Rancho Santa Fe’s Paige Hansen recently appeared on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” pitching her growing company BAM, America’s first-ever buckwheat milk. With her time in the tank, Hansen hoped to showcase not just her eco-friendly plant-based product but shine a light on buckwheat, what she calls “the cream of the climate-smart crop.”
“I really think that buckwheat is an underdog crop…it never got its chance in the sun,” said Hansen.
Hansen’s episode on season 16 of “Shark Tank” aired on March 21 and she hosted a viewing party at a Rancho Santa Fe home with about 70 people in attendance, many repping BAM gear.
Her BAM milk comes in three flavors including original, extra creamy and hint of vanilla—the organic and gluten-free milk has an earthy and nutty taste and she served it up to the Sharks in a smoothie, vegan chocolate pudding and swirling in an iced coffee.
BAM stands for Because Agriculture Matters and this is a milk on a mission.
During her pitch to the Sharks, Hansen spoke about the concept of regenerative farming and how intensive monoculture agriculture can deplete the soil of its nutrients: “I’m here today because our earth is in crisis,” Hansen said.
Buckwheat is a possible solution to a growing soil crisis: a powerful cover crop that can help improve the soil naturally, leaving it rich, healthy and thriving. Hansen said farmers love it because it regenerates ravaged soil, suppresses weeds, prevents erosion and can attract valuable pollinators.
Hansen developed the BAM Buckwheat Milk recipe on her own and used all of her own savings to launch her product into 25 stores in 2023 as a pilot. Her milks landed on shelves in Whole Foods in spring of 2024, around the time she filmed her “Shark Tank” episode. Noting that female founders only get 2% of venture capital funding, Hansen was seeking $250,000 from the Sharks for a 10% stake in her company.
On the show, Hansen had some fun with Kevin O’Leary, “Mr. Wonderful,” who was pulling some sour faces at the milk’s taste. The majority of the sharks were complimentary about the milk and what she has done, but were “out” because they thought the timing was not right for an investment. Although turning her down, Shark Mark Cuban said he thought both Hansen and her mission were great.
“Of course I was disappointed that I didn’t get a deal, but honestly, I’m more motivated than ever,” said Hansen, 37.
Hansen is a former TV news reporter who grew up in Fresno, in California’s farm-rich Central Valley. She worked as a reporter in Bakersfield, Tucson and Charlotte, North Carolina before getting out of news and moving to New York City in 2016. For her second act, she knew she wanted to do something in food— as a reporter, she had done a lot of stories about agriculture, the environment and health. And as she personally had health issues that led her to remove dairy from her diet, she had been exploring plant-based milks for years, including making her own blends of almond, cashew, brazil nut and walnut milks for her food blog.
In New York she began working at an agriculture tech start-up and discovered she was a “soil girl” at heart: “I really believe in real soil and being good stewards of our land.”
Driven by her agricultural roots in Fresno, her journalistic curiosity, and as an advocate for her own health, she started researching more about buckwheat and how she could create demand for farmers to grow this super crop and how she could find her own place in the $3 billion plant-based milk market in the United States.
She cold-called organic farmers to learn all about buckwheat’s benefits and experimented with milk recipes in her kitchen, sourcing the groats from a mill in upstate New York. Determined to sell her creation, she went to the Cornell Food Venture Center in 2021 to learn about how to make the milks at scale to sit on a shelf and eventually find its way into people’s homes.
While a bit of an afterthought in America, Buckwheat is quite popular around the world. Europe and Canada have brands of buckwheat milk, and in Japan it is used in soba noodles. In parts of Eastern Europe it is used as a grain for breakfast cereal and in the Jewish culture, it is used to make kasha, a kind of porridge.
Part of Hansen’s mission with BAM would be learning how to market the milk to people who don’t even know what buckwheat is.
After moving to Rancho Santa Fe in 2023, Hansen went straight into retail with BAM that November, partnering first with Jimbo’s.
“I am really so grateful to Jimbo (Someck) and the whole Jimbo’s team,” Hansen said. “We are so lucky in San Diego to have a store like Jimbo’s that promotes small emerging brands and gives them a chance to see how people take to their product.”
BAM Buckwheat Milk also launched in pilots at Erewhon and Mother’s Market in Los Angeles and eventually got into 27 Southern California Whole Foods locations in March 2024.
“Anytime you see something that you create from nothing in people’s shopping carts and in their refrigerators…. It’s an indescribable feeling because I dreamt this up in my mind,” Hansen said.
As “Shark Tank” filmed almost a year ago, a lot has changed for Hansen’s business. The milk is currently not on shelves anywhere as they ran into some manufacturing challenges when they started scaling up and Hansen decided to pause retail sale in order to course correct.
“The entrepreneurial journey is not for the faint at heart,” Hansen said, ever open and honest about the challenges of starting a business. “It has its ups and downs.”
Right now the plan is to re-launch this summer with deals in Whole Foods and Target, with a slightly different recipe and some new packaging.
Since the airing of “Shark Tank” on March 21, BAM has gotten a huge response, a response so overwhelming that it brought Hansen to tears. She had over 15,000 new visitors to the website even though they have nothing on there to sell and received hundreds of messages from investors, potential customers and people who want to get involved in her lofty mission to diversify the crops that farmers grow and the food that we consume.
It was “Shark Tank” that reached out to her and Hansen admits it was probably too early to go on the show but she felt like she couldn’t pass up the opportunity—at the very least, she said, it meant she could put buckwheat on the map. Hansen had been a fan of the show for years and while watching, she could never imagine doing something like that.
Ahead of her taping, she studied intensely and prepared for anything to happen in the intimidating tank full of five very successful angel investors.
It was a confidence builder, she said, to do something she didn’t know she could do. She opened herself up to criticism, held her ground and had fun. And the response she has received has made it all very much worth it.
“(’Shark Tank’) was really an experience I’m very grateful for even though the outcome was not what I’d hoped,” Hansen said.
The entrepreneur added: “Life is short, I just think you should go for it and not be afraid. You have to push past fear in a lot of things in life…every time I have, I’ve never regretted it.”
In time, Hansen believes the Sharks will realize they made a mistake. She hopes people will stick with her on her rollercoaster of a journey as she works to make BAM milk better, give buckwheat the spotlight it deserves and, most importantly, to make all her farmers proud.
Learn more at bamisbetter.com