Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of the New York City Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios. Joined uh via telephone with Nastasi De Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? I'm good.
I would uh normally ask you if you did anything interesting over the week, but uh we actually recorded uh our normal show yesterday, so I'm assuming that you had nothing really interesting happen in the past 24 hours from a culinary perspective. Is that true? Yeah, true. Yeah, true, true. Uh and uh also joined back in the studio.
We have John. How you doing, John? Good, thanks. Yeah? Yeah?
Anything? Uh glad to uh I didn't have you yesterday, so you had a whole week and days worth of time to come up with some interesting culinary facts for me, and the look on your face tells me that you have not. False, Dave. False. Oh I went to uh the British steakhouse uh Hawksmore.
Oh, yeah, how was it? Very good. Very good. Good steaks. Yeah, I cooked over the charcoals and ate a lot of food for one person.
Yeah? Yeah, I got a 20, you know, six oysters, 24-ounce porter house, cream spinach, fries, sticky toffee pudding, cheesecake, and a cheese course. Now, am I allowed to have the same uh hot take that everyone else has about the porter house? Not possible to cook it right. Yeah, true.
Like why what made you go for the por? Look, I understand there's a certain like bingo la 70s about the porter house. There's a certain like, you know. Yeah, I think that was it. You know, I just felt like a mystique.
Yeah, I don't know. Just I wanted to, I just wanted like a classic steakhouse kind of meal. So which side was cooked properly, the fillet or the other side? The other side. So the fillet was hammered, huh?
Yeah. Yeah. A little over. But it's still it was still very good. Very good.
I'm also gonna take another, and you know, uh how about this? Someone remind me to get back to the hot take on steak. We'll get back to it. I'll go through the whole thing. Do we have uh senor molecules on the on the line?
We have Jackie? Or is he not? Is he is he here? I haven't spoken to him yet today. Molecules on the on the line.
I'm here. What's up, Jack? How you doing? Hey man, I'm great. It actually rained this morning in LA.
Crazy. Is that uncommon? Yes. Yeah. Especially in the summer.
You know what I like? I like rain. What? I like rain. Yeah, me too.
Remember that uh remember that uh group garbage? Oh, yeah. I'm only happy when it rains. Oh, yeah. Only happy when it's complicated.
Great song, great band. Uh do people still listen to it? Do people still listen to garbage? Or did that fall by the wayside? I mean, it's a perfect name for me.
Anyway. Uh the reason that aren't they Scottish? I don't know. No, garbage was here from the States, right? Weren't they?
They were from Wisconsin? Really? Maybe I'm mistaken. Wisconsin is pretty much the Scotland of the U.S. I know they recorded at Smart Studios because I wanted to work there.
Oh, really? Yeah. Nice. Anyway. Uh I will go to that reunion concert, assuming everyone's still alive and in DC.
Madison, Wisconsin, by the way. You're right, Joe. Yeah. Madison. Well, that makes sense.
All right. Uh the reason we are recording on a special day. So for those of you that are just, you know, listening on the regular internet, uh, you know, you won't notice that this is a special day. But the reason uh that we're recording on a special day is because it is the day that the founders, Chipmalt and Jay Kalick from Maiden are here. And it's the first time.
Is that true? No. We've had ANOVA come on to talk about things. Uh, but about a specific oven. This is the first time we're bringing in uh a basically a whole equipment company to talk to us because we thought it was something that our listeners would be interested in hearing the process on because that's who our listeners are.
So welcome guys, how are you doing? Thanks for having us. How's it how's everything going? What are you guys in town for? Are you allowed to say?
Or is it super top secret? Evil. Half of it's really exciting. The other half will probably put the listeners to sleep. I mean, Chip, do you want to talk about your project in town?
Uh yeah, so uh Chip Malt here. I run the e-commerce and digital side of the business. So I'm in town speaking at a conference. So okay. That's the part that will put everyone to sleep.
So everybody loves a conference. I was just having this conversation with uh Dr. Jessica Harris yesterday. Uh, you know, uh the curator from African slash American, which you can still see up. It's got extended for a month at MoFed.
Please go to MoFed. Uh you have an extra month to see it. Don't sleep on it. And uh we were just talking about the fact that it's those kind of conferences that actually have the money to go to cities when it's nice to go to them. Okay.
As opposed to Tales of the Cocktail, which was started with no money and therefore had to be in New Orleans in the middle of July, which is no offense, a crap time to visit New Orleans unless you really, really, really like physical discomfort. If there's something about you that doesn't like to be dry or comfortable, then New Orleans is a fantastic place to be in July. And she's like, Yeah, Essence Festival started there at the same time. Same reason. Same reason.
Uh, you know, we're just not an industry with a lot of money. So I'm sure the e-commerce folk have the cash to spend on a nice crap toss, as we used to call it in the trade, right? A good little convention, uh, huh? It was a great conference. I mean, a lot of uh talk about future of marketing, uh obviously a lot of disruptions in the marketing world right now with Apple privacy and things like that.
So a lot of trend talk, but also, as you mentioned, a lot of great events. Um, we were able to go to you know Nobu and a couple other nice restaurants out of it. So that's great. Great job. You know, I've never been to Nobu.
What? Yeah. Any of the Nobus? Nope. Nope.
You know why? Dummy. I'm a dummy. Here's another here's some other places. Uh back in the day, even though it was literally my job to do so.
I never went to El Boolee, right? I never went to Trotter's restaurant when it was open, which was dumb because I knew the guy. I just, you know, when I was in Chicago, I didn't go. I did go to uh Alinea, obviously, and I even went to Moto back in the day. Didn't go to Trotter's joint.
I've never been to Per se. I went to Alan Ducasse's Essex house. Okay. But I missed the multiple. So for those of you that don't know, uh Alain Ducas is uh he's still super famous, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So for those young people who are like, I don't pay attention to anyone who's old, right? Ducas was a middle of the road, correct me if I'm wrong, here's a middle of the road shif, gets in an airplane accident. Like, like gets caught, it's like trapped out, like after this airplane accident.
And I think that's how he injured his eye. I could be making all this up. This could be a fever dream, but I'm pretty sure it's true. So while he's waiting to get rescued, and John, you're checking up on me here? Well, well, well, he's waiting to get rescued, he's like, I'm gonna become the world's greatest chef.
And then, and then he just started like goes bananas and like goes on like a Michelin star frenzy. You know what I mean? And when he opened up Essex House here in New York, I'm gonna want to say this is like 08 or something. I don't remember exactly when, because you know, time blurs. John is so not believing me right now that he's literally going on the internet to check this out.
The word the word back in the day was that he was hanging upside down from a tree clinging to life. That I'm sure is an exaggeration. Anyway, uh so when he opened up in New York, New York is famous for being buttheads, right? Just extreme jerks. You know what I mean?
To people if you're trying to do anything outside of our box, right? You know, you guys know this as selling to us, because I'm sure we're a decent size market. Our customers are all very nice. No jerk. Uh you know what?
I found that in our bar too. Like, I really liked our I think what it is is that if New Yorkers get rubbed the wrong way in media, we go bananas, right? Absolutely. So uh Essex House was a very kind of stayed, you know, old school French stuff with a little, but the frills were old school front frills, right? And one of the things that they did, and this is remember when WD was going great guns, and you know, Grant was doing his thing over in in Chicago, and all this stuff was happening.
