Mafe and Coco Cabezas desperately missed their mother's cooking when they moved from Venezuela to the U.S. for college.
One of the dishes they craved the most were arepas, a Venezuelan staple made from ground corn dough that is typically filled with ingredients like cheese. The arepas they found in the U.S., they said, were often made with unhealthy ingredients and additives like preservatives. It was a world away from the homemade snacks the sisters had enjoyed for most of their lives.
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"I started to research the market and realized there was a gap for convenient, authentic Hispanic foods made with original recipes and great ingredients," Mafe Cabezas said.
That sparked the idea for Toast-It, a line of frozen, ready-to-toast arepas. Based on their mother's recipes, the arepas are made with organic ingredients sourced from Latin America. Three years after the company's launch, Toast-It products are available for sale at more than 800 retail stores across the southeast, including Publix, Whole Foods and Walmart.
The brand will be introduced to a whole new audience this week when the Cabezas sisters pitch Toast-It on an episode of "Shark Tank" airing Oct. 6. It was a surreal experience for the pair, who grew up watching the popular reality television show.
"When we started the company we'd joke and say, 'Imagine if we took this to 'Shark Tank!' And then we'd laugh," Coco Cabezas said. "We finally submitted an application, never expecting a response."
Toast-It began during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, with Coco Cabezas making the arepas from scratch at her home in Miami. At the time, Mafe was working at PepsiCo, so she had some experience in the consumer packaged goods business.
The sisters began to advertise the brand on Instagram and created a website where customers could place direct orders for frozen arepas. Soon, they were receiving repeat orders from customers as the brand grew via word of mouth among the Hispanic community.
By the late 2021, the company inked a distribution deal with Publix that brought Toast-It to 500 of the grocery giant's stores.
"That's when I quit my full-time job and started working on Toast-It full time," Mafe Cabezas said.
As longtime 'Shark Tank' viewers, they had some idea of what questions the judges — or "sharks" – would throw their way. That helped when they began to prepare the pitch for their appearance on the show, which filmed in June. They sat down and anticipated every question they would be asked and then came up with appropriate responses.
"Then we pitched our family and friends for days on end until one of us lost our voice," Mafe Cabezas said. "We didn't know how nervous we would be once we were standing on stage, so we wanted to be prepared for anything."
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As of now, the sisters cannot reveal the results of the pitch — that will come when the episode airs on Friday.
Even if they don't snag a big investment, the pair will have another cause for celebration: This week Mafe, who was five months pregnant during the "Shark Tank" filming, is due to give birth to her first child.
"My sister is having a baby, our episode is about to air. All of these big moments are happening at the same time, but that's life," Coco Cabezas said.
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