Marcus Lemonis is best known for running his billion-dollar company Camping World, as well as hosting CNBC’s “The Profit.” But one little-known fact about the business mogul is this: He’s a “macaron snob.”
And Macaron Queen — a boutique macaron shop in Atlanta — gets his seal of approval.
“I actually think this is the best macaron I’ve ever had,” Lemonis says on an all-new episode of “The Profit” on Tuesday.
Macaron Queen is a small start-up with a great business model. Co-founders Finia Jahangard and Nina Chteoui are the mother-daughter team behind the beloved dessert shop and need Marcus’ help in scaling the business.
As a backstory, Jahangard was the original creator behind Macaron Queen. After Jahangard underwent heart surgery, her daughter stepped in to help run the company. With no prior experience in the food industry, Chteoui went from working in fashion to opening their commissary kitchen.
“Inside of every business there’s a story of why they got in the business, how they got there, and the troubles that they’ve had,” Lemonis says in the episode. “And the fact that Finia has had real health scares puts a lot of pressure on the business.”
Throughout the episode, Lemonis focuses on getting Jahangard all the help she needs when it comes to baking in large masses. Trusting the process — as well as others — is going to be a major theme. But with Jahangard being a perfectionist, she has difficulty trusting others with her macaron recipe. And this could pose a huge threat to the company if she’s not willing to release it.
Chteoui tells CNBC her goal a few years ago was to have her mother expand the brand in the marketplace, but her lack of trust in others held her back.
“Mom was at one point popping the bubbles in the macarons,” Chteoui tells CNBC. “If it wasn’t perfectly smooth, it didn’t make the cut. That’s how precise she ran the kitchen. When I went to her with a co-packing idea originally, I was met with major resistance, and she was scared that they might make the macarons for us, but also make it and sell it in the backdoor to someone else or under a different name.”
When Lemonis first came into the picture, Chteoui says that co-packing was one of the first topics of discussion. Lemonis validated Jahangard’s decision not to get a co-packer early on, given her vulnerable state. But with her health on the line, this exclusive recipe needed to be written down as soon as possible.
In Tuesday’s episode, viewers will see how Macaron Queen reaches major milestones that leave Lemonis saying: “It is definitely one of the biggest wins in small business history for me. It was that big of a deal for me.”
Tune in Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET for an all-new episode of “The Profit” on CNBC. Use the channel finder tool to see where you can find CNBC on your TV.