Butcherbox is known to be growing, generating over $600,000 in revenue. The company hasn’t traditionally gone the M&A route, but today it announced the acquisition of Truffle Shuffle – which you may remember from a Shark tank episode in 2021 (or, perhaps, The Goonies). The acquisition helps Butcher Box customers improve their cooking – and potentially broadens the appeal (and product range) to more customers.
The goal of Truffle Shuffle is to make us home cooks feel like pros, which it does by providing easy-to-follow cooking shows. When I tried it during the pandemic, I was struck by how the company was able to make even fairly advanced dishes approachable and fun: with attitude and lots of little tips and tricks throughout. along the way, including cocktail-making breaks and dancing parties where the home cooks show how far along they are in the process and how tasty the meals are as they cook.
The companies declined to share terms of the deal, but a ButcherBox spokesperson confirmed it was a cash-only offer.
Bringing Michelin star cuisine to your kitchen
As always, one of the most important elements of starting a startup is the founder’s market fit, and both founders – Jason McKinney and Tyler Vorce – have quite a story about it: they met at the Michelin-starred restaurant French Laundry and decided to start a truffle business.
Truffle Shuffle chef Tucker Ricchio won Gordon Ramsay’s Next Level Chef Award. Image credit: Jay Maidment / Senior Level Chef
Truffle Shuffle was founded with the dual goals of helping chefs and consumers source authentic truffles and develop its own line of truffle-infused products. However, the pandemic meant they suddenly found themselves with $20,000 worth of premium, highly perishable truffles on their hands, and no restaurant open to purchase them.
This is when scrappy founders up their game. In response to these extraordinary 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 giving customers the ability to choose a dish they wanted to learn how to cook. Once the selection is made, the company sends them all the ingredients needed to prepare a Michelin-quality meal in the comfort of their home. This solution not only helped the company manage excess inventory, but also brought a gourmet cooking experience to the kitchens of cooking enthusiasts across the country – and ultimately caught the attention of ButcherBox.
“Jason and Tyler are incredibly scrappy entrepreneurs and extremely talented leaders,” Mark Cuban said in a statement to TechCrunch. “It’s been a pleasure to see them expand their home chef community and see the impact they’ve had on so many homes in such a short time. Their approach to teaching people to cook will continue to inspire the Truffle Shuffle community and will also be a valuable tool for the ButcherBox community.
Actually Shark tank wasn’t the team’s only brush with a TV celebrity: Another of the company’s star chefs, Tucker Ricchio, won $250,000 on Gordon Ramsey’s Next Level Chef in May of last year, which couldn’t have hurt Truffle Shuffle’s profile and public awareness. any of them.
Acquisition by ButcherBox
ButcherBox has been growing rapidly for some time and recently expanded into a line of pet food called ButcherBox For Pets.
The company says the purchase of Truffle Shuffle is its first acquisition to date and appears to be a logical extension of the company’s “Just Cook” recipe and site for learning to cook better. For now, however, the acquired company will operate under its own brand while the company works out how best to integrate it more permanently into the ButcherBox brand – but the company says it’s excited to allow ButcherBox customers to access this content more immediately.
“To me, Truffle Shuffle is more than just a recipe and video platform. The community that the team has cultivated is what really sets them apart,” said Mike Salguero, founder and CEO of ButcherBox, in an interview with TechCrunch. They empowered and celebrated people who are learning to cook in their own kitchen, while improving the skills of those who are further along in their culinary journey, all while having fun and eating better. As a brand, our goal is to help people eat better, and while we strive to help them eat higher quality proteins, through the integration of Truffle Shuffle we can also inspire and inspire them. educate on how they prepare our proteins.
ButcherBox, meanwhile, continues its mission to make meat consumption healthier and more conscious. Meat has always been a morally complex area (especially 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 called on animal welfare organizations to hold it accountable.
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