It was all about being new. America had just started looking away from France as being the leaders and everything, and they look towards, we're looking towards ourselves and other places. And uh they had this thing where the meal was absurdly priced. And they would bring out like a pen selection so that you could choose what pen you wrote your check with, and they just got freaking hosed in the media for that. They're like just shellacked.
Anyway. So, what made you choose Alinia and not Trotter's and this version, not that? Uh well, Alinia, when I was in Chicago, we had two meals that at that time. And I was going to, which we can talk about, the McCormick Place, world's worst place. I don't know, what's worse?
The Javit Center, which is our convention center here in New York, or McCormick Place in Chicago, go discuss. Javitts. Uh, I'd say I'd say McCormick because you're McCormick. There is so little food options around that place. Like Javits, I think you can get to a decent restaurant quicker.
Um you can. So you're stuck at McCormick with nowhere to eat all day. And you're waiting for that bus. You have to take the McCormick bus back to wherever your hotel is. But the Javits, when you're inside of it, when you're in in a trade show situation, the Javits was designed by the devil to show you that you weren't worth living.
You know what I mean? I mean, standing on the trade floor, which I've had to do several times on the Javits all day, is just like it's just a punishment. Depressing lighting. Yeah. You know what?
Anyone who's gonna start a business, so I hope that someone out there is thinking of starting a business and that what we're about to talk to is somewhat useful for them. Because believe it or not, while people don't like direct competition, like every person that I've ever met who I like wants other people to succeed going forward. Right? Would you guys agree with that? Yep.
Yeah. Uh so one thing that you guys, new people, younger people, won't have to do is probably stand on a trade show in the old school way, because not the way it used to be. Like there, I'm sure they can't be as bad as they used to be, like orders trade trade shows where you have to stand around and wait for orders to come in and like. But that made trade shows worth it. Now we don't get orders, we just stand there.
But why why even go anymore? I don't know. You kind of have to kiss the ring of the the cookware elite and you know, do the whole whatever. But you learn something, you see new ideas, but I think they're going away. We were just in the Chicago houseware trade show and it was pretty quiet.
I think people took COVID as a chance to break the traditional, you know, events. I mean, I remember like a lot of the a lot of the old trade shows kind of started going out of business. Some of the ones still were like, especially the ones where you have to eat stuff. So the so-called fancy food show, uh, you know, I get it. And if you know, for your stuff, like people want to like touch the product and you don't necessarily want to ship a full line out to people and you can kind of show people up close, I get it, right?
Um there used to be a a book that you you were supposed to read that I was started reading in um in like the late 90s. Uh like, you know, how to do your first trade show. And it was this book called Trade Show Gorilla. And like Gorilla, not like ooh-ooh, but like, you know, like Gorilla Warfare. And uh it was kind of an amazing book because when you're doing a trade show, you can't really be a person.
It's kind of it's it's similar, and believe it or not, if you've ever worked a shift on the floor of like a restaurant, you know how like punishing it is to have to be on all the time and everyone's looking at you and you're always catering and you can't be yourself and you can't like just look at your watch like you're bored, and you can't like you know, go on your phone and start like looking at stuff or reading some sort of book. You have to be in service mode the whole time. Now, imagine doing that in a trade show situation where even when there are no guests in your place, you have to have that eager beaver look that I'm doing business. Isn't it a nightmare? It's like how tired are you at the end of the day after a trade show?
Exhausted. We actually had a pretty interesting trade show experience. We did a trade show and then we did a food and wine festival, which is essentially a trade show for consumers, right? And the restaurant trade show was dominated by vendors selling impossible burgers and other kind of non-meat-based things. That was the theme of the show.
Next week, consumer-based, didn't see one of them. Um super interesting. I mean, if that's you see that as a lagging indicator, you see, obviously those things are coming and coming in force, and it was probably uh probably 80% of the floor we were on was was those kind of um alternative meats and and non meat. Really? So yeah.
So do you feel misplaced? Oh, that's the other thing. When you're in a trade show, you get a giant map of the trade show floor. By the way, McCormick, we can get so we're gonna get so you get a giant map of the trade show floor, and you have to pick where you're gonna be well you're correct. You don't do it anymore?
I don't get to pick if you're two years old. They put you in the back of the back of the back of the room. Oh jeez, Louise. It used to be, because I haven't had to buy my own trade show slot since like the early 2000s. And it used to be you're like, oh well, yeah.
Well, first of all, you don't have the money, you're in a crappy little booth. But you get to say, you at least tell them what they do, and you're in a section of people related to you. If you get put in the wrong part of the trade show, you're toast because the buyers just don't come next to you. You know what I mean? That's the kiss the ring I was saying.
Like, you gotta do your time, you get to move up, you get more selection, you get to be in a better area. We were like the bathroom vendors with like the candy, right? Right in the way back. Oh my God. I really the only time I had my own booth, we were we were selling handbags.
My wife and I had a leather handbag business, and we were we were selling them, I forget the name of the show. Uh and the second time I had my own booth was the very first uh museum of food and drink event. I did the uh American Country Hams in like 04, and they gave me a booth. Uh that actually wasn't punishing because I felt like I was doing something that I needed to, it wasn't punishing. The leather bag one, punishing.
Terrible. And we were next to people who were selling like cut rate jewelry stuff. So none of the leather handbag people were coming. It's okay, okay. If you're a buyer and you're going to one of these trade shows, go to the wrong zones and just scan because you're gonna find the gem that the other fools didn't find, right or wrong?
Good spin zone. I like that. Yeah, yeah. Please and help those poor sons of any. Okay.
So uh interesting that uh we're talking about McCormick, uh, because actually the restaurant equipment, the houseware's business really kind of started. Although our first show apparently was the first couple shows were in New York, but really the actual like the the the uh what was it? It was the NRA, right? And all that stuff started with at in the McCormick area. And so it's kind of like hyper historical important that those shows, the Chicago shows, to the housewares industry.
Is that maintained to now? Yeah. Uh NRA was great. We were there a month ago. Yeah.
Yeah. I won't say anything negative about it. The restaurant NRA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.
The other NRA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the other. Yeah, I used to do shows. Anyway, uh, okay.
So uh Jake, you come from so you come, Chip, you come from an e-commerce background. Correct. Right. Uh, which obviously is vitally important to you. But oh, for those of you that don't know, made in is uh a brand of uh what do you call it?
Kitchenware. Kitchenware, there you go. Because it you you do you do start it with pot like pans, pots and pans, but you also do knives. Uh apparently your wooden spoon is much beloved. That's Jake's franchise.
Cold following. Cold following. On the wooden spoon. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
I noticed uh uh Steve, your your engineer was uh was uh pushing for using the wooden spoon on your on your Teflon on your on your Teflon pants. We could get into customer service here, but we get into a lot of trouble when we show videos of of our of our cooks using metal on non stick, uh, because in the writers write in and say, I used metal and I scratched it and it's broken. So we try to make it as foolproof as possible. All right. Well, before I get into history, then let's just get down to the utensils.
On your clad section, right? So your the first products that you guys launched were the were your clad were your clad pants, right? Yep. And uh what do you what do you call uh in what's the non-branded fully clad? Multi-clad.
Multi-clad. But like in other words, like the difference between like disc versus like fully clad, you call it multi-clad. Yeah. Right. And uh John, should we just get into should we do this as we get and then jump around back and forth from history and equipment, history and equipment back and forth?
