Yes, Cousins Maine Lobster got a deal on Shark Tank, and unlike many on-air handshakes, this one went through. In an episode broadcast on October 19, 2012, cousins Jim Tselikis and Sabin Lomac — two months into running a single lobster-roll truck in Los Angeles — sold Barbara Corcoran 15% of the business for $55,000. Fourteen years later the company is still in business and privately held — in 2023 it said Corcoran was its only investor — and has grown into a franchise system of food trucks and a smaller number of restaurants. Its founders’ new book calls it a “Billion-Dollar Business.” That figure is real in one specific sense, and it is worth being precise about which.

What happened in the Shark Tank

The founders asked for $55,000 for 5% of the company, which Kevin O’Leary pointed out valued a two-month-old food truck at more than $1 million (the post-money valuation calculator shows the arithmetic), according to the Portland Press Herald’s account of the episode the night it aired. They wanted the money for a second truck and an online business selling lobster pot pie and lobster mac and cheese. Tasting Table, which interviewed the founders in 2023, reports they had one truck and $150,000 in sales when they taped the episode in July 2012.

Mark Cuban, O’Leary and Daymond John went out. Robert Herjavec offered $55,000 for 25%, then raised the cash to $100,000 before dropping out. Corcoran offered $55,000 for 17%; the cousins countered at 12%, and they settled at 15%, per the Press Herald. “Barbara, welcome to the family,” Lomac said.

Did the deal close?

It did, by every account we found. Tasting Table reports that Corcoran’s investment went through and that the founders spent it largely on the legal documents and other costs of franchising. In 2023, the company’s director of marketing, Annie Tselikis, told Richmond BizSense that Corcoran remains the company’s only investor. (That article describes her stake as 17%, the opening offer; the contemporaneous episode coverage records 15% as the agreed number. Her current percentage has not been disclosed.)

What Corcoran actually changed

The episode itself did less than you might expect. Tselikis told Tasting Table that online orders stayed weak because the e-commerce part of the pitch was edited out: “We ended up sitting on a lot of inventory that didn’t move.” A Good Morning America appearance a few weeks later, arranged with Corcoran’s help, did more; the Working Waterfront reported in 2015 that the company sold $250,000 of lobster pot pie in four hours after a GMA segment. The founders told Tasting Table that they bought the second truck with company money, not hers.

Her larger contribution was the model. “(Corcoran) was the one that led us to franchising,” Annie Tselikis told Richmond BizSense. “When we started, the food truck was our first franchise model,” with “the second concept” a brick-and-mortar storefront. The company says it began franchising in 2014. The founders told Tasting Table that without her push they believe they would still be a regional business.

How the franchise model works

Cousins Maine Lobster franchises two formats: food trucks and restaurants. Its franchise page puts the initial investment at “$194,000 to $644,700 for our food trucks and $266,700 to $968,900 for our restaurants,” and asks for at least $250,000 in liquidity and a $500,000 net worth. Franchisees tend to take territories rather than single trucks: Verdict Food Service reported in 2025 that the average franchisee runs six units, and in Richmond a pair of brothers held the rights to D.C., Maryland and Virginia and planned six trucks, per Richmond BizSense. “All of our products go over the road and we have a pretty tight supply chain and very efficient logistics,” Annie Tselikis told that paper. Alongside the franchise system, the company runs what it calls a shore-to-door online shop that ships live Maine lobster.

The food truck is the important design choice. It is a cheaper, faster unit to open than a restaurant, and Verdict Food Service reported in 2025 that trucks can launch within three to six months. It is also why location counts for this company are slippery: a “unit” might be a truck that moves between events, not a fixed address.

What happened to Cousins Maine Lobster after Shark Tank

The growth is documented in snapshots, and they do not all agree:

The gap between 85-plus units in mid-2025 and 50 locations in 2026 is not explained in anything we found; it may be a stale caption or a different way of counting, and we cannot tell which. Nor did we find an announcement that the 100th unit has opened. Restaurants have not all lasted: a New York City location run by the Richmond franchisees closed during the pandemic, according to Richmond BizSense. Expansion continued into 2026, with a new truck in South Bend, Indiana, in March and a Fort Wayne truck slated for 2027, per a February 2026 company release.

About that billion dollars

In June 2025, Fast Casual reported that the company had “surpassed $1 billion in systemwide sales since its founding in 2012.” Read the words carefully. “Systemwide” means sales across all franchised and company units, most of which belongs to franchisees, not the franchisor. “Since its founding” means thirteen years added together. It is a cumulative sales figure, not annual revenue, not profit and not a valuation, and it is the company’s own unaudited number. The more useful figure for a would-be franchisee is per unit: Fast Casual, citing the company’s 2025 Franchise Disclosure Document, reported average 2024 truck sales of about $1.3 million.

The founders and their books

Both cousins grew up in southern Maine — Tselikis in Cape Elizabeth, Lomac in Scarborough — according to the Working Waterfront. Tselikis studied political science and worked in medical device sales in Boston; Lomac studied drama in New York and moved to California for a real-estate career. After Tselikis visited Lomac in the winter of 2011, they put $85,000 into a truck that opened in Los Angeles in April 2012 and did $65,000 in its first month, the same report says. “You don’t realize what you had when you were kids,” Lomac told Tasting Table.

They have written two books. Cousins Maine Lobster: How One Food Truck Became a Multi-Million-Dollar Business came out from St. Martin’s in 2018; Publishers Weekly said it “successfully avoids being an extended commercial for their company.” The second, Life and Lobster: From Shark Tank to a Billion-Dollar Business (And How We Almost Lost It All), was published by Matt Holt Books on September 22, 2026. The company’s own page for it carries a disclaimer that the book “does not constitute official Cousins Maine Lobster company guidance.”

What founders can take from it

First, the cheapest-looking deal on Shark Tank can be the best one: $55,000 bought Corcoran’s attention, her media contacts and her push toward franchising, which mattered more than the cash. Second, the franchise model was a choice about capital. Trucks let other people’s money fund expansion at a lower cost per unit than restaurants, which is how a company with a single outside investor reached dozens of markets. Third, read big numbers for what they measure. A billion dollars of lifetime systemwide sales and “50 locations” versus “85 units” are both true statements of something; neither tells you the franchisor’s revenue, which has not been published.

This is an editorial profile assembled from the public record, not an interview. Sources: Portland Press Herald — Two Maine lobster vendors go swimming in ‘Shark Tank’ (Oct. 19, 2012), Tasting Table — Cousins Maine Lobster after Shark Tank: we caught up with the founders (2023), Richmond BizSense — Lobster-focused food truck franchise rolls into Richmond (Mar. 10, 2023), The Working Waterfront — Maine cousins succeed with lobster food trucks (Apr. 27, 2015), Fast Casual — Cousins Maine Lobster surpasses $1B systemwide sales (June 30, 2025), Verdict Food Service — report on the 100th-location target (June 9, 2025), Cousins Maine Lobster press release via PR Newswire (Feb. 24, 2026), Cousins Maine Lobster — Franchise, Cousins Maine Lobster — Life and Lobster, Publishers Weekly — review of Cousins Maine Lobster (Jan. 22, 2018), TheTVDB — Shark Tank season 4, episode 6. Franchise figures and site status checked October 23, 2026.