Mantis BBQ

About Mantis BBQ

In 2019, family member and Co-founder of Mantis BBQ, Spencer Mantis, successfully underwent a kidney transplant while still in his 20s. While Spencer was very fortunate to have a live donor, many wait years for a kidney.

Renal failure and Chronic Kidney Disease impacts millions of people in the U.S., and while these patients await a match from the kidney transplant list — where recipients greatly outnumber available donor organs — they’re forced to undergo dialysis, which is not only expensive, but life consuming. If a patient is lucky enough to be matched, a kidney transplant is more often than not an impermanent solution.

This is why we have chosen to team up with the Kidney Project. The Kidney Project is a national research collaboration led by bioengineer Shuvo Roy, PhD, at the University of California, San Francisco, to develop the first-ever surgically implantable artificial kidney research, which would effectively end the need for dialysis, eliminate the transplant waiting list, eliminate many post-transplant medications, and mean an improved quality and length of life for Spencer and other patients facing kidney failure.

After years of hosting BBQs and friends and family asking us (the Mantis family) to bottle and sell our famous sauce, we decided to go for it and market our “BBQ sauce to save lives.”  10% of all sales go to artificial kidney development.