BruMachen from Shark Tank

BruMachen shark tank

BruMachen is a revolutionary and innovative coffee maker that is lightweight, easy to carry, and lets you brew a fresh cup of coffee anywhere. It makes it easy to save extra trips to the coffee shops and some bucks, as the portable coffee machine lets you brew a cup of coffee with your coffee pod in just 5 minutes.

What is BruMachen?

BruMachen is a single-serve portable brewer that makes a hot cup of coffee for you with just a push of a button.

You can plug in the BruMachen to any USB socket in your car, pour water inside it, insert a coffee pod of your choice, and voila! With just the press of a button, you can prepare a fresh cup of hot coffee anytime and anywhere.

What Makes Them Unique?

BruMachen lets you enjoy your delicious cup of coffee anytime without the need to stand in long lines and drive through.

You can insert a coffee pod of your choice inside the BruMachen and prepare fresh and hot coffee in just 5 minutes.

Are They Still an Active Company?

The website has an attractive design, and the business is still running.

How Did the Shark Tank Pitch Go?

Entrepreneurs Ross Smith and Kweku Larbi came to the show seeking $1 million for 10% stakes in their company.

Ross Smith is a social media influencer having 45 million followers across all platforms, and he partnered with Kweku to create the product, BruMachen.

Ross explained that he had taken BruMachen throughout the world in cabs, boats, and camping and proved that it is highly portable and quick.

They explained their product model and showed how BruMachen works. However, they didn’t stop with just one innovation.

An average American uses more than a thousand coffee pods yearly, which is wasteful. BruMachen has introduced a biodegradable single-serve coffee pod made of tree fibers and sugarcane.

An ordinary coffee pod takes 450 years to biodegrade, whereas a biodegradable coffee pod takes just 180 years to biodegrade.

Ross and Kweku invited the Sharks to invest in not just a product but a vision that will preserve the Earth for the next generations.

Kweku was a civil engineer. One day, he was working on the field with his fellow constructors in Indiana and saw that they were freezing out there, and no hot coffee was instantly available to warm them up. To get a cup of coffee, they had to do a 10-minute drive to the nearest shop to get coffee.

Kweku created a solution to get coffee on-site without driving too far away to coffee shops and spending extra bucks on getting coffee.

They had a utility patent pending for the pod and BruMachen coffee machine. They sold 600 units on Kickstarter in January and generated $42,000 in sales revenue. Those were the only sales they had done to date.

Kevin was appalled by the fact that they would consider their company to be worth approximately $10 million by just that small number of sales. Ross announced that he could use his influence to push the business forward, as previously, he scaled a product on e-commerce from $33,000 to $9 million.

Mark observed that the product had many moving pieces that Ross and Kweku hadn’t even appropriately explained to show that they deserve a million dollars. He went out.

Robert said that he loved the concept and the passion of Kweku behind it, but the product design wasn’t impressive, and a million dollars for just 10% stakes pushed it too far. They hadn’t even given proof that the product was worth it. For those reasons, he went out.

Daniel said that BruMachen was still an early-stage prototype and the company had a long way to go. The valuation they were demanding was too high, and it saddened him to see that Ross and Kweku were projecting great energy and passion behind the product. He went out.

Lori also thought the product was great but asking for such a high valuation was unfair. She went out.

Kevin thought the $10 million valuation was “obscene, ridiculous and stupid,” and he was offended by that demand. If Ross and Kweku walk out of the show without a deal, it would be their own mistake due to their greed and bad strategy. He went out.

The Sharks wished them luck as the two entrepreneurs left the show without securing a deal.

Our Review of BruMachen

BruMachen lets you brew your fresh cup of coffee and helps you save money on getting coffee from fancy cafes. It is portable and can be carried anywhere where you can plug it in and brew coffee on the go.

Pros of BruMachen

  • It allows you to make coffee on the go
  • Portable and easy to carry
  • Fresh coffee in just 5 to 6 minutes.

Cons of BruMachen

  • The product needs design improvement, making it easy to brew coffee without dealing with lots of moving parts
  • The BruMachen coffee machine is costly.

Who Is BruMachen For?

Kweku created a bridge for the gap between a coffee maker at home and the office. He designed a feasible solution for people at construction sites, camping, hikers, or people on the road craving hot coffee with no coffee shop nearby. BruMachen eliminates the need to spend extra bucks on getting coffee from the shop and brew your coffee in your car or a remote area.

Are There Any Alternatives?

  • AeroPress Go Portable Coffee Maker
  • Cafflano Klassic
  • Espro Ultralight Coffee Press.

Our Final Thoughts

Kweku and Ross designed a product with too many challenges in its design improvement, marketing and sales, and engineering technology employed in the coffee machine. The reason any of the Sharks were not interested in investing in the company was that the overconfidence of both the entrepreneurs was off-putting for any potential investor, as it would have led to other bad strategies and wrong decisions.