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| Industry | Foodservice |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2012 |
| Founders | Jim Tselikis, Sabin Lomac |
| Headquarters | |
| Website | www |
Cousins Maine Lobster is a franchise food truck business based in Los Angeles, California. In addition to food truck locations in Southern California, it has franchise locations throughout the United States.
The idea for Cousins Maine Lobster came in 2011 when cousins Jim Tselikis and Sabin Lomac were discussing food they used to eat while growing up in Portland, Maine. [1] Impressed with the Los Angeles food truck industry, they decided to start selling Maine lobster in the L.A. area. [1] The first truck opened in 2012 and by 2014 had four trucks in Southern California and signed up 10 franchisees in locations throughout the United States. The company received an investment of $55,000 from Barbara Corcoran after appearing on Shark Tank in 2012. [1]
Cousins opened its first brick-and-mortar location in 2015 in West Hollywood with additional menu items not found on the food trucks. [2] At the time of the store opening, the company was operating 15 food trucks in 11 cities, [2] and 26 trucks in 13 states by 2017. [3] In April 2018, the Cousins published an ebook in the hope of inspiring other entrepreneurs to start a business, and not lose hope.
On April 11, 2021, Jim Tselikis and Sabin Lomac's new show, "Food Truck Rehab" premiered on The Food Network. [4] As of February 2024, Cousins Maine Lobster had 60 locations and had plans to expand in the Chicago area. [5]
Wahoo's Fish Taco is a U.S.-based restaurant chain that offers Mexican food mixed with Brazilian and Asian flavors. Categorized as a "fast casual restaurant", the quality and preparation time of its food is between that of a fast-food restaurant and a more formal restaurant. Wahoo's provides many vegetarian and some vegan options, such as tofu, banzai veggies and brown rice, and also provides a kids' meal menu. They serve wahoo fish in their tacos, as well as Mahi-mahi.
Daymond Garfield John is an American businessman, investor, and television personality. He is best known as an investor on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank. As well as being the founder, president, and chief executive officer of FUBU, and Based in New York City, John is the founder of The Shark Group.
Kogi Korean BBQ is a fleet of five fusion food trucks in Los Angeles famous both for their combination of Korean with Mexican food and also for their reliance on Internet technology, especially Twitter and YouTube, to spread information about their offerings and locations. Highlights of typical fare include Spicy Pork Tacos, Kimchi Quesadillas and Short Rib Sliders. Its owner/founder, Mark Manguera, a Filipino-American, married into a Korean family and was inspired to combine Mexican and Korean food as a result. The food truck has won much recognition, including a Bon Appétit Award in 2009 and "Best New Chef" for Roy Choi by Food & Wine in 2010, the first for a food truck.
Shark Tank is an American business reality television series that premiered on August 9, 2009, on ABC. The show is the American franchise of the international format Dragons' Den, a Japanese TV series. It shows entrepreneurs making business presentations to a panel of five venture capitalists called "sharks" on the program, who decide whether to invest in their companies.
The Best Thing I Ever Ate is a television series that originally aired on Food Network, debuting on June 22, 2009.
Barbara Ann Corcoran is an American businesswoman, investor, syndicated columnist, and television personality. She founded The Corcoran Group, a real estate brokerage in New York City, which she sold to NRT for $66 million in 2001 and shortly thereafter exited the company. One of the show's original "Shark" investors, Corcoran has appeared in all 14 seasons of ABC's Shark Tank to date. As of January 2023, she has made 130 deals on the show, the largest being a $350,000 investment for 40% of Coverplay.
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Chi'Lantro BBQ is a Korean-Mexican fusion mobile truck and catering service which opened in Austin, Texas in 2010. Since then, the former food truck operation has opened ten restaurants in the Austin area. The name "Chi'Lantro" is a portmanteau of "kimchi" and "cilantro", two distinct cultural staples aiming to reinvent traditional Korean and Mexican cuisine. They are known as the originator of a dish known as "Kimchi Fries".
The Grilled Cheese Truck is a food truck company serving gourmet "chef driven" grilled cheese sandwiches. The company started in Los Angeles in 2009, and has since expanded throughout Southern California, Phoenix, San Antonio and Austin.
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Andrew Gruel is an American chef and television personality, based in Orange County, California. He appeared as a judge on Food Network's Food Truck Face Off and as a host of FYI's Say It to My Face!, and is the founder of Slapfish, a seafood restaurant franchise that he launched in 2012 and sold to Mac Haik Enterprises in 2022. He is the founder, CEO and executive chef of Big Parm, a pizza restaurant in Tustin, California; Two Birds, a chicken restaurant in Irvine, California; Butterleaf, a plant-based restaurant in Irvine, California; and Calico Fish House, a casual seafood restaurant in Huntington Beach, California.
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Buck Mason is an American clothing brand founded in Los Angeles in 2013 by Erik Allen Ford and Sasha Koehn. Buck Mason sells men's and women's apparel primarily online, and also through 27 brick and mortar retail locations in the US.
Ten Thirty One Productions was an American entertainment company based in Los Angeles that created, owned, and produced live attractions in the horror genre. It was featured on Season 5 of Shark Tank where it received the largest investment in the history of the show. The company was sold to Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group.
Melissa Carbone is an American entrepreneur who creates, owns, and produces live attractions primarily in the horror genre. She is the creator and founder of Ten Thirty One Productions which owns Haunted Hayrides in Los Angeles and New York and the Great Horror Campout.
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Alvin Cailan is an American chef, author, and television host; of Filipino-American ethnicity. He is the host of First We Feast’s The Burger Show which airs on YouTube and Hulu. Cailan launched Eggslut, a food truck that specialized in egg sandwiches. The food truck quickly became popular and often had waits that stretched to two hours long. Eggslut has brick-and-mortar locations, including at Los Angeles' Grand Central Market and Venice, Glendale, and Las Vegas. Cailan was named the head chef of Umami Burger in 2021.
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