Even as Kyle Cooke began a new chapter on In The City, the same Loverboy financial problems continued to loom over him.
While meeting with his friend and castmate Kenny Martin, who’s also a Loverboy investor, during the In The City series premiere, Kyle admitted that he’d been “dragging [his] feet” on giving any financial updates about his beverage company for nearly a year.
“There’s been so many moving parts and changes,” Kyle explained to Kenny, who makes a living as a venture capitalist. “I had to lay off five people last week. I’ve put 500K of my own money in. I literally needed to keep the lights on.”
RELATED: Kyle Cooke Is Under “Financial Pressure” with Loverboy on In The City: Where It Stands Now
In a confessional, Kyle shed more light on the rise and fall of Loverboy. “I took money from friends and family,” the founder and CEO said. “Like, at one point, I was gonna give everyone a 25x return on their money. Twenty-five times their money.”
However, as Kyle continued, “Now, I’m basically on the financial brink of disaster. That’s one of the reasons why I started DJing: to pay the bills. If I don’t find a partner, either to buy Loverboy or take on our operations, we will go out of business by the end of this year.”
Kyle Cooke reveals how long he’d been considering selling Loverboy
Meanwhile, Kenny, who started his career on Wall Street, reminded Kyle, “There was a point where I’m like, just sell the company. Like, punt it.”
That’s when Kyle revealed, “Trust me, if I could’ve sold the business two years ago, I would’ve.”
RELATED: Amanda Batula Shares Rare Details on Her and Kyle’s Finances, Including “Separate Bank Accounts”
Kenny replied by saying that he understood that Kyle’s “back is against the wall” now that he’s gone all in on Loverboy. Still, he advised him to keep him in the loop in terms of “the debt” and “the downsizing,” so that they could talk through some possible solutions.
“Look, I appreciate your patience. It’s good advice,” Kyle responded. “My communication skills across the board could improve. Professionally, personally, it’s been kind of a rough summer. Between my business and my marriage, it’s a bit of a perfect storm.”
Is Loverboy still in business today?
“The support from our fan base saved Loverboy because I was like, I could put more money in, but that doesn’t go to paying down the loan, or I could basically start the bankruptcy process,” Kyle shared on Jason Tartick’s Trading Secrets podcast on May 11. “I mean, that was literally my reality a month and a half ago.”
Kyle Cooke’s financial crisis with Loverboy, explained
Previously, during Summer House Season 10, Kyle had been quite candid about Loverboy’s financial crisis. As of last summer, Kyle said that he had only about three months of payroll left, in addition to being on the hook for a $2.1 million small business loan that he had personally guaranteed.
At the time, Kyle further detailed how Loverboy had “lost 175 grand” that month alone, even prior to him making the company’s loan payment. Needless to say, he confirmed that the brand was in imminent danger of “folding” altogether.
“At our current rate, that would give us three [months],” Kyle explained to Carl Radke in August 2025. “It’s like the most stressful thing you can imagine.”
Prior to that, he also shared that he had recently invested another $500,000 of his own money, in addition to no longer collecting a paycheck from Loverboy. “In the last six months, we’ve actually seen a decline in distribution, which means declines in revenue,” he elaborated to a Summer House producer. “So, I stopped taking a salary at Loverboy to kind of prolong our cash reserves.”
As Kyle continues to navigate his professional challenges on In The City, get even more details on where Loverboy stands today.
