Bertello
The entrepreneurs behind Betrello believe they've found the solution to what's wrong with frozen pizza. You know, frozen pizza, that thing you buy from the supermarket or bodega frozen section because you're too lazy to actually cook or you're planning to be drunk and/or high that night. The one with the frozen cheese that's, let's face it, never really enough, and a sauce in dire need of more seasoning. Frozen meats, frozen mushrooms. That's what these entrepreneur believe they have found the solution for and it doesn't include tossing it out and ordering yourself a real pizza.
The problem with all of those things above is that people aren't cooking it in a Bertello pizza oven! That's right! It's not the hand kneaded dough or the fresh mozzerella and tomato sauce that makes a pizza great, it's the oven that it's fired in, didntchaknow? And Bertello fixes that by having created a home pizza overn that can be heated with wood, propane, charcoal, and even those little wood pellets. Christ, you can even mix fuels, mixing wood and gas for example, should it inspire.
They demonstrate their oven with Kevin and say that a pizza takes about two minutes to cook in their oven and that a pie should be rotated every thirty seconds or so. And, despite demoing it in the Shark Tank studio, they do note that it is intended to be used outside.
One Bertello overn costs $250 at retail. An over costs $84 to manufacture, including shipping. The entrepreneurs net $33 per oven. Currently, the oven is being sold on Amazon. In the year in which the deal was filmed, Bertello earned $640,000 in sales with $400,000 being made in the previous three months. Together, they invested $90,000 to fund the company. Additionally, they borrowed $70,000 but no longer carry the debt as they just finished repaying it.
The two entrepreneurs are 80/20 partners in Bertello. The majority shareholder is a professional structural engineer who designed the product while the minority partner works in financial services.
Bertello has one competing product but the entrepreneurs say that it doesn't over the different fuel options a Bertello stove does. But the reason the entrepreneuers are in the tank looking for investment is because they are having trouble keeping up with demand and need money to fund the additional inventory (which is what they call, "One of those good problems to have...").
Making A Deal