We're okay. Yeah. And did you look it up? Was I correct about uh about your boy Duke? Was stuck out there for seven hours, but he'd been cooking a long time before that.
He was, but he was basically he was like just a high-end normal dude. He was middle of the range. He wasn't a shoe. I'm not saying he was a shoemaker. Yeah, I don't know.
He was working for like Roger Verger and working for working for. Does he still have the most Michelin stars of any chef? I think he does. Still to this day? Yeah.
Yeah, he wasn't freaking Alain Ducasse. I sat across from him once at a lunch at WD-50. It was crazy. It was Alan Ducas, uh, Jose Andres, uh uh freaking um uh uh what's the name? Ferran Adria, right?
And because they were they were talking they put them next to each other so that they could yak it because not everyone could speak, you know, Catalan, right? And and then I think that Dave Chang was at that table because he, even though he wasn't famous yet, he was I mean he was kind of famous, he was like noodle bar famous, but he wasn't like, you know, the the the Chang monster that he is now. And uh he was there because he was Wiley's buddy, and they put me there because I you know knew Chang. You know what I mean? And so that was kind of it's surprisingly intensely boring conversation.
It's like super super boring conversation because Faran was like just like, I don't speak the language that these buttheads speak. And so he just kind of stared around or whatever. You know what I mean? Ducas was just there being Ducas. You know what I mean?
It's like, you know, Nastasia, you agree with this. You'd rather just hang out with your buddies and hang out with a with a with a with a bunch of people just to say you hung out with them, right? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Stas like Nastasia would rather, I mean, she doesn't dislike hanging out with with big wigs and famous people, but if someone's gonna be boring, she doesn't want that.
She hates that. She still does not let me forget anytime I make her hang out with someone that she considers boring, she freaking hands it to me for years and years, right, says, yeah. So that's yeah, get back to get back to me then. Well, anyway, and the other thing is though, is that whatever. Whatever.
Okay, I'll I'll get back to what we're talking about. What the hell were we talking about? Oh, pants, clad. Uh, so that was the first thing uh that you came that you came out with, right? Um, in your care instructions, because I carefully read your care instructions yesterday on your website.
Uh, you also don't recommend metal tools on the clad. Is that a mistake, or do you really not recommend metal tools on the cloud? Or did you have somebody hit it with an with a mallet? Like what what? We serve two kinds of customers, right?
We have we have a pretty big customer base. We have what we call the prosumer customers or even the professional cooks that understand that you can use this fish bat on a multi-cloud piece of cookware and it's just fine. We have some customers that see us on TV and like the idea of Grant Hackett's using our stuff and buy our stuff, and who knows what they're using on it. So, in order to keep those kind of customers as happy as possible, we try to make sure we accommodate their cooking styles, right? But I'm gonna say this though.
I'm gonna say this. If I'm like, you know, like uh, you know, random consumer. Let's say I'm random consumer, which I definitely You're not. I'm not not just because like uh sometimes I intentionally punish things just to see what the hell's gonna happen to them. You know, I think I told that story where this person told me that her blender pitcher was unbreakable, so I threw it on the ground as hard as I could and started stomping on it.
Like Uncle Buck. Remember, you guys see Uncle Buck, he's like he accidentally drops a plate and he goes, hmm, I'm breakable and then shatters it. Anyway, that's we've done we've done similar stuff. I mean, we run run over the pans with cars and trucks and things like that. So uh similar.
Hopefully you didn't have any Elon Musk moments uh with uh your your your windows breaking. Cyber truck? Yeah, cyber truck moments with your windows breaking. Although I have to say, my Subaru windows would not have survived uh Fritz hitting them with a sledgehammer either. I don't know that you want a guy named Fritz hitting your stuff with a sledgehammer, like in a guy in a tight black t-shirt named Fritz hitting your break anything.
Yeah, he'll break anything. It's gonna go through it. So uh if I'm a consumer and you tell me not to use metal in my clad pans, and there's a there, and you know who they are, you know what I'm talking about. There's that consumer out there who's gonna listen to you, and they're gonna use crappy, because let's face it, John, back me up on this. I'm not gonna make them say anything.
Nylon sucks. Yeah. Yeah, nylon spatula is freaking blow. And before you guys like get angry at me about it, first of all, if you're cooking with proper heat in a lot of situations, the nylon's gonna get this little weird like lip where it like semi-melts. I'm not saying nylon's getting into your food.
That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that just the the surface of it, like lips over. But even that I can tolerate because I can shave that off with a knife. What I although, you know, be careful. But what I can't tolerate is that a nylon spatula, when it gets warm, when you do like a rest over in an oven, it gets a permanent set.
And that permanent set on your nylon means that when you're when you're moving stuff out, you get so many drops off of that nylon, and it never acts the way you want. It doesn't move stuff around the way you want. It's just trash, right? Silicone is typically too soft. No one has figured out a way to, you know, no one has figured out a way to make.
I'm fine with um nylon tipped uh tongs and whatnot. You know what I mean? Although uh, you know, uh Steve, you know, who did the video legend? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I was watching these videos.
So he uh he said that you're gonna use these nylon tongs on the nonstick pan to move fish. And I want you to know that I'm not forwarding that to Wiley or Dave Chang because I I think I mentioned on the air before that like the closest I ever, second closest, Nastasi remembers the closest I ever got caught to getting hit by Dave Chang in a meeting. Remember that, Staz? Yeah, and we should not tell that story. We won't tell that story.
But let's just say a lot of silver backing in that meeting. Do you got well? We'll get back into me, but like was when an argument I had at a restaurant uh about the use of tongs, wherein I said tongs are an appropriate tool to use in the kitchen, and they shouted at me saying that uh they weren't ever appropriate because someone might use them on fish. And I was like, hey man, hey man, you know, hey. Uh I mean we we we do wholeheartedly agree with you.
We're coming announcement. We're coming out with a uh uh utensil set in the fall. Nice. Five pieces. Breaking news.
No five pieces, a metal fish spat, fully metal tongs, and then we've got the upstill upsell nonstick spatula uh for for those for those customers that want a nonsticks bat. So so we're very much in your camp, right? Like we we know we know the tools that that make sense, but yeah, the good news is the customers who will not use well the the people who know what to do, they'll ignore the care instructions, right? Um we're not making those care instructions for the customers who don't know what they're doing. Right.
But my point is though, my point is is that the person who doesn't know what they're doing is gonna have a more negative experience than they should because they're gonna follow your instructions and it's actually gonna make their life worse. That's the issue I have if someone's using nylon or silicone spatula in one of your fully clad pants. That's that's the only thing that makes me it's it's a it's a fair point. And it's we could talk about like the struggles in running a business, and you have the stakeholder that oversees customer support versus the stakeholder who designs product, and it's a consistent wrestling match about who wins in the voice of the room, right? Oh, yeah, no, it's terrible.
Like uh the stuff that we have. Uh I was talking to uh someone the other day, and just like the fact that you have to put prop 65 warnings saying that your materials cause cancer on your boxes, and then people are like, then they write negative ammo. Well, you know, for us, they write negative Amazon reviews saying, it says on the package it causes cancer. I'm like, I have to say it. It's like our lawyers won't let me sell it if I don't write that.
There's nothing that's gonna cause cancer in it, you know? It's like our Hertz Rent a car had a Prop 65 warning last week. Yep. On the door. I mean, I have to say there's a lot of stuff in a car that will cause cancer.
