Man of Wu-Tang Clan fame . So if you're interested in enjoying a delicious, gourmet food while listening to your favorite celebrity then you should definitely check out Truffle Shuffle's cooking classes and meal kits.
Who are the founders?
Tyler Vorce and Jason McKinney are the founders of this high-end food brand. The co-founders of the business met while they were working as chefs at the three Michelin Star restaurant The French Laundry, California. The duo launched their business in 2018 along with jason's wife, Sarah in the loop. They initially worked on selling the truffles they sourced to nearby restaurants, while they also worked as private chefs.
But with the dreaded Covid-19 pandemic taking over the world, the restaurants were all closed. This left the duo with 20 pounds of truffles that was estimated to be worth $20,000. Since the restaurants were closed they couldn't sell it to restaurants so they came up with the idea of conducting online cooking classes with high-end ingredients and fancy chef techniques. Their new venture turned out to be a smashing success.
They started doing the classes in the McKinney’s apartment. Five months later, they had 46 employees – many of them out of work chefs – and a 10,000 square foot facility with four studio kitchens, where they could produce up to 10.000 meal kits in a week. In an interview with SF Gate, McKinney said, "It [was] a 100% pivot and no, none of us were chef instructors. We had taught people how to cook in restaurants and we kind of applied those same principles. If you were to go to the French Laundry, 11 Madison Park, Alinea — today, five years ago, at any point — and you wanted to be a great chef, you would go in, you'd be eager, you'd be ready and the chef would say, 'go mise [en place] out these ingredients for risotto.' And then you would go measure everything and then you would make it standing next to the experienced chef. And so basically we kind of mimic that same process of how you train great chefs, but doing that with home chefs and giving them the ingredients, doing it live and allowing them to ask questions."
"[Our class] truly offers a level that you will never be able to achieve in a restaurant kitchen. It offers a level of intimacy that you'll never be able to achieve in the restaurant kitchen, because as ... we're sharing the knowledge that we spent years to accumulate, we're watching in real time how well we are doing to communicate to the audiences that's taking part in the group. And if we do a well enough job with that, not only do [students] have a delicious dish, but they have a skill and a technique and a memory that they will carry with them forever," he added.
What is the cost and where to buy Truffle Shuffle from?
The meal kits are priced at $99 each and can be ordered for a live cooking show or “on demand” viewing of a taped show. Some classes feature celebrity guests like Snoop Dogg, rapper E-40, NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott and others. You can get them from either Whole Foods, Mollie Stone's Markets, Whole Foods and Oakville Grocery.
Where is Truffle Shuffle now?
The founders are currently exploring the option of live streaming a talk show version of cooking class that is not only interactive but also features a celebrity judge like Snoop Dogg. "We feel that live streaming is the media of the future and we want to be ahead of the curve, and we have a cooking show that airs on Zoom. Zoom allows you an accessibility that there has never been before, it allows for a virtual connection that there has never been before… We found that using it as a tool to teach people how to cook better dishes in the comfort of their own home — and whether there's a pandemic, no pandemic — there'll never be a better way for people to learn how to make dishes than from the comfort of their own home."
Who will steal the deal?
Kevin O'Leary aka Mr Wonderful might close the deal. Although the brand's sales numbers and profit margins will ultimately be the major deciding factor for the sharks on whether to invest in the business or not. So, we will just have to wait and watch to see if the Sharks even make a deal.
'Shark tank' Season 12 airs every Friday at 8/7c on ABC.