Butcherbox is known for pushing ahead and generating over $600,000 in sales. The company hasn’t traditionally gone down the M&A route, but today announced that it’s acquiring Truffle Shuffle – which you may remember from the past Shark tank Episode in 2021 (or maybe The Goonies). The acquisition will help Butcher Box’s customers cook better – and potentially expand its appeal (and product range) to more customers.
Truffle Shuffles goal The goal is to make us home cooks feel like professionals through easy-to-understand cooking shows. When I tried it during the pandemic, I was impressed by how the company was able to make even fairly challenging dishes accessible and fun: with attitude and lots of little tips and tricks along the way, including breaks to make cocktails and dance parties where The amateur chefs show how far they are in the process and how delicious the dishes look when they are prepared.
The companies declined to share terms of the deal, but a ButcherBox spokesperson confirmed it was an all-cash offer.
Bring star cuisine into your kitchen
As always, one of the most important aspects of founding a startup is the fit of the founder to the market and the two founders – Jason McKinney and Tyler Vorce – have a hell of a story in this regard: They met at the Michelin-starred restaurant French Laundry and decided to start a truffle business.
Truffle Shuffle chef Tucker Ricchio was the winner of Gordon Ramsay’s Next Level Chef. Photo credit: Jay Maidment / Next Level Chef
Truffle Shuffle was founded with the dual aim of supporting chefs and consumers in sourcing real truffles and developing its own range of truffle-infused products. However, the pandemic left them suddenly holding $20,000 worth of perishable premium truffles and no restaurants open where they could buy them.
This is when belligerent founders do their best work. In response to these exceptional circumstances, the team pivoted to direct-to-consumer sales and introduced a unique live cooking experience. This innovative change saved the company – and was the birth of a new idea.
From there, the business evolved: the team launched a platform that offered guests the opportunity to choose a dish they wanted to learn to cook. Once a selection is made, the company sends them all the necessary ingredients to prepare a Michelin-quality meal in the comfort of their own home. This solution not only helped the company manage excess inventory, but also brought a gourmet cooking experience to the kitchens of food lovers across the country – and ultimately caught the attention of ButcherBox.
“Jason and Tyler are incredibly fierce entrepreneurs and extremely talented chefs,” Mark Cuban said in a statement to TechCrunch. “It was a joy to see them expand their community of home cooks and the impact they had on so many homes in such a short space of time. Her approach to teaching people to cook will continue to inspire the Truffle Shuffle community and be an invaluable tool for the ButcherBox community as well.”
It turns out that Shark tank wasn’t the team’s only encounter with TV stars: Tucker Ricchio, another of the company’s chefs, won $250,000 on Gordon Ramsey’s Next Level Chef last May, which didn’t hurt Truffle Shuffle’s profile and publicity can be any.
Acquired by ButcherBox
ButcherBox has been growing rapidly for some time and recently expanded its business to include a pet food line called ButcherBox For Pets.
The company says the purchase of Truffle Shuffle is its first acquisition to date and is a logical extension of the company’s “Just Cook” recipe and learning site, where people learn how to cook better. For now, however, the acquired company will operate under its own brand while the company works to best integrate it into the ButcherBox brand more permanently – but the company says it’s excited to give ButcherBox customers quicker access to this content.
“In my opinion, Truffle Shuffle is more than just a recipe and video platform. “The community the team built was what really set them apart,” ButcherBox founder and CEO Mike Salguero said in an interview with TechCrunch. “They nurtured and celebrated individuals learning in their own kitchens to cook while educating those further along in their culinary journey, all while having fun and better food. As a brand, our goal is to help people eat better, and while we’ve focused on helping them eat higher quality protein, with the Truffle Shuffle integration we can now inspire them too and provide information about how they prepare our proteins.”
Meanwhile, ButcherBox continues its mission to make meat consumption healthier and more conscious. Meat will always be a morally complex area (particularly from a climate perspective), but the company says it’s doing what it can. Among other things, it is a registered B Corp and has invited animal welfare organizations to hold it accountable.