But I mean, no more so than anybody else's car. You know what I mean? Like, anyway. So, what we're trying to do with that YouTube channel is teach people how to use our products um to the best of their abilities and inspire them to cook. And so when we have the uh and utensil collection, which uh hopefully PR doesn't get mad at about us leaking here uh for the first time, like that will be a great opportunity for us to come out and teach people how to use utensils correctly, because that will be from us.
We designed it, um, and then we can show them how to use it. So I like that. Okay, so so so since this is new information, I can't I don't I literally, people, this is not stage. I have no idea that this is coming. So I'm gonna ask some random questions.
John, what's the worst problem? What are the two worst things that happen with tongs? What are what are your two least favorite things? And maybe they're different from mine. I don't know.
I've had my tongs for 12 years. I like them a lot. Really? Yeah. Okay.
Average metal tongs. Yeah, they've never failed me. They're extra long, but they're they're great. Well, first of all, um, as a home person, I have a set of super mini tongs that I use for salad bowls because they don't fall out of a salad bowl. One of the big people, you need a small you need mo you need more than one set of tongs.
You there's not one tong for all things. Everybody who's ever used tongs to serve salad for family meal knows that the way you should serve salad is with tongs. And if you're sitting there using two hands with these goofy 1970s, like freaking like, you know, giant, like weird like sporks and forget it. You know what I mean? Tongue, also a decent way to toss salad.
Tongue is a great thing for salad, but on the table, the long tongs, the cooking tongs that you use, keep getting knocked out of the bowl, leaves everywhere, nightmare. You need to get a short set of tongs for salad. However, the two things that go wrong with tongs for me is not all of them, but uh certain locking mechanisms fail. Like uh so the old hip lock ones where you uh you can't see what I'm doing, folks, but you clench the tongs and then you pop the uh the back against, they fail constantly. Hate, hate.
Uh whereas the ones that pull, the the ones that you pull, while it is a two-handed operation instead of a one-handed operation, they do lock better, but they don't lock as tight as the pop guys do. So, in my opinion, the the handles of tongs could use the thing. But here's the thing maybe this is only specific to people who love deep frying the way I do. Deep frying with tongs is dangerous. Your your gut tells you, I want to fry with a tongue, because hell yeah, I want to fry with a tongue.
I want to turn that thing over. I want to take that piece of chicken and I want to move it upside down into my oil while I'm jiggling it around. But anyone who has ever taken something out of a deep fryer with tongs and lifted it over 90 degrees or over parallel with the floor has gotten a terrible burn to tell you about from the oil running down. And is this a solvable problem? Are you gonna solve it?
Maybe not in the first rev. Maybe you've already been thinking about this, but the oil down the tongue to me is like if someone could solve that problem of the of the fry person having the burnt wrist, that would be they would be doing a good service even if no one ever knew that this had been engineered into their tongs. You know what I mean? Yeah. The the big problem for us solving is the locking mechanism, right?
Because because I I I used to sell restaurant equipment in shops, right? And that's where the business started. 95% of chefs buy the Udland tongs that don't have the locking mechanism, right? Five percent do. But at home, right?
Yeah, other way around. Yeah, because at a restaurant, we're all just go pop pop, pop, pop, pop, and we're sticking them over the metro, you know what I mean? And we just went, we're grabbing the one side of the tong and flipping and going. Right, right. And yeah.
So the restaurant tongs are also like they're all beat to hell. I don't know what the hell people are playing drums with them. I don't know what the hell, how beat the hell they are. I think they are. I think the airplane rhythm of them.
Yeah, of course. All right. And they never go out to the table anyway. But at home, they're mainly people are using locks. Yeah.
Uh so you've been working on the locking magazine. Working on the lock that locks. My problem with locks is they get janky and then they don't allow the tongs to fully open all the way. So you end up like stopping at whatever you're cooking. So that that's the first thing we're working on.
Yeah, I have a bunch that, well, like I said before, that over the years the lock no longer functions, and you'll put it in your drawer because home people put them in drawers, and then pop in the drawer. And then when the tong turns as your drawer opens, I've said this, I said this before. If if if any kitchen designers are out there, any designers at all, when you make drawers, the average drawer when it's designed, there so you design the box out of ply, and then there's uh another piece of wood across the top to brace it to give it strength. Yeah, just push that wood all the way to the back. Make that piece of wood go all the way to the back.
Because there should never be a situation where a tong can pop up, or God forbid a knife. I've had it happen in my knife drawer, and it sticks into the top. Then what? Now what? You have to you have to get like your your child, hopefully they're small enough.
Yeah, yeah, get oh wow, that'd be smart. Yeah. I've had to get a bore scope out. That's I've had to get a bore scope out to open my uh my utensils drawer. I have a lot of utensils though.
Yeah. I'm not very much, I'm not a minimalist. I don't know if you can tell. I'm not a minimalist. All right.
So uh, all right, but uh, can you solve the oil drip problem? Can anyone solve the oil drip problem? Is there a way to put like some sort of like some sort of what? Like a sleeve or like some sort of like uh like a like a something that like vents it away so that it spills out of the tong before it gets to your wrist. Is there some way to stop that hot oil from getting to your wrist?
There's gotta be. There's gotta be. Maybe that's our collaboration. All right. Revision two.
Revision two, and I'll just sit there for I'll just sit there picking pieces of fried chicken out out of uh uh deep fryer fryer and like lifting it over my head and go, Look at this chicken. Ah you know what I mean? Like lift the chicken over your head and have the see whether the oil goes down on my wrist. A real labor of love. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, it fits back into one of uh my last art projects that I never did, which was trying to deep fry myself. Uh it was after I burnt myself with the with, you know, after I horribly burnt myself with my um St. George and the Dragon piece, I was no longer allowed to consider deep frying myself. Probably good.
Most likely. Most likely good. Yeah. Remember when people used to sell silicone gloves that they told you you could put into a deep fryer and pull stuff out of? Yeah.
Uh they cut real easy. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so if I had put my body into one of those and deep fried it, it's like one mistake getting caught on something I hadn't ground down. Toast.
And then it gets like once it seeps, it gets too much. Your toast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. All right. Okay. So uh, Jake, let's get into this. So now you alluded to the fact that you come from restaurant businesses.
Why don't we talk about that? Because I think a lot of people are like, I want to start a business. Well, like it's not that easy. It's not that easy. Like how small a community.
I mean, I used to know when I was at the French Culinary Institute, I used to hang out with the Mercer knife people. And you know, they were kind of giving me an insight even into the knife world about how small it is. How small is that is the community? Like not tiny, but in other words, like it's pretty small. It's pretty small, and the same people that run each company get fired from one and go run another and then go work for someone else and go work for someone else.
I my my grand my my family started a food service equipment business in 1929. So my grandfather was building bars and cigar cases in downtown Boston in the north end. And uh and over the years that changed from a bar building business to starting to sell the supplies the bars used to going beyond bars into restaurants and hotels. So Harbor Food Service commercial restaurant equipment and supply design installation, that kind of thing. So were they selling bar stuff out of a catalog?
Like the uh like the like what was the company, like the same billiard company used to also do it. Yeah, at one point. At one point, yeah. And that was that was when North Washington Street in Boston had, you know, 10 different food service equipment dealers. Um now there's there's none because the big dig drove them all away.
