When Al “Bubba” Baker walked into Shark Tank in 2013, Bubba’s-Q Boneless Ribs was barely holding together. The family business had reported about $154,000 in sales, mostly through roughly 50 Ohio stores, while Baker was trying to find a way to take his patented rib process nationwide. (abcnews.com)
The pitch ended with one of the more memorable food deals in the show’s history. Daymond John offered $300,000 for 30% of the company, contingent on securing a licensing arrangement with a major meat processor. Baker accepted.
For a while, it looked like the deal had worked spectacularly. Within three years, Bubba’s-Q was being promoted as a Shark Tank success story with $16 million in revenue. The company reached major retailers, appeared on QVC and eventually supplied boneless ribs for a Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s burger sold across thousands of locations. (latimes.com)
Then the relationship between Baker and John deteriorated, and the story became much less straightforward.
Bubba Baker invented the boneless rib because his wife hated the mess
Baker’s idea was unusually literal: take a real rack of ribs, cook it, and remove the bones without turning the meat into something resembling processed meat.
His wife, Sabrina, disliked the mess involved in eating ribs. Baker spent years developing a method that would let people eat the meat with a knife and fork. He eventually patented the rib itself in 2007 and the cooking process in 2011. (latimes.com)
The family had been making the product at small scale, even renting a supermarket’s processing facilities and producing ribs overnight after the store closed. By 2013, though, the economics were becoming difficult. Baker wanted national distribution, but the company did not have the capital or manufacturing infrastructure to get there. (latimes.com)
His daughter, Brittani, pushed him to apply for Shark Tank. The opportunity arrived at almost exactly the moment the business needed it.
Daymond John offered $300,000 for 30%, and Baker said yes
Baker entered the Tank asking for $300,000 in exchange for 15% of the company.
Kevin O’Leary offered the same $300,000, but wanted 49%. John countered with $300,000 for 30%, with the additional condition that Baker pursue a licensing deal with a major meat producer. Baker chose John. (latimes.com)
The deal became especially interesting because the Sharks were not simply betting on a barbecue product. Baker had patents covering the unusual process behind the product, giving the business something that could potentially be licensed rather than merely manufactured and sold one package at a time.
That distinction mattered. A small food company could struggle to finance national production, while a licensing arrangement with a large meat producer could theoretically put Baker’s invention into a much larger distribution system.
But the deal shown on television was not necessarily the final arrangement.
John later said the televised terms were contingent on finding a licensing partner and that the condition was not fulfilled as he understood it. Baker disputed that explanation. The Los Angeles Times reported that Baker said John subsequently changed the investment to $100,000 for 35% of the company. John maintained that the terms changed as part of post-show due diligence. (latimes.com)
That disagreement would eventually become central to the much larger dispute.
The Shark Tank episode produced an immediate sales explosion
Whatever happened to the investment terms afterward, the television exposure itself worked.
Before the episode aired, John encouraged the Bakers to build an e-commerce operation so they could capture the demand generated by the show. The result was dramatic. Baker told the Los Angeles Times that the company received about $250,000 in online orders within days of the episode. Earlier reporting from SUCCESS said orders reached $150,000 in the first 24 hours and exceeded $400,000 by the end of the week. (latimes.com)
The problem was that Bubba’s-Q was not prepared for the volume.
Its existing co-packer could not produce enough product, while shipping and handling costs had also been underestimated. Baker eventually had to refund a substantial portion of the early orders. SUCCESS reported that roughly half of those orders were refunded during the initial production crisis. (success.com)
That experience exposed the real challenge behind the product. The question was no longer whether people wanted boneless ribs. They clearly did.
The question was whether the company could manufacture and distribute them economically at national scale.
Rastelli Foods helped turn Bubba’s-Q into a national food business
The next major step came through Rastelli Foods Group.
By 2015, the Bakers had agreed to work with the New Jersey-based food manufacturer. Rastelli would produce, sell, distribute and market the ribs, while also handling accounting. The arrangement gave Bubba’s-Q access to the manufacturing infrastructure it had previously lacked. (latimes.com)
Rastelli’s own case study describes the transformation in straightforward terms: the company helped take Bubba’s-Q from $154,000 in sales to $16 million in three years. It also says the original product was redesigned from an 8-ounce unsauced package into an 18-ounce sauced, heat-and-serve product. (rastellifoodsgroup.com)
The $16 million figure is widely reported, but it should be understood as reported revenue rather than profit. That distinction became crucial later.
The product reached grocery stores, QVC and other retail channels. At one point, the Bakers said it was being sold in approximately 1,400 locations. (latimes.com)
The Carl’s Jr. deal made Bubba’s-Q look like a Shark Tank home run
In 2017, Bubba’s-Q reached one of its biggest commercial moments.
Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s launched a Baby Back Rib Burger using Baker’s de-boned ribs. The burger was rolled out across about 3,000 franchise locations, and The Los Angeles Times reported the deal was valued at $5.8 million. (latimes.com)
From the outside, this was exactly what a Shark Tank investment was supposed to produce: a small family food company had gone from local supermarkets to a national restaurant chain.
Daymond John had even described the investment as potentially his biggest deal ever. (latimes.com)
But the size of the sales headline concealed a problem that would eventually become impossible for the Bakers to ignore.
Revenue was not the same thing as money reaching the owners.
The dispute was about profits, control and what the deal actually became
The Bakers later alleged that the financial results did not match the success being presented publicly.
In its 2023 investigation, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Bakers said they had received $659,653 despite the business generating the much-publicized $16 million in revenue. They also raised concerns about accounting, control of the business and the way profits from major deals were allocated. (latimes.com)
John disputed the Bakers’ account. He said he had lost money on the investment, denied taking advantage of Baker and said the Bakers had significant access to financial information. Rastelli likewise rejected the Bakers’ allegations and said production costs and pricing problems had hurt the business. (latimes.com)
One particularly contentious example involved the Carl’s Jr. deal. The Bakers told the Los Angeles Times they expected to earn at least $193,000 from the arrangement, but said they received $2,900 in net profits plus a $61,917.45 licensing fee. Rastelli declined to address the specific discrepancy, citing confidentiality. (latimes.com)
The parties eventually went through arbitration and mediation. A 2019 settlement acknowledged that the business had accumulated $14.5 million in gross receipts and included provisions concerning profit sharing, financial transparency and cooperation on future opportunities. (latimes.com)
That settlement did not end the conflict.
The legal fight eventually overshadowed the ribs
By 2023, Baker was publicly describing the partnership as a nightmare and accusing John, his associates and Rastelli of misleading the family and depriving them of profits. John and the other parties rejected those claims.
The dispute reached federal court.
In July 2023, a New Jersey federal judge granted a permanent restraining order against Baker, his daughter Brittani and his wife Sabrina. The order prohibited the Bakers from making further disparaging statements about John and DF Ventures and also applied to statements concerning Rastelli Foods Group. The ruling followed an earlier 2019 settlement and findings that the Bakers had violated obligations arising from that agreement. (ew.com)
That matters because some online accounts describe the outcome as though a court had simply ruled that Baker’s allegations were true or false in their entirety. The legal proceedings concerned the parties’ contractual obligations and the Bakers’ public statements; John also maintained that he lost money on the investment, while the Bakers maintained that they had been denied the financial benefits they expected.
The public dispute therefore should not be reduced to a simple “Shark cheated entrepreneur” or “entrepreneur failed business” story. The parties gave fundamentally different accounts of what happened.
So, is Bubba’s-Q Boneless Ribs still in business?
The evidence today is considerably less encouraging than the company’s Shark Tank peak.
Bubba’s-Q’s original restaurant in Avon, Ohio, closed in 2019 after 13 years. More recent reporting has found the branded retail operation difficult to trace, with the company’s former online store no longer functioning and the product largely absent from normal retail distribution. Food Republic reported in 2025 that its research indicated production of the retail offerings had ceased. (foodrepublic.com)
There is some evidence that the product has not completely disappeared from the commercial ecosystem. QVC still maintains product pages for Bubba’s-Q boneless ribs, although its current listings indicate the products are not presently available for purchase. (qvc.com)
That is a useful distinction: the brand and product have not simply vanished from every database or retail page, but there is no strong evidence of the national consumer business operating at anything resembling its 2016-17 scale.
What happened after the deal was not a simple Shark Tank success story
Bubba’s-Q is unusual because both halves of its Shark Tank story are real.
The deal produced extraordinary exposure. Sales climbed from about $154,000 to reported revenue of $16 million within three years. The product reached major retail channels, QVC and thousands of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s locations. (success.com)
But growth did not translate into a lasting, uncomplicated family business.
The manufacturing economics were difficult. The company relied on outside partners. The parties later disagreed sharply over accounting, profits, control and the terms of their relationships. Those disagreements led to arbitration, settlement agreements and eventually a federal court order restricting the Bakers’ public statements.
By the mid-2020s, Bubba’s-Q was no longer the national food success story that Shark Tank once showcased.
The striking part is that the ribs themselves were never really the problem. Baker solved a clear consumer annoyance and proved that people would buy the result. What the Shark Tank story ultimately demonstrates is something less televisual: getting a food product into thousands of stores is one challenge; building a durable company around it, while preserving control, margins and financial transparency, is another.
Bubba’s-Q managed the first. The rest of the story is why the second mattered more.
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