'Shark Tank': One shark burns up the tank as another strikes deal for outdoor pizza oven
Two pizza-loving brothers brought the sauce and offered an alternative to outdoor grilling on Friday's "Shark Tank."
Seeking $120,000 for 10% of their company Bertello, Eric and Andy Bert of Woodbury, Minnesota, entered the tank dressed like classic Italian chefs, white chef hats and all. The two are the creators of an outdoor pizza oven fueled by propane, wood chips, or charcoal.
“Sharks, do you like pizza? Sharks, do you know what’s even worse than what my grandfather Vinnie would think about my fake Italian accent?” Eric said in his fake Italian accent, before dropping it to reveal his normal voice. “It’s the quality of home baked pizza in a conventional oven.”
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The sharks loved their hokey theatrics. Like a clown in a circus act, Eric even took a pizza to the face, spitting out sauce. As he wiped it away, shark Lori Greiner wondered if he was going to clean himself up, or “are you going to do the pitch like that?” (He did.)
The sharks loved their pizzas even more, completely devouring them. The brothers even invited Kevin O’Leary to cook a pizza himself, but Chef Wonderful managed to burn half of it: “I like a little carbon with my pizza.”
Selling primarily on Amazon (for $299), the company made $640,000 in the year leading to the segment's taping.
Competitors exist in the outdoor pizza-oven business, but none use wood chips and propane at the same time, the brothers said. Using both methods speeds up the process and lets the pizzas cook faster. Still, O’Leary wondered why they decided to create a pizza oven of their own.
Eric said he worked for the past decade as a structural engineer on bridges in Manhattan. He said that when he gets passionate about something, he's all in and devotes himself to the idea.
“I go for it. I think big,” Eric said. “When I was 10 years old, I started building a treehouse and I made probably the biggest treehouse in all of the United States.”
Shark Mark Cuban appreciated everything the brothers had accomplished but said “it’s not a business that I want to get attached to. I’m not that guy that's like, ‘Let’s heat up the grill. Let’s go make some pizza in the backyard.’ It’s just not a fit for me.”
Robert Herjavec wasn’t excited by the product, even though he loved the pizza. He was more entertained by their theatrics than the oven and didn’t see the correlation to market.
Barbara Corcoran loved the product but felt the brothers lost their enthusiasm and energy after their opening act. Her biggest concern was whether they would make good partners: “When you got hit with that pizza, everything changed. Are you still recovering from that?”
She offered them $120,000 for 25% of the company, but only after making the fatal error, as Herjavec later pointed out, of calling the brothers boring.
O’Leary had an offer of his own, but wanted 30% of the company. “I get behind this as Chef Wonderful and sell a lot of it, because I’m an amazing chef,” he said before settling on the brothers’ counteroffer of 25%.
The deal with O’Leary left the brothers energetic as they left the tank. “We got the same offer from Barbara and Kevin,” Eric said, “but we went with Kevin because he believed in us from the start.”
After the brothers left, Herjavec messed with the still burning pizza oven and almost set fire to the tank, before running away from the smoking table.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Shark Tank' recap: Outdoor pizza oven attracts offers, and flames