Um and and I joked, I I gave a toast to Chip's wedding two months ago. Oh, congratulations. And I joke that like nobody else could have found a way for me to leave my family business and make a salary besides Chip bringing his knowledge of e com to my knowledge of pots and pans and commercial tools. Well, I mean, but that's undoubtedly true. Yeah, right.
I mean, like it like you can't, like your business has done amazing things, but it's built on this kind of relatively new concept of direct to consumer. And you know, we're a much worse version of that because it's through Amazon, and then Amazon controls your money tab. Not only that, we you know don't have the connections or whatever, and we you know, we don't sell things that people want as much as you do. But uh yeah, so like you really need kind of both. So, where did you guys meet up?
So I was I was running my family business and uh and we we've known each other for three years old. Yeah, but you're not like you weren't still family, wasn't still in Boston at the time. No, we were. I was I was working in Boston, I was I was outfitting commercial kitchen. So I had the first hand knowledge of like what chefs were buying.
We were also wholesalers for the big all clads mode. Modern. Okay, really? Yeah, okay. Yeah, very, very big believer in that.
All right, sweet. I grew up in the north end. All right, yeah, yeah. Uh but um my stepfather's butcher shop was there. They he retired in the 80s though, and it turned into something else.
It doesn't even look like a butcher shop anymore. It's kind of like there's only one one butchery shop left in there, I think. Yeah. Umisio and Sons was uh yeah, but that was back way back. That was like it closed, like I say, in the in the mid-80s.
Um still kept a lot of its charm in the north end. Yeah, yeah. For a big city. Yeah. Um modern, huh?
Modern. Modern. Modern. All right. Um can you how many I can't, I gotta be honest.
People can get mad at me. I don't I can't eat a whole cannoli, it's just too much. Well, you know they make mini cannolis now. Well, come on, man. Like the mini tongs.
Yeah, yeah, mini tons. It doesn't flip your cannoli box over when you uh I mean for any of you. Are you a chocolate chip on your cannolis kind of guy? Oh yeah. Undo pee.
I I look I can I I'll eat any cannoli. I'll eat it, but like, you know, when I went to uh what was the other one? Mike's right or whatever. I went to Mike's and Moder on the same day, which you know, you gotta build in your line time. Jeez.
And I was just like, uh this is a lot of cannoli. So like I w I got the planes because I'm like, I gotta try the plane. Yeah. It's just a lot of filling. Yeah.
What did you think? Are you uh are you a Mike's guy? I didn't seem to be. I don't I don't remember. I believe my my memory was I liked one person's filling and I like the other person's shell better.
That was my feeling, but I don't remember which is which. I just remember thinking that this is something too deep for me to get into. And so, but you know. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, that well, so now we we're talking food. Uh steak, right? What were we talking about with steak? We're talking about a fill.
Filet is not a bad cut of meat. Every not a bad cut of meat. Everyone ranks on fillet. Ooh, filet's not it's not supposed to be beefy. It's supposed to have be amazingly tender.
It doesn't taste bad, man. Like, you guys with me on this? So fillet's not terrible. Like why why hate it? What's the point of hating it?
I can see why you don't want everyone to go order it because it's ridiculous to jack up the price of one little cut of meat that's only a little bit of them in the whole cow, right? It's bad to eat fillet at the expense of other pieces of meat. But if someone hands you fillet and they haven't overcooked it and it's not dry, you're like, that was enjoyable eating. No? You disagree.
I've got to be a good thing. Your looks on the faces tells me. You can't cook one side without overcooking the other. So correct. Well, no, you shouldn't serve it as a porterhouse.
But I'm saying filet on its own. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. All right. Beef.
That's the most thing. Beef beef. That's what's for dinner. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Uh so you start out making bars in 1929. 929. Oh, bad year to start making bars. Bad year to start making anything.
How the heck did you guys survive? It's probably a good year for bars, actually. Cigar cases. Yeah. You don't even really make those anymore.
Wait, did so the business is still that part of the business is still alive? No, no carpentry anymore. No. We buy the modular bars, you know, that you can do it. Yeah.
Um, so but now it's it's heavy design and installation of commercial kitchens. And then we sell them everything they need once they get up and running. So you're like a competitor like Sonny Mattel and those kind of guys, and try Mark Wasserstrom, that that biz. Yeah. Yeah.
We're we're more boutique regional New England, but um, yeah, so so I was I was selling 15 different brands of cookware. Everything from the Wincos and you know, import stuff to the all clad Maviel Citram. So could kind of see firsthand what chefs wanted, where the value was. I had people calling me every day saying, I'm moving into a new apartment. What what cookware am I buying?
I have no idea. So I would, you know, say, like, I'll sell you some Maviel and I'll just sell it to you at my wholesale pricing, which was 50% of what they made us sell it for, right? Yeah, it's a lot lower. Yeah, that's a big deal. And then and then one time Chip called me and he said, Hey, I want to do my own business in the e-com space.
And I was looking at the kitchen. Nobody had really disrupted the kitchen space direct to consumer. And and that that's when it clicked. It was like, oh yeah. I was like, nobody cares about kitchen tools outside of the the super passionate home cooks and chefs, right?
How do you how do you build a brand that people are loyal about that teaches you why the tools you buy matter and get them excited about investing in tools, like they're excited about investing in grass-fed steak and curating the perfect recipe and finding the right wine producers and that kind of stuff. I think what was interesting about having Jake as a partner in this was he was a product guy first, and he had been selling products for you know his family a hundred years, as you mentioned. And I think that's a lot different than a lot of the DTC companies out there, which you know, the first thing they run to is what brand are we gonna create? What are we gonna stand for? What is our color palette, et cetera?
The first thing we did over the next 12 months after that kind of initial call he mentioned was work on the product and have chefs test the product, get it in the hands of all the chefs that Jake had relationships with in Boston. Um so it really was like a product-driven company. Once we landed on where we wanted to go with the product, it was what does the brand stand for and what's the color palette and all the stuff that comes after that? Yeah. I mean, color palette, I don't pay attention to it, but it's important.
Uh should we get rid of red? Oh, okay. Yeah, hot tank in the game. So guys, here's a happen. So like I I have a made, I have a I have a made-in um uh um enamel uh enamel cast iron uh Dutch oven, right?
Uh beautiful actually. Here's something I have to say. Like uh though for those of you that you know have heard me before, like uh I I I try to be straight. I try to be straight with you, right? So like uh like the handles on this thing like blow the pants off of anyone else's handles.
Even the little hex nut on the bottom. So if you've ever had uh a Dutch oven with a crappy little like half standard half Phillips uh thing on the bottom, and you look at it and you're just like right. Uh I forget whether it's seven or eight millimeter. I had to take it off the other day because uh you're uh so I was I was testing cooking bread. So anyway, so it's a beautiful uh on mine.
I have a red enamel. Uh the inside I guess is whitish cream. Uh and it's got a brass handle, and then the underside is a sweet custom uh uh hex bolt with a flange on it. So uh again, if you don't think about it, when you're when you're screwing a hex nut, a regular, sorry, a hex bolt down, uh it puts a lot of stress right where the where the points of the hex are. So they bought a very nice uh with a custom logo on it, uh uh hex bolt that has its own built-in smooth flange so that it wouldn't mess up the uh enamel uh where it gets screwed down.
