Tom + Chee Shark Tank Update

Tom + Chee Shark Tank Pitch

Trew Quackenbush and Corey Ward and their wives emptied their bank accounts to create Tom + Chee, a grilled cheese and tomato soup-centered food chain. What started as a griddle and a tent in Cincinnati, Ohio, quickly grew into several brick-and-mortar stores. Tom + Chee is famous for its doughnut grilled cheese but serves a full menu of sandwiches with roasted meats and spreads.

The business has 70 employees. The first two corporate stores did $11.5 million in revenue last year. The corporate company charges a one-time $35k fee and gets 7.5% of future revenue (or profits?). Trew and Corey sold their first Tom + Chee franchise in Louisville, Kentucky, this year, which cost the franchisee $250k to open up the store. That franchisee did $100k in revenue last month.

The sharks laughed off the health line but were impressed by the sales numbers and that people waited in long lines for Tom + Chee. Barbara, Kevin, and Robert put up partial offers, but the first complete offer came from Barbara and Mark. Trew and Corey happily accept.

Tom + Chee After Shark Tank

In season 5, episode 9, Barbara brought 7 of her best Shark Tank companies to her summer home in Fire Island, New York, for a retreat. Barbara announced the release of a Shark Tank book, including advice from all the sharks. Trew and Corey were honored to be there and learn from the other entrepreneurs. In season 5, episode 29 (the season finally), Tom and Chee was briefly mentioned in the montage of season updates.

Corey had a background in art and worked at his family restaurant as a kid. Tom and Chee's doughnut grilled cheese drew them significant free press and hype. Before Shark Tank they were aired on other tv shows such as Man vs. Food on a Wed night leading to a 200-person line waiting at Tom + Chee's door the following morning.

Corey said Mark Cuban was involved with another franchise business, Naked Pizza, which grew very fast, and then everything collapsed around the same time Mark's team was doing due diligence on Tom and Chee. Mark liked the company but no longer wanted to do the franchising route, while Barbara, Trew, and Corey did. They moved forward with a smaller deal with Barbara and not Mark. After airing, they quickly got over 2400 franchise requests covering all 50 states. Tom and Chee opened 23 franchises in one year, and the most that existed at one time was 37. The franchisees had a wide range of backgrounds, from people with several restaurants to rich people buying their kid, who struggled to get a job elsewhere, a franchise.

In 2014 Tom and Chee took out a loan to fuel growth, but as the hype phase faded, Corey noticed they were spending way too much money and needed to cut staff. Some of the stores were built large to accommodate the rush of people the business saw in the early days but eventually became unnecessary, and the overhead costs were overbearing. They had 18 employees at their headquarters at one point and eventually scaled back to four.