When James and Johanna Windon launched Buena Papa two years ago, they had just $18 in their bank account.
Now, they bring in millions of dollars in annual revenue across three North Carolina restaurant locations, they said on Friday’s episode of ABC’s “Shark Tank” — during which they landed a $400,000 investment offer from millionaire entrepreneur Robert Herjavec.
The Windons, a husband-and-wife duo, opened their first location of Buena Papa — where you can find Colombian, Mexican, Puerto Rican and American flavors piled on top of French fries — in Raleigh in July 2021. They needed to make money after closing their cleaning business amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and Johanna, a native of Colombia, wanted to somehow involve the flavors of Latin street food.
Despite no prior restaurant experience, the pair “invested our life savings [of] $40,000,” leaving just $18 behind, James said. Four weeks later, their fries went viral on TikTok, he noted — and the attention brought in plenty of paying customers.
“Our first year, we did $1.1 million. We took all the profits from that and invested it in [our second] store … Combined, this year, we’re going to finish at about $2 million,” said James, adding that he and Johanna plan to expand to a Miami location later this year.
The Windons asked the show’s panel of investors for $400,000 in exchange for a 7% equity stake in their business. They wanted to use the money to open more locations — one a year, for the next five years — and didn’t want to use their profits to do so, saying bootstrapping was “sucking up all the cash flow.”
They’d also already sold the franchising rights for four other new locations, which haven’t opened yet, James noted.
The investors reacted differently. Mark Cuban opted out, citing the difficulty of simultaneously operating restaurant locations and overseeing any number of franchisees.
“Running a restaurant is a hard business. Once you franchise, you’re in a second business … the babysitting business,” Cuban said. “If you guys were just in this, I was interested, but you’re in two different businesses. I think that’s going to crush you. I’m out.”
Kevin O’Leary also declined to make an offer, saying he was on a personal mission to eat more healthily and backing a French fries restaurant would make him feel hypocritical. Barbara Corcoran and Lori Greiner took a different approach: They didn’t want to invest because they thought the Windons were already in great shape.
“You don’t really need anybody,” Corcoran said. “You have the whole package, you have each other, you’re progressing nicely and I think you’ll continue that way.”
That left Robert Herjavec, who offered the Windons $400,000 for 20% of Buena Papa. The couple tried to counter-offer with 15%, but Herjavec held firm, only going down to 19%.
The Windons accepted. “We’re going to take Buena Papa from Raleigh, North Carolina, and it’s going to travel all over these United States until it’s in every metropolitan city,” James said. “The sky is the limit.”
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