Jared Cannon took a swim with some sharks. He looked to be in hot water for a moment, but in the end, he emerged with two apex predators on his side.
The Moorestown resident (formerly of Cherry Hill) appeared on the Friday, March 5 episode of Shark Tank where he struck a deal with Sharks Lori Greiner and Mark Cuban. Greiner and Cuban split 10 percent equity in the company in exchange for a $500,000 investment in his company Simply Good Jars.
A professional chef by trade, Cannon created a patent-pending package that preserves fresh ingredients without preservatives. The salads that come in Simply Good Jars are marketed as restaurant-quality and have a shelf life of up to nine days. For every jar a customer recycles, Simply Good Jars donates one to a community in need.
The concept behind Simply Good Jars began percolating in Cannon’s head around five years ago. Cannon was a professional chef with experience having trained at the Culinary Institute of American in New York, worked for Ritz-Carlton and running kitchens up and down the East Coast.
He was struck by the juxtaposition of the fact that he was making all this food for people to enjoy and then would walk through Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia and see people begging for food. The behind the scenes look at the food industry gave him a first-hand perspective on food waste, and he looked at the clamshell model of packaging utilized by most grocery stores for salads and thought to himself that there had to be a better way.
He wondered how he could combine restaurant quality flavor in a prepackaged format. But he also wanted any product to remain sustainable and to empower everyday people to help eradicate hunger in their communities.
With that, Simply Good Jars was born. Cannon designed the propriety jar that helps give the fresh ingredients three times the average salad shelf life. Customers simply shake the jar to combine ingredients and can eat directly from the package. The jar is also resealable.
Customers can then scan the QR code on the jar’s package to indicate they plan to recycle the jar and provide their zip code. For every recycled jar, Simply Good Jars donates to a serviceable food bank near the customer.
Prior to COVID-19, Simply Good Jars operated out of a sort of vending machine model in hotels, universities, office buildings and other areas where people may be stuck without access to fresh food options. But when the world shut down in March 2020 and these public spaces became vacant in the blink of an eye, the company sold off all of its vending machines and doubled down on retail distribution.
By Easter 2020, Simply Good Jars had contracts in place with more than 250 retail stores to stock the jars in nine states. Cannon said the standard commoditized bag salad never tastes as fresh or good as something at a restaurant, and so in his eyes, the market was ready for some disruption.
Cannon was contacted by Shark Tank’s casting team in 2020, and several interviews later he was put into the pool of entrepreneurs before flying out to film last August.
“Being there on the carpet with the sharks in front of you – sharks in front of your face – it was equally energizing, inspiring and terrifying,” Cannon said.
Cannon said he put everything on the line when he stepped out on the carpet to make his pitch in the hopes that someone would raise his or her hand to offer a deal. Ultimately, sharks Lori Greiner and Mark Cuban did so, investing $500,000 in exchange for a 10 percent stake of the company.
While Cannon was tight-lipped about deals on the horizon, he has plans to launch Simply Good Jars in 100 stores in the D.C./Virginia area this month with more launches to follow nationwide.
He said to see the positive response to Simply Good Jars since they pulled all of their vending machines and to land on Shark Tank has left him feeling encouraged.
“It’s re-energized and inspired me,” Cannon said. “ The fact that all this hard work is culminating toward something.”
