'Brie-lliant' idea: Boarderie has fun creating gigantic Guinness World Record charcuterie board
The board was set. The meats, cheeses and spreads were in place. And then the final verdict came in — they’d done it.
Boarderie, the Riviera Beach-based charcuterie company, set a Guinness World Record on Wednesday at The Colony Hotel in Palm Beach with a massive charcuterie board that weighed in at a total of more than 1,000 pounds, 769 pounds of which were ingredients that qualified for the record — a minimum of five different cured meats, two different fruits, two different cheeses and two different fruit preserves.
“It was so much fun for us,” said Aaron Menitoff, one half of Boarderie’s founding husband-wife team with his spouse Julie, along with their partners Rachel Solomon and Angel Jerez. “We really want to be the company that’s the household name for cheese and charcuterie in America, and we feel like we have done that.”
Boarderie got deal with 'Shark Tank' entrepreneur Lori Greiner
The Boarderie team came up with their idea to set the world record for largest charcuterie board as they thought of ways to celebrate their astronomical success over the past year: From an appearance just 11 months ago on the hit TV show “Shark Tank” where they scored a deal with entrepreneur Lori Greiner, to being featured as one of Oprah’s “Favorite Things” during last holiday season.
“We’ve had tremendous success in a very short amount of time,” said Menitoff, who with wife Julie launched Boarderie during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 as they sought ways to keep their popular catering business afloat.
“We literally bet the farm on this concept,” Menitoff said, noting that to build out their first facility, the couple took out a second mortgage on their Loxahatchee farm, in addition to a Small Business Administration loan.
It was a gamble that paid off: In the five weeks after being featured on “Shark Tank,” Boarderie did $1 million in business per week — blowing their yearly projections out of the water.
The world record is a celebration of further surpassing their expectations, Menitoff said.
World record winner is 169 times larger than Boarderie's typical board
When their projections showed that for the current year Boarderie expected to sell and ship 169,000 boards, they had a brie-lliant idea: Why not build a version of their popular Arte board, 169 times larger than the real thing?
For the past six months, Boarderie has worked on the event, applying for the record with Guinness, scheduling a third-party monitor to weigh the board and working with their suppliers. All of the food was shipped to Boarderie’s Riviera Beach facility, where 40 people worked for four hours to assemble everything by hand, Menitoff said.
The board clocked in at 20 feet by 14 feet, and it was filled with 1,024 of the small trays that Boarderie uses to ship its charcuterie board fully assembled and ready to eat.
All of those pieces were loaded into a 26-foot refrigerated truck provided by Cheney Brothers to make the drive to Palm Beach, where everything was unloaded and assembled within an hour in The Colony’s Coral Ballroom.
In addition to the massive scale of the board, Boarderie’s team also found a woodcarver on Etsy to create large-scale versions of the bamboo utensils that are included with each order.
Boarderie has grown 1,000% from last year to this year
Menitoff said it was important for Boarderie to include all of their suppliers, including wine from The Vineyard House for Wednesday’s event, because they have met every challenge Boarderie’s team has thrown at them as the company has grown 1,000% from last year to this year.
“They have to jump through hoops and get full truckloads of pallets of artisan ingredients to us, getting them there expedited so we can fulfill every order,” said Menitoff, who noted that Boarderie’s turnaround time for an order is about a day. “If you place your order by midnight, we will pack it the next day and ship it so it arrives at its destination the following day,” he said.
“The icing on the cake is that we were able to involve two of our nonprofit partners,” Menitoff said.
Boarderie hires clients of The Arc of Palm Beach County — an organization that, in part, provides job placement for people with disabilities and special needs — to work in their facility, doing much-needed tasks including sorting brochures, wrapping boards for shipping and loading trucks, Menitoff said.
On Wednesday night, the team from Arc put all of the gift bags together, he said. “They did a beautiful job,” he noted. “It was wonderful to have them there and that they were a part of it. We have the opportunity to give people meaningful work, where they have the opportunity to feel purposeful and part of a team. Involving the Arc clients was important to us.”
Charcuterie food donated to charity, fed 900 people
At the end of Wednesday night’s event, all of the food on the board was donated to The Lord’s Place, a nonprofit organization that helps unhoused people in Palm Beach County, with the retail value of the food clocking in at $40,000, Menitoff said. The Lord’s Place planned ahead to share the food with six other organizations, he said, adding that 900 people were fed.
The Boarderie team also held an impromptu auction for the world record certificate, selling it for $3,200. Because two other people at the event were willing to pay the same amount for certificates of their own, a Guinness representative who attended to monitor the record-setting attempt said two more copies will be sent to Boarderie, raising a total of $10,000 for The Lord’s Place, Menitoff said.
While Greiner of “Shark Tank” was unable to attend Wednesday’s event in person, she attended virtually, calling in via Zoom during the record-setting attempt. “She congratulated the team and let us know how proud she is,” Menitoff said, adding that everyone appreciated her taking the time to do that. “She is always there for us when we need to consult with her,” he said.
Since that appearance on “Shark Tank,” the company has added direct-to-consumer sales through its website, www.boarderie.com. There is a year-round, full-time staff of 60 people that will increase to 160 full-timers during the holidays to handle the massive influx of seasonal orders expected, Menitoff said. They will go from shipping about 1,000 products a day now, to about 3,000 products a day in the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Menitoff said.
The company also is planning an expansion into the other half of the warehouse space Boarderie currently occupies, doubling its footprint from 14,000 square feet to 28,000 square feet. “We will be able to do about 6,000 products a day once that is completed,” Menitoff said.
“We’re just over the moon with the reception that we’re getting and how quickly the brand is growing,” he said. “We have a great community around us.”
What exactly was on the Guinness World Record charcuterie board?
Which foods were included on the board?
Qualifying ingredients, meaning their weight counted toward the world record
403.5 pounds of cheese:
Apple smoked cheddar by Carr Valley
Fig and rose goat cheese by Celebrity
White gouda by Artikaas
Blueberry Fayre Stilton by Clawson
Peppadew pepper whitecheddar
Moliterno il Vignaiolo by Central Formaggi
Midnight Moon by Cypress Grove
Wine-bathed ubriacone by Mitica
Blueberry cinnamon goat cheese by Celebrity
Wasabi horseradish cheddar
Grand Reserve Havarti
Moliterno al Tartufo by Central Formaggi
Goat brie by Celebrity
126.75 pounds of charcuterie
Rosette De Lyon salami by Columbus Craft Meats
Peppered salami by Columbus Craft Meats
Finocchiona salami by Columbus Craft Meats
Spanish-style chorizo by Columbus Craft Meats
Soppressata by Columbus Craft Meats
101 pounds of fruits
Dried apricots by Yupik
Turkish figs by Yupik
Dried cherries by Yupik
Thai crystalized ginger by Yupik
Dried tangerines by Yupik
Dried mango slices by Yupik
94 pounds of jams and preserves
Fig and orange marmalade by Divina
Peruvian jam by Divina
Non-qualifying ingredients
79.25 pounds of nuts
Buttered toasted pecans by Yupik
Macadamia nuts by Yupik
Salt-and-pepper roasted cashews by Yupik
Salted sesame sticks by Yupik
Lemon-peppered almonds by Yupik
41.6 pounds of chocolate
Chocolate Prosecco cordials by Kopper’s Chocolates
Chocolate espresso bean mix by Yupik
19 pounds of vegetables
Sun-dried tomatoes by Ambassador Foods
Pepperoncini by Cheney Brothers
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Charcuterie board from Florida 'Shark Tank' firm sets Guinness record
