Long Table on Shark Tank: How is the founder’s love story connected to his food business?

Shark Tank season 14 returns with another episode after a holiday hiatus and is set to feature a new batch of entrepreneurs who are waiting to take their projects to the next level.

One of the projects set to appear in the upcoming episode is Long Table, the founder of which “got deep into pancakes” and fell in love with an acrobat named Lindsey. Samuel wanted to impress her with a pancake that would be both nutritious and dense at the same time. This led him to create a new type of flour altogether.

Tune in on Friday, January 6, at 8 pm ET on ABC to watch Samuel’s pitch on Shark Tank

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Samuel Taylor brings a new type of waffle and pancake mix to Shark Tank

In the upcoming episode of Shark Tank season 14, a father, husband, and former theater person will take center stage to pitch his line of waffle and pancake mixture to the sharks. He will be joined by his wife, who will be performing acrobatic tricks.

He will appear on the show with four different mixtures, including a gluten-free mixture containing sorghum, almond meal, and teff seeds, and a popcorn-flavored mixture that contains popped popcorn, almond meal, and poppy seeds. The third flavor was a blue corn mixture that contained blue corn, hazelnut meal, buckwheat, and rye while the last one contained dark bono rye. Each bag can make 50 four-inch pancakes in batches of 10.

In the clip, the founder said:

"I badly wanted to impress this deeply charming acrobat with a pancake. Now I knew that meant whole grains."

He added that he knew there was no whole-grain flour available that was fluffy enough and he invented a new one out of popcorn. He threw a bucket of popcorn like confetti and stated that popcorn flour makes the lightest whole-grain pancakes in the world.

The sharks tried the pancake mixes and Lori Greiner said that it tastes “popcorny-ish” and that it was lighter than a typical pancake.

On Shark Tank, Samuel is prepared to offer the sharks 15% of his company in exchange for “140,000.”

Since its inception, the Long table has earned a quarter million dollars in sales. From 2015 to 2019, the upcoming Shark Tank project earned 25,000 a year. Gwyneth asked the founder where all the product is being distributed and he said that he’s a part of 20 independent grocers while 70% of the business has been directed to consumers.

While Barbara isn’t too keen on a business that has a slow start, guest shark Gwyneth, who is an actor turned entrepreneur, disagreed with her. She said that sometimes when actors migrate to another line, they learn skills along the way.

She added:

"You’re learning skills along the way, you’re learning how to be an entrepreneur so I just want to say, like, actor to entrepreneur, I have a lot of respect for you."

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How Long Table came into being

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Samuel was a theater actor who wanted to impress and woo Lindsey, who he fell in love with in 2010. He took all his savings, a “big steel whisk,” griddle, and started working at a farmer’s market. Initially, it was a side business, but when Covid-19 forced all the theaters to shut down, he decided to make a change.

He added:

"As a new dad with no job, no industry, and no career path forward, it was a hopeless time for me. But I had this side hustle: a little seedling of a business working with regenerative farmers helping to build a more hopeful world for my son’s generation to live in."

The upcoming Shark Tank product sells it in bundles and his line includes mixes as well as maple syrups. Each bundle contains four packs of mixes and costs $45 on the website. The mixes can also be found in a variety of stores, including TIN by Jean George in New York, Here Here Market in Chicago, Andale in Chicago, Green Grocer in Chicago, Redbird Cafe in Homeland, Illinois, and more.

Tune in to Shark Tank on January 6 at 8 pm ET to see if Samuel gets the funding he wants to get.