Three guys in suits and sport coats stand quietly in a conference room just off of East 5th Street and I-35 while a videographer adjusts the lights. Once they get the OK signal from the videographer, the three men start chatting quietly about what they're going to say until the producer starts prompting them to talk to the cameras by asking questions from the script.

It's kind of an awkward moment, really. Real-time filming is never as dramatic as the final product. But the co-founders of BeeHex, Inc., are being methodical because they know that what comes out of this little film session matters. Big time.

Jordan French, the chief marketing officer at BeeHex, a 3D food printing startup that launched at SXSW this year, said the company was invited by Shark Tank producers to submit an application. It's apparently pretty rare that a startup gets asked to apply since the ABC show gets thousands of applications every season. And French takes that as a sign that the media buzz they generated at SXSW and the conversations they had with top chefs and investors may have paid off.

Celebrity chef Jose Andres...All that hype is out the window for a few moments now. The team is elbow-to-elbow like they're posing for a wedding photo, and the video cameras are on. It's time to show the substance behind the suits.

The BeeHex founders want to get a lot of elements and anecdotes into their pitch for the producers, who will ultimately decide if BeeHex and its personalities are the right fit for the show. So they rehearse it again.

French, who has a background in biomedical engineering and invested in The Zebra, the Austin-based insurance startup, tells his co-founding team that he wants to make sure they talk about how 3D printing is a new thing to most of the world and that it has huge potential -- like the next microwave, even. And he wants to make sure producers know that founder and chief engineer, Anjan Contractor, is kind of famous in the tech world for his work at Systems & Materials Research Corp. where he worked on a NASA grant to create 3D food printers that could sustain a team of astronauts on a mission to Mars -- or beyond.

French tells his team and the video crew that they also want to make sure the producers know that Contractor also has the long-range vision to make this type of technology economically viable and interesting to consumers.

"In 30 years, every house will have a 3D food printer," Contractor tells the camera.

Then, they add the hook.

What if you could have a printer that makes grandma's recipes? Their printer can make chocolate treats, muffins and all sorts of things that are basically paste-based. If you know the ingredients for that favorite family recipe, this printer could make it spot on every time, and, maybe someday, it could mean a team headed to Mars could have whatever their families back on Earth are making.

Plus, dig this, they've had people suggest 3D printing marijuana edibles in the states where that's legal.

The BeeHex 3D printer in action at SXSW...It's a compelling pitch. But, for me and everyone else who hasn't tasted the printer pizza yet, the jury is out on whether it can compete with human culinary instinct -- or even on a chain restaurant that seems to operate with robotic consistency. The company is currently doing demonstration tastings, typically ordered by other tech companies and high-end condo complexes that like to bring

in unique eats for residents.

But the BeeHex team says they are in talks with pizza companies large and small to eventually sell the machines. And they think the future could create a lot of opportunities.

"It is possible, maybe 30 years down the road, we'll have steak coming out of a 3D printer," Contractor said in an interview after the video session. "And not just that. The biomedical industry, they are going after printing kidneys and printing lungs."

He brought up TeVido BioDevices, as an example. That Austin company is printing nipple tissue for women who have undergone a mastectomy and want to recreate their natural look.

But, for now, BeeHex is all about the pizzas.

If the pizza makers catch on with restaurants, the founders hope to see 3D food printers in consumers' homes one day.

At their SXSW launch, BeeHex was using ordinary ingredients for its pizzas. And, after talking with celebrity chef Jose Andres (pictured above), they decided to focus on a recipe handed down by French's Sicilian grandma. French said that Andres suggested 3D printing could offer a fluffier and more consistent dough because it prints in hundreds of layers that would be tough for human hands to replicate. And, that same chat led to BeeHex's new goal -- to get a few celebrity chefs to compete with the printer in a pizza baking contest.

A 3D printed pizza made by...The idea is to have a show like Top Chef record a competition between traditional chefs and the BeeHex printer, said co-founder Ben Feltner, a one-time pro baseball prospect who provides legal advice to startups.

"We really want to make that happen," he said. "We want it to be there right next to the contestants."

And Feltner has a track record of surprising people. He said college coaches doubted him early on, and he fought his way onto a team -- and then got drafted by the pros, although an elbow injury led him to pursue business law. And he also helped in a viral marketing campaign for the Free Flexor, an interesting (dang near explicit, and, yes, hilarious) variation of the Shake Weight that was featured by Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel.

And perhaps it's Feltner's high-profile experience with the Free Flexor and Contractor's role making 3D food printers for NASA that have helped them realize that, despite the narrative they're building, they also have to deal with the public's idea of what 3D printing is and where it can go.

"Most people don't understand," Contractor told the camera as they recorded their Shark Tank application. "It brings a lot of pressure on all of us. We're literally working with expectations... And everybody wants this on the market tomorrow."