Wine&Design

Wine&Design is a paint-and-sip franchise: customers book a class, a local artist guides the room through recreating a featured painting step by step, and wine is served while they paint. It is social-event entertainment more than art school. The business was built by Harriet and Patrick Mills in North Carolina, who turned a single studio into a franchise system that licenses the concept and supports independent owners across multiple states.

The couple entered Season 8 asking for 500,000 dollars for 10 percent. They came in with real scale already, dozens of franchise locations and eight figures in system-wide revenue, which made the conversation more about expansion capital than proving the idea. Kevin O'Leary, who likes royalty and franchise economics, made the deal. The terms held the 10 percent equity but layered in a sizable line of credit at interest, classic O'Leary structuring.

The pitch stood out because the Millses arrived as an operating franchise rather than a startup, which is unusual in the Tank. A proven, repeatable location model with paying franchisees is exactly the kind of cash-flowing business O'Leary gravitates toward, and the established footprint made their numbers credible on screen.

Wine&Design kept expanding its franchise count after the episode and has continued opening studios, with the network growing past 80 locations and the brand publicly celebrating new openings such as its 82nd studio. The paint-and-sip category stayed popular, and the company kept operating as a multi-state franchise through the years following the show.

As of 2026 Wine&Design is still an active franchise business offering adult paint-and-sip experiences across the United States. It weathered the usual operating challenges of a franchise system and remains one of the Season 8 deals that turned into a lasting, real company rather than a brief spike in attention.