In 2001, Sean O’Connor was a co-owner of a San Francisco club that served up punk bands alongside yak burgers and bear-meat chili, reports Fortune Small Business.
When the dot-coms collapsed, he pared down the menu to focus on cheap, creative snacks.
During an experiment with whipped cream canisters and funnel cake — a project that failed miserably — he stumbled on a better idea: putting pancake mix in pressurized cans for quick and easy breakfasts.
By 2005 O’Connor had left the restaurant business and filed patents for Batter Blaster, an organic pancake-and-waffle mix in a pressurized can with a point-and-shoot nozzle.
Through word of mouth, social networking and publicity stunts — traveling 180,000 miles in an Airstream trailer to visit county fairs; rallying a team to cook 76,382 pancakes in eight hours to set a Guinness World Record — O’Connor and his 16 employees have gotten Batter Blaster into 13,000 outlets nationwide, including Costco and Whole Foods stores.
In 2008 Batter Blaster’s annual revenues hit $15 million. O’Connor expects the total for 2009 to surpass $19.5 million.
Photo by FSB.