And when I undid it, I was like, nice touch. Uh but then, like, uh, the reason I had to take the handle off was because I mean, I guess some people might do it for cleaning, but uh it wouldn't fit into my oven with the uh with the handle on into my brevel oven with the handle on. And it was hot, so I wasn't heating up my big oven to test it. So I take this beautiful, like uh, I mean, fire engine red. It's like fire engine red, like shiny made in red.
Made in red. It's made in red. You know what color? Yeah, yeah. You know what color they make those uh fire things?
They make them made in red. Although now everyone uses lime green. I don't think anyone's gonna buy that lime, that lime green fire truck color for uh for a potter but maybe they will. You'd be surprised. Well Instagram men.
Oh, geez Louise. But the thing is, like, who's got the kind of we'll talk about this in a second? Well, okay, so here's what I do. I take this thing, and I duly went on the website, and they're like, it's good to 550 uh Fahrenheit. And I was like, damn.
That's higher than, and because they're using a brass handle and brat that they don't have the problems with the phenolic breakdown for people who use phenolic handles, just as an FYI. I'm pretty sure that the enamel is fine on competitors' brands up to the same temperatures, but it's just the the uh the handle that gets hosed. Right? Would you say I'm right about that? Yeah, totally.
I mean, they're fired at the end. 1200 degrees. Right. Well, before I finish what I'm gonna say, like, how much of a problem do you have with enamel spalling uh when they with thermal shock? Any?
I've never had it happen on mine, but of course I don't thermally shock my No, we we haven't had an issue with that. I mean, we we launched these, we we tested them for we actually have spent four years making this product. We tried to make it in the US first, couldn't figure it out. Yeah, are you making it it like in France? In France?
Yes, we're making it in France with a factory that really knows what they're doing. Not with the not with the Belgian weasels, you don't like those Belgian weasels? No, we don't, I don't think we know these people. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, uh, but the uh because didn't they didn't that production start in Belgium?
Didn't the initial uh castle gambles out? Yeah, yeah. Um big in Belgium, big in Czech. Um, but but France is the OG, and that's where we go for, right? We go to the places where they've really been master in this product and find somebody like that.
Well, that's the other thing. So we even before we finish that, this is like tangent on top of a tangent on top of a tangent, but almost impossible. I know for from personal bitter, bitter, bitter experience, almost impossible to build relationships from scratch. You know what I mean, with these companies to get them to do what you want. Because it it is a huge, it's a huge like piece of trust on their part to even devote part of their factory for however long the run is and to go make a new product.
So I'm sure a lot of that was a little bit easier because you had that was it. I mean, that was we could go in and you know, for better or worse, talk the talk, walk the walk. We we know the history of a lot of the brands, we know which brands went bankrupt, which brand bought who else. So we go in and talk to these factory owners, and we don't look like two direct-to-consumer dweebs that are trying to, you know, corrupt the market. We we are passion we're passionate about cookware, right?
Right. We know the stories behind the brands. Right. And but like I think even in today, like everyone thinks that all of these old things have been erased, but they have not, right? Like like companies are still run by human beings who have a history and want you to somehow be connected to that history, or you have to somehow give them a reason to take a chance on you.
You know what I mean? Exactly. Take a chance, take a chance. Because there is always a chance, right? Like uh well, you were I was talking to you about a different thing on the phone, and you told me a story.
Maybe you remember what the product was, where you thought you were gonna do gangbusters and they didn't make the product for you. Wasn't that you we were talking about? Yeah, we we we had a factory that you know we started working with, and we it wasn't our first collection, so we knew what kind of scale we could do within the first year, and we gave them our forecasts and they were all excited and said, you know, yep, we're good, we'll be able to make all this stuff for you, and then come Q3, they started to drastically cut our production or our forecasts. We said, What's going on? They said, Well, to be honest with you, we we thought you were lying to us when you gave us our numbers.
We've we've been making we've been making this product for 500 years, 500 years in the family. And they said, We've never seen a retail brand scale the way you have. Um, so we just discounted it ourselves and assumed you wouldn't get there. And we're like, Well, we're going in a holiday. What do we what are we gonna do about it now?
Oh my god, you know what? Like, why is it that you can't explain to people not in the US how important that Thanksgiving holiday crap is? You can't explain it to them. Uh why can't you explain it? I I mean, the consumer in the US is a a special breed, I guess.
I mean, that last that last 60 days of the year is believably important for our business. Right. It's like a quarter of your our yeah, yeah. So, but my point is is that like, why can't why do you have a technique to help explain to somebody in another country how important it is to hit that deadline? Because I have not been successful.
Amazon gets a lot of of heat, I think. As more of these international brands use Amazon as the way to penetrate the US from a retail perspective, they're starting to see it as well. And it's basically acting as the new retailer for them. Um, a lot of the heritage brands that we've talked to. So I think it'll it'll come around.
They need you to see it firsthand. It's one of those things where until you see it, you don't believe it. Um, but it's starting to come around. All right. So back to back to my my uh my Dutch oven, my beautiful red made in red, made in red Dutch oven.
So I stick it in to my oven to preheat because I'm doing bread, right? So I had used it already on the I had done some evaporation tests because you guys, no one does this with their pots and pans. But if you want, if you're gonna do long-term braises, and Dutch ovens are very good at braises, right? What you want to do uh before you use your pan for like a lot of stuff is just get a feel for how much liquid's evaporating out of it uh in a given amount of time at a given setting, whatever your setting is. Don't listen to a cookbook because they don't know your equipment.
They don't know your oven, they don't know you, right? Just get a gauge for it, and this way you'll kind of get an internal knowledge of when you should add liquid back to your thing or how much you're gonna lose over the course of a brace, et cetera, et cetera. It's just a good idea to do that. A lot of people don't do. Anyway, so when you have a liquid in your in your oven, nothing happens.
But I have uh uh an empty, dry made in red, and I stick it in 482 degrees, which is the hottest the brevel will do 480, you know, super convection to really jack it. Uh and I come back to put the bread in, and it's now brick red. It's now like a like brick red. I was like, I've killed it. It's destroyed.
Oh my god, I'm hosed. Oh my god, my wife loves this color. Oh, jeez. Uh. And so then, you know, I put the bread in, close the thing, you know, wait 15 minutes for the steaming to happen, to go to take the lid off, take the lid off.
I'm dejected. I'm like, here I've destroyed this thing. And uh while I'm waiting for the bread to finish, that 30 minutes, the lid cools off, goes back to being its normal color again. I was like, they should sell this as a to mood ring. Well, or it's like, I'm so freaking hot, don't touch me.
You know what I mean? Like it should sell it as like a thing. So then I we we email Maiden, and they're like, oh yeah, that happens on not just us, everyone's red. Like, whoa, whoa, woo woo. Why does anyone tell you this?
Because the first time someone does it, they're like, I've destroyed this. It's toast. I mean, maybe the relief of it going back to its normal color is like better than never having a hat happen at all. We often joke about like when a customer gets a product, we we have to hype up a product when a customer buys it. Enough that they want to buy it, but not so much that when they get it, they're disappointed.
Yeah, yeah. There's a sweet spot, right? You know that when you're making products. So I mean, that's a little surprising delight for you. Yeah.
Easter egg for you. Your reds are gonna turn like it's not that it's an unattractive color, but it goes from being like, it goes to being like uh that like 70s earth tone kind of a thing, not like 70s punch, like 70s earth tone. You know, I don't know. It would have been, I would have felt bad if it hadn't gone back, but it didn't. It's normal.
