‘Shark Tank’ preview: Chapul Cricket Bars, Packback Books, and a Fiber Fix update
“Shark Tank” is returning on Friday night with another new episode, and this one is not going to waste any time at all for people to form strong opinions about. This is why we’re going to dive right in here to the official synopsis, since it will help set up everything else that we have to talk about in this article:
“An entrepreneur from Salt Lake City hopes to convince the Sharks of the delicious and healthy merits of his energy bars fortified with protein from crickets; an inventor from Vista, California shows how his garage lock will protect everyone from easy break-ins, a confident entrepreneur from Needham, MA, tries to school the Sharks, even those without hair, on a ‘paradigm shift in morning grooming’—his shower cap to fix bedhead, and two young men from Chicago, IL, try to woo the Sharks on their e-commerce platform for digital textbook rentals.”
These “cricket bars” are made by Chapul, a company that has its mind in the right place when it comes to sustainability and giving back to water conservation. They also do a very good job boasting about the protein that come from eating crickets, and who knows? Maybe it tastes so good within the other flavors of these bars that you really don’t even notice that you are eating insects.
With all this being said, the reason that they may have a problem getting an investment is that you have to think about acquisition. We’re much more curious about the brand now than we would’ve been had someone just said to us “eat this bar made out of crickets”; but even with that, we’re still not the sort of adventurous eater that typically chews on insects. The average consumer is not going to do the same amount of research that we did for this article, and they may be turned off on the concept right away. Their best hope is to continue pressing the benefits of crickets vs. other proteins, and appeal to a demographic that appreciates healthy, sustainable products who are also willing to give something like this a try.
Elsewhere in the episode, you also have Packback Books, which is a novel concept in that it allows for textbook rentals and also a service that could compete against your price-gouging local college bookstore. We remember having to pay upwards of $500 a semester sometimes to get textbooks, and if there is a way to even cut that in half, this business has to be considered interesting to students. We like the idea behind this quite a bit, especially given that many professors don’t really mind if you have your books in class so long as you do the required reading. You can rent selected books on the site for $5 a day, which means that if you are using them seven or eight days a semester, you’re paying $40 for a book that may have cost you $100 at the campus bookstore.
Still, the business still seems to be in the early stages, and for the sharks, there may not be a proof-of-concept here. Also, we could see some students not searching or knowing the ISBN for their book to use the online search tool, and if you want the option to have your book around to student with at all times, you’re better off just buying it. Still, this is probably one of the products that we’ve been most interested in over the past few weeks.
One of the final things we’ll share here in this article is that according to The Hollywood Reporter, a special Thursday episode of “Shark Tank” is going to air on April 10. Is this a great idea? We’re voting here for “not at all,” since there are so many different things that we don’t like about it. For one, the show kills it on Fridays, and it’s not a bad thing to air then. Also, Thursdays would pit it against “The Big Bang Theory,” NBC comedies, and “The Vampire Diaries” on The CW. This makes it much less important for viewers to watch live, and selfishly, it makes it much harder for us to cover live thanks to everything else that is happening at the same time. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8:00 are our busiest times of the week.
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Photo: ABC