Where Is Brumachen From Shark Tank Today?
Brumachen is a portable coffee brewer that uses any K-cup style pod to brew coffee just about anywhere. Its bucolic, early-morning YouTube advertisement demonstrates how a cup of coffee can be brewed in six minutes via the power adapter in a pickup towing a horse trailer. It's a convincing ad. And even if you're concerned about all those single-serve coffee pods hurting coffee farmers and the environment, Brumachen has seemingly developed an answer. The easier-to-biodegrade Leaf Pods are made of sugarcane. Brumachen claims these will biodegrade in 180 days, versus the 400 years of a standard K-cup. That sounds impressive.
As Shark Mark Cuban explains in the episode's YouTube clip from Sony Pictures, "Single serve, take it with you, portable, preserve the environment, that's all good." However, the stated sales of $40,000 gave him pause to the founder's ask of $1 million dollars for a 10% stake in the startup. They also couldn't help but notice Brumachen's design, which "looks like a spaceship" that's been "designed by engineers."
The sharks suspicions about Brumachen may have been correct
Aside from the spaceship aesthetic, Cuban couldn't see past the fact that "there's just too many moving pieces." He's out. From there, the three other sharks quickly declined. Robert Herjavec cited the "horrible design" again. Recurring shark, Daniel Lubetzky identified it as still an "early stage prototype." But, the biggest issue was the $10 million valuation which Kevin O'Leary found offensive. No deal.
The sharks seem to have been correct in their decisions. Today, the Brumachen website has a banner proclaiming an unspecified "Shark Tank Special Pricing. Limited Time Offer" and some "as seen on Shark Tank" references, but the rest seems dated. For example, most of the Leaf Pods cite an expected ship date of May 2021 — nearly two years ago. The latest update on Brumachen's Kickstarter was in January of 2021 and offered an apology to the long list of 470 backers who are awaiting their brewer, a replacement for broken brewers, or just another update.
Brumachen is still accepting orders for the $120.99 brewer or one flavor of Leaf Pods, $24 for 24 cups. But we have to caution — buyer beware. Brumachen seems to have suffered the same fate as another travel mug that brews k-cups. Don't worry about Ross Smith though, the social media influencer who helped present Brumacher. He and his grandmother, continue to entertain almost three million subscribers on YouTube.