Meat The Mushroom: Here's What Happened After Shark Tank

We are living in the golden age of meat substitute products. Beyond and Impossible Burgers helped spearhead the charge, but from there, food scientists and innovators have taken the ball and run with it. Two such pioneers are Marvin and Aleah Montague, a Baltimore-based couple that founded the company Meat The Mushroom, a mushroom-based meat substitute made from just five all-natural ingredients: mushrooms, oil, natural smoke flavor, salt, and pepper.

The Meat The Mushroom team came up with their idea after Marvin Montague was diagnosed with heart disease. In the wake of that discovery, he went vegan, which he claims helped cure his enlarged heart muscle. This spurred him to want to open a vegan restaurant in his neighborhood, especially because of the prevalence of food-related illnesses that impact the black community. He and his wife Aleah got to work coming up with the ingredients that would populate the menu, such as bacon made from mushrooms, which is a trendy substitute that has been wooing carnivores over.

It took three attempts for this plant-powered couple to actually get onto "Shark Tank;" by the time they did, they were all in on the Meat The Mushroom business, having sold their car, moved into Marvin Montague's mother's house, and dedicated their collective time strictly to getting this business off the ground.

The Montagues got their shot to pitch their mushroom-based bacon, called Shroomacon, to the "Shark Tank" panel in Season 15, Episode 12, alongside a peanut butter for pets company, a mobile cocktail class, and other hopefuls. Their goal was to land a deal that would net them $150,000 for a 7.5% stake in the company, with a valuation of $2 million.

Their product samples went over well with the Sharks, with Kevin O'Leary declaring that a lot of plant-based meat substitutes had come through the show over the years — Pan's Mushroom Jerky being just one example — but that most of them had paled in terms of taste compared to the Montagues' Shroomacon.

The Meat The Mushroom team told the Sharks that despite a somewhat slow start, they had a lifetime sales total of over $360,000, 93% of which was direct-to-customer — though they were starting to get into grocery stores at the time of the episode. Mark Cuban recused himself due to a conflict with another plant-based meat substitute, and Daymond John and Daniel Lubetzky bowed out due to market challenges, but O'Leary offered the desired $150,000 — but for a 33.3% partnership stake. The Montagues surveyed the field, which led Lori Greiner to offer to split the partnership with O'Leary, after initially trying to undercut him. After some unsuccessful haggling, the company founders agreed to O'Leary and Greiner's terms.

The Meat The Mushroom "Shark Tank" episode aired on January 26, 2024. In the next 12 hours, the company sold $60,000 in product, and by May of 2024, it was cooking up over 1,000 pounds of mushrooms a month as the company attempted to reach its goal of getting into over 1,000 grocery stores by the end of the year.

However, despite the surge in growth, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for the Montagues. Their deal with Kevin O'Leary and Lori Greiner, which they hoped would catapult them into a higher echelon, ultimately fell through, leaving them without the cash influx they were hoping for. 

Despite that, the company added a small team of full-time workers and used Marvin Montague's experience as a welder to invent a new mushroom slicer that cut mushroom-slicing time down from 30 minutes for 10 pounds to two minutes, saving time and money, which the couple put back into the product, including swapping canola oil for olive oil.

Meat The Mushroom is still in business, with Shroomacon being sold in 75 stores, according to the company's website. That includes organic markets and Fresh Market, with which the company at one point had a deal to stock their product in 80 locations.

In January of 2025, the Montagues also announced the opening of a food truck in Baltimore named Swap Out The Swine. This barbecue-inspired food truck offered items such as chicken shroom pita, Shroomacon BLT sandwich, and shellfish-free crab cakes, while also selling Shroomacon by the half-pound for $14. 

In April, 2025, Marvin and Aleah Montague announced that the truck was going on an indefinite hiatus in order to give the business the best room to grow, which required taking a step back and recalibrating, but by June, Swap Out The Swine was back as a carryout location, open on Sundays from 12:00 pm to 6:00 pm.

In a 2025 interview on the "Portia Show," the Meat The Mushroom team revealed that they were working on expanding to other products, including pulled 'shroom — a pulled pork alternative which they had served customers at local Baltimore pop-ups. They have also experimented with creating a shelf-stable Shroomacon variant that could be sold to restaurants as a substitute for bacon bits.

While the product can still be found in some grocery stores, it can also be found in various Baltimore-based restaurants and farmers' markets such as Rotunda Farmer's Market and Fells Point Farmers' Market. It's currently somewhat difficult to find the product outside of the Maryland area, especially given that the website's shop function appears not to work properly, but that may be a temporary problem, as a recent response to an Instagram query teased a "BIG LEAP in our business" coming soon (per Instagram).