Daisy Cakes on Shark Tank: Kim Nelson, Barbara Corcoran's $50,000, and a '10,000 Cakes a Week' Claim the Kitchen Couldn't Bake

Yes, Daisy Cakes got a deal on Shark Tank, and it was one of the first the show could point to as a lasting success. Kim Nelson, who bakes four-layer Southern cakes from family recipes in Pauline, South Carolina, pitched in Season 2, in an episode that aired on April 22, 2011. Barbara Corcoran invested $50,000 for 25% while the other Sharks passed, and Looper reports her terms also included $1 for every cake sold and keeping Nelson’s mother on the team. The deal closed, and Corcoran has repeatedly held it up as a success. Fifteen years later Daisy Cakes is still in business, still small, and still shipping cakes nationwide from South Carolina in October 2026. The figure to be careful with is the most famous one: Corcoran’s 2011 claim that the company was selling “over 10,000 cakes a week.”

The Daisy Cakes Shark Tank deal at a glance

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At $50,000 for 25%, the deal valued Daisy Cakes at $200,000. Our post-money valuation calculator runs that sum for any ask. The royalty matters more than the equity in a business this size, a pattern you also see in Kevin O’Leary’s Potato Parcel deal.

Great Aunt Daisy’s recipes

Daisy Cakes’ own site says it was founded in Pauline in 2009 and that Nelson built it on recipes from her mother, Geraldine, and her great aunt Daisy, for whom the company is named. Entrepreneur reported in 2011 that she learned to bake from her grandmothers and an aunt, and that before the show the business had sold about 1,000 cakes in two years, mostly from holiday shows: more than $27,000 from three of them in Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Houston between October and December 2010.

What happened in the Tank

Corcoran invested while the other Sharks advised her against it, according to Entrepreneur. The magazine noted that Nelson had no concrete plan for the money. Corcoran backed her anyway, for reasons she later spelled out: “But what she really has is inordinate passion and the ability to sell her product,” she told Entrepreneur. “I’ve never seen a business that’s succeeded that didn’t have a salesman at the helm.” Looper’s account of the episode adds that the cakes cost about $18 to make and sold for $44.50.

Did the Daisy Cakes deal close?

Yes. Within months Corcoran was calling it her best investment on the show to date, according to Entrepreneur, and Daisy Cakes appeared on later Shark Tank updates with her. WLOS reported in 2016 that Nelson had just attended her fourth of Corcoran’s “All Star Retreats” for the companies she backs. The company’s website still quotes her: “Kim is authentic and her Daisy Cakes are straight from the heart.”

What happened to Daisy Cakes after Shark Tank

The episode brought about 2,000 orders in two days, according to Looper. After that, the reported numbers are worth lining up by date, because they don’t describe the same thing:

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Why the “10,000 cakes a week” claim doesn’t hold up

It is a useful test of how to read a Shark’s numbers. Entrepreneur’s same 2011 article says the commercial kitchen could produce 5,000 cakes in 30 days, which is about 1,170 a week. Ten thousand a week would be more than eight times what the kitchen could make. It would also mean selling around 520,000 cakes a year, which at the $44.50 price on air is about $23 million a year. The company’s own later figures are nothing like that: WLOS reported about $4.3 million in total over the five years after the episode, roughly $860,000 a year, and about 400 cakes a week. At $44.50, 400 cakes a week is about $925,000 a year, which agrees with the $4.3 million total. The likeliest reading is that Corcoran meant orders or demand in the first rush, or simply exaggerated. Either way, the run rate the business actually reported is about 400 cakes a week, not 10,000.

By the same arithmetic, a $1 royalty on 400 cakes a week would pay Corcoran about $20,800 a year on top of her 25%. That is our estimate from reported figures; the royalty’s actual terms and duration have not been published.

Is Daisy Cakes still in business?

Yes. In October 2026 the company’s site, ilovedaisycakes.com, carries a 2026 copyright and is taking holiday orders, with four-layer cakes at $69.95, vegan gluten-free cakes and a birthday cake at $84.95, a cake-of-the-month club, and a November pumpkin pound cake. It also sells through Goldbelly. Nelson has tried to grow beyond mail order: a founder podcast episode from around 2019 described her decision to open an outpost in Las Vegas, and Looper reports she has talked about franchised baking shops, with quality control as the obstacle. “The cakes would have to be baked exactly the way we bake them here in Pauline,” she said. Daisy Cakes is privately held by Nelson, with Corcoran as an investor. It is not sold on Amazon.

What founders can take from it

First, a Shark backs the founder as much as the product. Corcoran said so plainly, and invested despite the missing plan. Second, a headline number from an investor is a promotional number. Check it against capacity: a kitchen that bakes 1,170 cakes a week cannot sell 10,000. Third, a business doesn’t need to be huge to be a good Shark Tank outcome. Roughly $1 million a year in handmade cakes, for 15 years, from a town in South Carolina, is a real company. Barbara Corcoran made a similar early bet on another food business in Cousins Maine Lobster, which grew in a very different way.