Yumble is a weekly subscription service designed to make meal time for kids stress-free for parents. (No cooking required, and the healthy meals are ready in 60 seconds or less.) Plus, every meal delivered comes with a fun activity and collectible “to keep the kids excited and engaged.” The founders of Yumble, husband and wife team Dave and Joanna Parker of Englewood, New Jersey, pitch their business on Shark Tank on December 9. They go into the Tank seeking a $500,000 investment in exchange for 4 percent equity. That valuation has billionaire Mark Cuban and guest Shark Rohan Oza saying “whoa.” Don’t worry, Dave (the CEO of Yumble) knows his numbers. The Harvard Business School graduate who earned his BS in Applied Mathematics from Columbia has launched new companies before: he was CEO of Vowch Commonwealth.
[Related: 27 Favorite ‘Shark Tank’ Products at Amazon]
Another advantage for The Parkers is: they pitch Yumble in front of Kevin O’Leary who invested in the prepared food delivery company Plated after they appeared on Shark Tank. (Plated appeared on the show in 2014 and made a deal with Mark Cuban — $500,000 for 5.6% equity and advisory share — but the deal fell through after the episode aired.) In a Shark Tank update, Kevin O’Leary reveals that he later met with the founders, Harvard Business School graduates Nick Taranto and Josh Hix, and invested. In 2017, Plated sold to Albertsons Companies, a national grocery store chain, for $300 million.
Prior to starting Yumble with his wife, Dave Parker directed the documentary film “One Per Cent”, which won the Audience Award at the Vail Film Festival in 2006. The production company, How I Wish Films, describes the documentary as one that “speaks to the top one-percent wealthiest, from old money to new money, from the highly secretive to the universally famous, from millionaires to billionaires, in order to investigate the nuances among the top 1%.” Interviews include Russell Simmons, who’s the star, Rebecca Nanasi (a descendent of Benjamin Franklin), and Tyler Ellis (daughter of designer Perry Ellis). New episodes of Shark Tank air Sundays at 9 pm on ABC.
