Toast It - Shark Tank Update

The story of Toast It begins not in a gleaming commercial kitchen but in a Venezuelan grandmother's home, where the smell of fresh arepas cooking on a hot comal signaled warmth, family, and belonging. Sisters Maria Corina Vieteis and Maria Fernanda Romer Cabezas grew up carrying that smell in their earliest memories - arepas as birthday-morning breakfast, arepas as comfort after a hard day, arepas as the edible thread connecting them to their heritage even after their family emigrated to the United States.

When Maria Corina applied her food science training and Maria Fernanda her business acumen to the question of how to share that heritage with American neighbors, Toast It was born: a frozen arepa company dedicated to bringing authentic Venezuelan flavors to mainstream grocery stores without sacrificing the taste or the story behind them. The timing was deliberate.

The sisters recognized that the American food landscape was shifting - consumers were actively seeking bold, authentic international flavors that had long existed in immigrant households but rarely appeared on supermarket shelves. Arepas occupied a rich opportunity: beloved among the Venezuelan and Colombian diaspora yet virtually unknown to the average American shopper who had never wandered into a Latin grocery.

Toast It's lineup included Corn Arepas ($5.79), Yuca Arepas ($6.39), Plantain Arepas ($6.39), and Pandebono Bites ($6.79) - priced for quality while remaining genuinely accessible for weeknight dinners. The product itself was clean and pantry-friendly: no artificial ingredients, no complicated preparation, and a naturally gluten-free profile that appealed to health-conscious shoppers regardless of their ethnic background.

A reviewer trying an arepa for the first time could hold one in their hand and understand immediately that it was something different, something real - not a processed approximation of a cultural food but the food itself, adapted for a freezer section. When the sisters entered Shark Tank seeking $100,000 for 5% equity at a $2 million valuation, they pitched Toast It as a bridge between traditional Latin American culinary heritage and contemporary American convenience habits, targeting both nostalgic Hispanic families and curious mainstream consumers who were finally ready to discover what they had been missing.

Their abuela's recipes were the origin. Their ambition was the whole frozen food aisle.

Guest shark Daniel Lubetzky had built KIND Snacks on the conviction that food businesses could succeed commercially while serving a larger purpose - and he heard exactly that philosophy in Maria Corina and Maria Fernanda's pitch. Lubetzky offered $150,000 for 20% equity, and the sisters accepted.

The partnership made immediate strategic sense: KIND's distribution infrastructure and Lubetzky's personal relationships with grocery buyers gave Toast It access to retail channels that would have required years to develop independently, while his experience building purpose-driven food brands provided a genuinely useful blueprint for scaling a brand rooted in cultural storytelling. The deal closed, and with it came a chapter of significant evolution for the brand.

In the period following the Shark Tank episode, the sisters made a decision that reflected their expanded vision: Toast It rebranded as Kiosco - a name evoking the corner markets and street-food stands where Latin American food culture truly lives. The new identity, anchored at eatkiosco.com, positioned the brand to grow beyond arepas toward the full breadth of Latin flavors they hoped to introduce to American kitchens.

Their product pages carry the tagline "From Shark Tank to your table," a direct nod to the journey that connected their abuela's recipes to a national audience. Post-Shark Tank press coverage validated the brand's crossover appeal.

Kiosco's story appeared in Entrepreneur magazine, el Nuevo Herald, Telemundo, Univision, Miami New Times, and Axios - a media mix that illustrated their dual-audience strategy in practice, simultaneously reaching the Hispanic community that recognized the flavors and the mainstream business press that recognized the market opportunity. The media coverage also served as word-of-mouth acceleration, introducing the sisters' story to readers who had never tasted an arepa but understood immediately why someone would want to.

For the Venezuelan community specifically, the Shark Tank appearance carried significance beyond commerce. Seeing two sisters tell their abuela's story on national television - and win a deal with one of food entrepreneurship's most respected figures - represented a kind of mainstream validation that resonated far beyond the frozen food aisle.

Kiosco has continued building on that foundation, serving both the cultural nostalgia and mainstream curiosity markets with products that carry a genuine story in every bite.