Tina Rexing’s appearance on Shark Tank may be sitting somewhere on ABC’s cutting room floor, but the entrepreneur behind T-Rex Cookies is making the most out of the experience, even if she never made it onto millions of TVs.
“It was a bummer, but I have been able to make some lemonade out of it,” Rexing said. “It’s sad that it’s not going to air because it was a lot of work, but I turned it around and used the feedback.”
Rexing has grown from selling her giant cookies from a stand at the Capella Tower farmers market five years ago into a wholesale business supplying to restaurants, U.S. Bank Stadium, Orchestra Hall as well as from two of her own retail locations and a food truck.
She applied to be on Shark Tank and found out last summer that she was among the roughly 500 companies that made the first round, out of 10,000 applicants. Then she was among about 100 companies flown to Los Angeles in September for a filming of the show.
Rexing was excited in part because she was aware of the “Shark Tank Bump” — the publicity from the show is known to help companies with sales.
But last week, Rexing said she got a call from Clay Newbill, the show’s producer. Shark Tank wouldn’t be airing her segment. She was one of the 20 who won’t be making it on season 11.
Rexing had put in a lot of time and effort for the filming, take a deep dive into her company’s numbers and preparing her pitch. Even though she was flown out by the show, she still invested in other things to make a good presentation, including 200 pounds of cookies she brought for taste testings.
So Rexing is disappointed, but it wasn’t all for nothing. She went to the sharks — the investors who react to entrepreneurs' pitches on the show — with an idea for growing her business. She wanted to get money to franchise T-Rex Cookies. But the Sharks, she said, told her that she shouldn’t do that. She spent 45 minutes talking with them.
“The feedback I got was, ‘Do you really want to do that? When you franchise, you lose control of quality and product.’ And they liked my quality and product,” she said.
Instead, they told her she should maintain control of her business and her product. In 2017, Rexing was hired by a Singapore chain of bakeries called Twelve Cupcakes to develop a cookie recipe for the company, which she did. That company, she said, centralized its baking operations to serve its 28 locations. It’s an idea she liked. So Rexing leased a kitchen in Eagan, where she also has a retail operation (she previously operated in the Prospect Park neighborhood of Minneapolis but moved due to a re-development plan).
In November, Ridgedale Center called her asking if she wanted to open a kiosk in the middle of the Minnetonka mall. She opened it last week.
“I wouldn’t have stepped into the Ridgedale space (without the advice of the sharks),” she said.
Rexing has worked long hours to build T-Rex Cookies into what it is today, and she is finally starting to enjoy some of the fruits of her labor. She turned a profit for the first time in 2019 and is now paying herself a salary. She did $450,000 in revenue last year and has 15 employees.
She hired Eagan-based Gregory’s Foods to co-pack her dough. Rexing could make 80 dough balls in an hour; Gregory’s Foods, which serves many local grocery stores, can make 800 or more in an hour, which is allowing Rexing to scale her business.
Rexing is exploring grocery distribution, but first, she is testing whether or not customers will be able to bake her large cookies in their own ovens.
In other words, she is moving on without the “Shark Tank Bump.”
“I can’t base my business growth on a TV show,” she said. “I want to share with other entrepreneurs that if this happens to you, it’s a chance to re-imagine your company by using third-party people giving you advice."
