Our favorite bacon-flavored food startup is back in the news. J&D Foods, makers of the wonderfully American Bacon Salt and Bacconnaise products, is featured in a hilarious piece on KING 5 about how Oprah Winfrey helped establish the tiny company.

Created by Seattle techies Dave Lefkow and Justin Esch with $5,000 in prize money won on the TV show America’s Funniest Home Videos, Lefkow describes how the company’s servers, Internet and phones crashed after the Oprah endorsement. The mention sent orders skyrocketing, and within two days Lefkow said they had recorded more than 10,000 orders coming in via the Web site.


In anticipation of Oprah’s final show on Wednesday, KING 5 is taking a look back at local companies impacted by the “Oprah effect.” Seattle area tech companies sure have benefited from Oprah’s kind touch, including Amazon.com’s Kindle which received a glowing endorsement (hilarious video of Bezos describing how to use a Kindle to Oprah’s audience) in 2008 and Microsoft’s Kinect which was handed out to the talk show host’s audience last year. (I couldn’t resist, so had to include that video).

Meanwhile, the makers of Baconnaise also got one of the most hilarious product endorsements in recent memory from none other than Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. Here’s that clip for your viewing pleasure, which also drove big sales for the Seattup startup.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.