It's chemistry, I don't understand, but it's normal. Yeah, it's just with the with the glazes. Anyway, uh oh man. Uh okay. So uh okay, what are we gonna let's answer some of the the questions from people before I ask the rest of my questions?
Like, for instance, once and for all, guys, this is not a question people asked. How do you properly measure a pan? Right? They measure when you're measuring something quartz, are you measuring it to the rim? Are you me where are you measuring?
To the rim. Okay. Inches on a on a saute or a fry. Gotta give both. But the if you're gonna give one number, it's from outer to outer.
Outer to out. But why? Because everyone's slope is so different, and I don't cook with the outer rim of my saute pan, I cook with the bottom of my saute pan. That's market though, right? So I mean, again, maybe you put the asterisk like, you know, the internal diameter is this, but I think if you look at a 12-inch fry pan across market, it's 12 inches from rim to rim.
Yeah. Yeah. But centimeters if you're I mean the one that bothers us the most is pieces in a set. I mean let's ship go on this ramp. You know, we're sitting there and our lid is not a piece.
And if we sit there and say our six-piece set is a three-piece set, we will lose the internet customer all day long because all clad sitting there with a three-piece set that they've said six-piece set set 10 years ago to do 20 years ago, right? And so um we tried that. We were like, we are gonna be the ones here we're gonna be the honest ones. Three piece? Yeah, it's a three-piece set.
It is like your three-piece is the same as all clad six-piece. Exactly. And they go with all clad all paper. It's what if you put like a key ring and then like you can count the packing inserts as a uh 15 piece, yeah. Yeah.
Oh, your packing material is very nice, by the way. Thank you. Um important, it is important, even though we like at Booker Index, where we decided to go like craft craft paper only, like not retail pack, but you know, maybe we're stupid. I don't know. The other thing is like we're trying to move away, we were trying to move away from um like plastic at all in our packaging.
You know what I mean? And they were like, uh our factories, it would cost you so much to use renewables because their factories are just set up to do uh EPS. I mean, kind of depressing. Have you guys seen it? We've been co-investing a lot with our factories.
Um we just moved a lot of almost all of our tape or all of our tape uh to waterless tape, which is non-plastic, and they were resistant as well. There was a ton of uh pushback on us, and we've been co-investing in machinery and and packaging materials. Most of our factories are still family owned, and they're like, Yeah, this is awesome. We would love to do this, but like we can't figure it out, or we don't want to take the step. But if you guys are gonna push us there, like help us and we'll do it.
Right. And I think they're most mostly happy. And a dollar to a dollar to them is two dollars to you, is four dollars to the consumer, and they're like, is the consumer willing to pay that? And in a normal situation, not in your situation, but in a normal where there's another middle person, that's another two multiple, roughly, right? Because like with all the losses and everything.
So we're we're big believers though that sooner than later that's gonna become required to do business, is you're gonna have to you're gonna have to make those sacrifices or pay up for that kind of environmentally sound process. And so we're just trying to get out in front of it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right, more on measurement.
I notice you have a pie pan, and you give the quartz in it, which is nice. Uh, and then uh, but what do you call it? You call it a nine-inch. Now, where are you measuring that sucker? You're measuring that rim to rim?
Uh internal rim to in so that one has a thin little rim. So that one might be internals. But internal, but not base. Not base. Not base.
We we we had a whole thing with our I mean, we could talk about rectangular baking dishes and and the the perfect baking dish, right? Never accounts for the height of the of the pan. Uh to me, it's a huge nightmare that you guys can kind of and you do address by giving multiple more multiple measurements than most people do, but uh recipes are a nightmare about this, especially for things like pies, because like the slopes on different pie pans are completely different. You know what I mean? Completely different.
And so, like how you measure makes a huge difference. I mean, I'm not gonna say I agree with you guys. You guys like only deep pies, you are deep pie people. Texas. Yeah, all right, fair.
Uh, but a lot of your bakeware you teamed with Nancy Silverton, right? Talk about OGs. Yeah, you know what I mean? So was she involved with the pie one or just with the square one? She's she's awesome.
I mean, she gives her feedback on kind of a lot of our baking stuff and even a bread knife that we co-designed with her. Um, she's a customer first, and then we started to talk to her about what she wanted to bring to market. Um, but the recipes is a huge thing, right? We we actually hired a uh a culinary director, um, Rhoda Boone, who joined us and she was moved from New York. And because every chef sends us their recipe when we're giving customers recipes, but we need to standardize it to your point for our product.
Um so we're now in taking all those recipes, making sure on our stuff they're cooked and measured and portioned properly. Yeah. And it's just like like because I'm working on this book now, I'm just like looking at my pants, I'm like, God damn. You know what I mean? Like especially things like pies.
Yeah. You know, like I have three different pie plates from the same many. Here's another thing on pies. I agree with you coming out with uh I like, I like uh glass and porcelain stoneware for pie. I really do.
I think uh, you know, a lot of times, especially like silvery, cheap, punched out pie tins, you just it they just don't brown, they're not emissive enough. The emissivity on those things is not high enough to get a good brown crust on the bottom in the time allotted for the pie to cook, even at the temperatures you're jacking, because you know, the upper part is gonna get over before the bottom part gets the color you want. So I, you know, and also for service, you know, you really that porcelain, as you say, the filling's never gonna stick to it. I think it's the way to go. Like glass and porcelain on on pie, I really like it.
The only thing about our porcelain, I I love it. It's awesome quality. It's the only product we make that doesn't isn't aligned with our home cooks and our professional chefs' cooks. Because prof like in the professional kitchens, they don't use porcelain bakeware. No, they can't.
Right. So everything else is like same for home, same for restaurant, same for home, same for restaurant. We make awesome porcelain bakeware for home, and the restaurants are like, where's my metal stuff? Right. So we're working through it.
Do you know who I used to like a lot for uh like uh uh bakeware, Chicago Metallic? Yeah, that talk about OG metal stuff. Yeah, yeah. Chicago Metallic makes some really and their their uh release goop, whatever they paint on their uh stuff, they do a good job, but I hardly see them at the you have to only buy maybe from them. It's like it's not as common as it once was, you know?
Yeah, I I don't know. I I'm sure they're on Amazon, but they're they're a great company and they're still making everything here in the US. They're muffin pans. Yeah. Are they trademark release goop, or can we have that?
I think Gwyneth Paulcho trade on a game. Yeah, well, well, going to real going to release goop. Uh you have a set of nonsticks. Yep. And uh the big thing is, well, look, if you overheat Teflon next to a bird, it'll die.
The lungs. I don't know if the lungs will have issues. Well, they need those lungs to live. Yeah. Depends on how much you're flying.
Yeah. So uh, well, okay, John's telling me we only have five minutes, so I'm gonna do the listener questions. All right. Uh from the science slut. Uh, do you guys plan on making any copper core stainless clad?
Well, your copper has stainless on the inside, so it's not reactive, right? It's not tinned, it's stainless on the inside. So it's one up over those ones that you have to go back to. Yeah, what was that place? Uh what's that place?
I can never pronounce it. De Hillarin. In Paris? Yeah. How do you how are you supposed to pronounce that place?
Delarin. Delarend? Yeah. That is a sick store. There are some gems in the basement there.
Oh my God. Uh, if you've never been to that store, it's on that, whatever that island is near where Lazalle used to be, right? And it's like, isn't it right near the uh the Ile de whatever Ile de France or whatever? If you're a Patreon member, it's on the shared Google maps. Did you go last time you were in Paris?
