'Shark Tank' recap: Sisters' macaron ice cream sandwiches prove a sweet investment

On Sunday’s “Shark Tank,” the daughters of a Vietnamese refugee made their father’s entrepreneurial dreams a reality. And Kevin O’Leary coached his fellow sharks on how to properly say macaron:  “It’s not mac-a-roon. It’s mah-kah-ron. Get it right.”

Gwen and Christine Nguyen’s biggest hero is their father, who immigrated to America in 1975 on a small wooden boat. He learned English, put himself through college and worked two jobs for over 20 years as an electrical engineer to provide for them.

The sisters own Mavens Creamery, a California-based macaron ice cream sandwich maker, and were seeking $400,000 for 10% of the business.

“We’re the only manufacturer in the country that produces an all-natural line of macaron sandwich,” Christine said. “We take our homemade super-premium ice cream and form them into perfectly shaped hockey pucks and stick them between two macarons – that we made from scratch by the way – (to) create the perfect ice cream sandwich.”

The ice cream treat wowed the sharks, and the sisters even had the sweet victory of proving Mr. Wonderful wrong when he questioned how long a macaron stayed fresh.

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“The macaron, because it’s made fresh and has a component of egg, spoils very, very quickly,” O’Leary said, stressing macaron in a heavy French accent, to eye rolls from shark Daymond John. “When you freeze these, how long is the shelf life of the macron part?”

“Six months,” Christine said as John and fellow shark Lori Greiner rubbed it in O’Leary’s face that he was wrong.

While the company’s yearly sales of $1.5 million sounded great to the sharks, the margins were two narrow (it cost $1.08 to make and sold for $2.20) and the profits too slim (they kept only $167,000) for O’Leary and shark Mark Cuban.

“The product is amazing, just phenomenal,” Cuban said. “When businesses are growing, it’s great. But your margins are so slim, $1.08 versus $2.20, the minute sales decline at all, you start to get this cascade of problems where all of a sudden the retailers that are giving you space aren’t giving you money for that space.”

But, the sisters’ story of their father and his dream struck a chord with shark Barbara Corcoran, who remembered being 35 years old and using the profits from her business to surprise her parents with the gift of a Cadillac convertible. She was willing to make the sisters an offer if they answered a simple question: What did their father think of their company?

Gwen describe how, at the grand opening of their manufacturing lab, their father started to cry: “That’s the first time I ever saw my dad cry in my life before. He’s not a sentimental guy, but he shows it by other means. And he said, 'I only wish my parents were proud of me, the way I was proud of you guys.' ”

Corcoran offered them the $400,000 but wanted a 33.3% stake, believing she would put a lot of work into making their product successful.

“Would you be willing to go down to 20%?” Gwen asked.

They decided to meet in the middle at 25% and make a deal. Afterward, Christine said: “I think what Barbara saw in us was her when she was young, struggling and when she finally made it, and she made her father proud, just like we are making our father proud.”