DENVER — Owners of a Colorado grocery store focused on sustainable packaging have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to expand their business — and their impact — with an appearance on "Shark Tank" right here on Denver7 on March 11 at 8 p.m.
“Honestly, they weren't as sharky as I was expecting,” said CEO and Co-founder of Nude Foods Market Rachel Irons, laughing. “We made a list of over 100 questions that we thought they might ask us, put answers to them and practiced those to make sure that we were ready for whatever they could throw at us.”
"Shark Tank" producers reached out to Irons and Verity Noble, CMO and another co-founder of the small grocery business, after learning about their business model. They have a store in Boulder and in Denver, and they are zero-waste grocery stores where all of the products are packaged by employees into pre-weighed glass jars. Customers head home with those containers and return them to the store the next time they go shopping.
“Not only is our packaging sustainable, but every piece of food in here is deeply researched to make sure it's good for people and planet,” Noble said. “We want to be a one-stop shop for people. So, we want to be an actual viable alternative to mainstream grocery shopping.”
Nude Foods started during the pandemic as an online grocery-delivery service in Boulder. Not wanting to harm the environment by packaging foods in single-use plastic containers, customers would be given glass jars that they would give back to the delivery drivers on their next order.
The business boomed, and after only about a year they opened their first retail store in Boulder. The owners credit a lot of that success to the culture of Colorado.
“I think Colorado is the perfect place to open a zero-waste grocery store,” Noble said. “People here love the outdoors. That generally makes them more interested in the environment, more thoughtful, and more conscious about what they put out there.”
Now, they are trying to grow. First, they want to expand to five stores in the Denver area to prove that their business model works and to automate some of the jarring they currently do by hand. If that is successful, they plan on expanding to other cities in the United States. They’re hoping the sharks can help them make their dream come true.
“Rachel and I probably ran through our pitch, I don't know, 250 times,” said Noble, laughing. “However big you made it, they wanted it bigger, so we had to be really over the top with it, which was kind of fun.”
Watch the show on Denver7 on March 11 at 8 p.m.
