Scratch & Grain Has the Goods on 'Shark Tank'

Desserts do well on Shark Tank — that is a fact. Daisy Cakes, Wicked Good Cupcakes, The Painted Pretzel... all products that found major success with the help and capital of a Shark Tank investor. Those all happen to also be great brands with novel ideas and a hungry (metaphorically and literally, presumably) entrepreneur behind them. Leah Tutin and Taya Geiger think they are the next entrepreneurs of that caliber, fulfilling an even greater sweet tooth need with their unique culinary business, Scratch & Grain Baking Co., which will appear on Shark Tank on Tuesday night.

Scratch & Grain packages premium dry ingredients to offer easy make-it-from-scratch cookies to the consumer market. But this isn't your average Betty Crocker brownie mix. Each Scratch & Gain cookie kit comes with the perfectly measured, individually packaged ingredients needed to make cookies easily at home, while still achieving the full baking experience. As they describe on their website, Tutin and Geiger came together to create a simpler way to make delicious, all natural cookies less out of a desire to create a business and make a lot of money, and more because of a parental hope that they could help their kids have a fun experience in the kitchen without spending exorbitant amounts of money on ingredients, and ending up with those pricey ingredients all over the floor — or worse, bad cookies.

But the story of how they came together detailed on their website... that's nothing short of sweet serendipity.

Their Unlikely Start

Tutin and Geiger were basically strangers before they became business partners. Well, not total strangers — they were neighbors; the kind of neighbors that greet each other when they're rolling the trash cans out, or have a quick conversation while their dogs sniff at each other on a walk. During one of those quick chats, Geiger mentioned interest in starting a business after the birth of her son, Lincoln. Tutin then recounted how she'd spend three hours, $40, and a priceless amount of frustration trying to make cookies from scratch with her daughters, and was struck with a business idea. In the way that all great relationships are formed these days, she texted Geiger, "I have this business idea, want to come over and talk about it?" And with a quick walk across the street, the rest is history. Great history, hopefully.

How the Cookie Crumbles

Tutin and Geiger felt there was a need to making baking at home easier, more fun, and as healthy as possible for families. That's why they decided to curate the highest quality, all natural, mostly organic cookie ingredients, but keep them individually packaged so that kids could still have the full experience of pouring, mixing, and scooping. Scratch & Bake now offers seven different cookie kits on their website, including three that are gluten-free. Individual kits sell for $7.99, and there also combination packs available at various price points. If you'd rather check out the kits in person, they're available in different stores across the country, listed on their website.

If You Give a Shark a Cookie...

Tutin and Geiger created a product and a company that fulfilled a need for their households, but the question remains, does this product meet the needs of many? Scratch & Grain creates a middle ground between cut-and-bake cookie dough slabs and the true make-it-from-scratch experience, and that's apparently an open space on grocery store shelves. Tutin and Geiger told the Portland Business Journal that after investing $45,000 of their own money to launch the business 18 months ago, Scratch & Grain kits are now sold in 400 grocery stores in 48 states, including Whole Foods and Albertsons. The Sharks like numbers, and with distribution like that, and cookie kits starting at just $7.99, Tutin and Geiger might just bake themselves into a delicious Shark Tank deal.

Image: Kelsey McNeal/ABC