Sweet Corn Farmer Dives Into the Shark Tank

Sheldrake’s family has grown sweet corn and other vegetables since 1960 at Early Bird Farm in Ithaca, New York. In the summertime, like many small farmers, they sell corn, picked by hand each day, at a roadside stand. Consumers pay a premium for the freshest sweet corn, and at the end of the day, unsold ears, whose delicate sugars are all the while turning to starch, are discarded. At one time, Early Bird might have sent its excess sweet corn to be frozen or canned at a local Seneca Foods plant, but the company closed the nearby facility about 10 years ago.

Sheldrake, seeking to close the sweet corn efficiency gap, began to experiment with making tortilla chips that included fresh sweet corn kernels in addition to the grain corn masa that makes up other chips. He wrote a business plan that won him a $20,000 grant from Babson College, from which he graduated in 2012, and raised another $15,000 on Kickstarter, to begin his business, Off The Cob Sweet Corn Tortilla chips. He began selling the chips online, and at retail stores, running the business while continuing to work on the family farm. Seeking a $100,000 investment of to help grow the business while streamlining production, Sheldrake made an appeal on Friday the to the panel of high-profile investor “sharks,” including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and inventor and QVC personality Lori Greiner, on the television show “Shark Tank.”

“My business is really important to me, because we’re helping to sustain my family farm,” said Sheldrake in his introductory segment, which also featured a clip of him feeding sweet corn to the family dog. “I had to find something to do with this corn, so I made a plan to change it from wasteful to tasteful.” (The earnest and articulate Sheldrake may have been coached in TV-speak by “Shark Tank” producers.)

“My business is really important to me, because we’re helping to sustain my family farm.”

While the sharks seemed to enjoy the chips they sampled on camera, none were ultimately willing to put their own money behind the product, citing concerns about the scale of the business, and fears of a delayed return on investment. Kevin O’Leary, known as the harshest of the sharks, also balked at the relatively high price of the chips, which retail for about $3 for a 4-ounce bag. Sheldrake explained that he pays over $5 per pound for the sweet corn that goes into his chips (it’s not yet efficient for him to use his own farm’s corn), versus 30 cents per pound for commodity grain corn masa.

Despite the sharks’ unanimous rejection, Off The Cob seemed to benefit immediately from the TV exposure, to the point that a flood of orders crashed its website and cleaned Amazon.com out of its existing stock. Whether the exposure will shake loose a willing investor remains to be seen, but Sheldrake is undeterred.

“I’m just going to keep growing my chip company, and figure out the best ways to do it,” he says. “Hopefully we can bring production back home [to Ithaca], but if not, at least we can support sweet corn growers on a large scale.”

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