No. I haven't, I didn't know about it until you told me about it. Then I need to go. You gotta go. I know.
Uh gotta go. I mean, if you want if you like surly French service, go. You know what I mean? Uh if you want to not be taken seriously no matter who you are, go. Anyway.
Um, do you plan on making a copper core stainless clad cookware? I really enjoy the evenness of uh the copper core pans on my control freak and would love to uh use a source other than all clad. Oh, right, because the bottom on induction. And the induction won't go through the copper and heat the stainless because it's not magnetic stainless. Okay.
So what's the answer? Yeah, so so all cloud does that copper core where the middle layer is copper. So you don't even really get to see copper other than like a nice aesthetic band around it to hit sh to flex that you have the copper core. Um we've talked a lot about it. I mean, our our hypothesis or or or approach to making products is do one type of each category.
So and that may change over time, but right now we do one type of cladded cookware, and it's aluminum core because we think it's the best value to performance to accessibility ratio, right? What we're very cognizant about is starting to introduce multi-levels of the same category, because then I think that's where customers get really confused. Now, I get I get confused and I know a lot. Exactly. So and for certain customers, they're they're very specific.
They know that what they're they're looking for, but I think our customers trust us to make one version of each category the right way, and kind of trust us blindly to buy it and know that they're gonna be happy with it. We don't want to give people decision paralysis. So I'm guessing because you went with five-layer clad that you think that that the performance of uh five is better than three, but that seven is just a load of hooey. Correct. Yeah.
More or less. I mean, well, the and the and the difference in price between five and three is super minimal from a raw materials perspective. So you might as well flex up to that five. Right, right, right. And what does the the so they the the what the so for those of you that don't know, the original the original patent was on uh uh well, you could use whatever you want, but it's an induction-friendly stainless bottom, then an aluminum layer, and then uh, you know, a you know, not a non-usually non-magnetic, right?
Just like super like surgical stainless on the inside uh they they make them in sheets correct so the sheets are made and then those things are stamped and then either you weld or rivet the handles you guys went with rivets you must have thought the welding wasn't strong enough I I had really negative experience with commercial pans that were welding handles even like the even like Volrath if people don't do it oh those those exact ones I had a lot of chefs had had issues with it when we were selling them like the centurions and stuff yeah yeah or or it was it was actually more of the wherever the the smooth wherever ones they were like the Z4010s right and those were falling off huh huh yeah and and the flush the flush rivets are just really expensive right yeah making those flush rivets it's a crazy technology to do that yeah because what they have to like rivet it flat and then grind it flat on the inside and not hurt the pan surface and not and very select people set up that machinery to do it. And I guess most home cooks aren't worried about like you know I know like Wiley. By the way first uh uh thing I got from your your brand when I first learned about it was I went to Wiley to frame my brother in law I was like hey made any good or is it a load of horse crap? He's like no it's really good. I was like oh okay that's awesome.
That's really cool to hear. Because you know when I see something on the internet I'm like those guys are full of crap. You know what I mean? That's my first honestly our hardest challenge because there's so many competing brands on Instagram on Facebook that are as you mentioned uh you know lower product quality but have great marketing. And so you know we talk a lot about how do we differentiate ourselves as a DTC brand or as a uh kind of internet first brand um to show that we are professional quality made the right way live up to your your standards.
Which, you know, again, my standards may not be normal, but they are high. Uh so the uh so the the point of adding the so the obviously the the the reason to have those three layers are aluminum is fantastic. Inductor and stainless is crap, right? Aluminum pits, uh has lots of other problems, right? Um and you want like you know basically within reason you want uh not really, I mean whatever.
If you like if you like a pan to be even, you want the aluminum to be thick. If you want the pan to be very reactive, you want it to be thinner. Most people most people, Kenji's book on walk cooking aside where he wants very reactive cookware, most people want even and not reactive. That's my guess. True or false.
Totally. Yeah. So you want the thicker ones, which is why like some of the commercial, like uh super thick base guys I actually really like cooking with, but no home person would buy them. I don't know why. Home people don't like discs.
They only like uh fully clad, right? Why? Probably an aesthetic thing, easy to clean, easier to clean. Um yeah. I I mean I think I think the fully clad looks better too, right?
And and then the other thing is it actually when you have a disc, the the the walls tend to be thinner. So when you're making a soup at home, you have to really be stirring that thing all the time. Otherwise the walls get a lot hotter than the base, which end up burning the top of the soup. So especially if you have a big burner that can loop over the discount. Exactly.
But even even those uh those Belgian weasels, Dem Air, they moved away from uh discs, even though they were the original OG disc folk. You know what I mean? Yeah. And they're not weasels, they're not gonna be. I mean, we sell everything with a lifetime warranty, so uh so correct correct me if I'm wrong.
The the the additional layers there are actually to slow down conduction so that you get a more even thing, right? Put little slowdowns, like put little like traps in the way, and you find that that actually is beneficial in the Yes. And and for us, the middle of the five layers is actually an aluminum alloy, which is stronger than, I mean, why you would use stainless, which is stronger than the two aluminums, aluminums on each side, because aluminum alloy won't actually bond to stainless. Okay. So that's why there's you know, three layers instead of one, because you couldn't do only aluminum alloy, and by adding the alloy, it actually makes the interior stronger.
Got it. So it's a sturdier pan, less prone to warpage. Correct. So people get real worried when they're putting pans in and from hot and putting cold water on them. And on a regular aluminum pan, it will, I have seen them warp, right?
Uh but on the clad ones, do you really have to worry about it that much? I mean, I'm not going to tell people to do it, but do you really need to worry about that much? We've seen, I mean, our first restaurant install was when we launched at the end of 2017, uh high volume steakhouse. Never had any issues with pans warping. What about on the carbon steel?
Don't worry, we keep going for a little while. Cool, cool, cool. What about carbon steel? Uh carbon steel, the incidence of warping we see is when people put it on induction and heat it up too quickly. Carbon steel is induction compatible, but when you heat it up too quickly on induction, that's when it can get a little bit wonky.
Well, because it can overheat, it can get almost to the curie point on that ring because carbon steel, believe it or not, not as good a conductor of heat as people seem to think it is. It's just, you know, anyway. All right. Uh Science Sled also believes that you should do a collaboration with uh Larren Thomas, the knife engineer, uh knife uh uh engineering author. Is that you're shaking your head like that might be in the works?
No, not not particularly. I mean, we love knife steel. He's got that cool steel. We love limited drops of knives. Like it's been a huge part of our brand.
We'll put 3,000 knives on sale one morning, special edition, special handle, special design, and our customers eat them up. Yeah, so maybe sometime in the future. Uh, can you tell us about uh uh how you think about branding and marketing so your products stand out instead of being commodities? For example, on your website, you say French foodies and professional chefs have been using carbon steel for centuries. That suggests commodity, but you still manage to sell the carbon steel products at a premium relative to some of the French brands like uh uh Borgiot.
It is impressive that your marketing strategy enables you to pull this off. Can you tell us more about how you think about marketing and pricing versus uh these established competitors? Yeah, I mean we pick uh you know, we pick the thicknesses, the gauges, the fittings, um, all to be premium performance and what would hold up in restaurant kitchens, which is not necessarily the case. So I think part of it is for the discerning cook who actually understands that. And then um it's not like we're pricing in any sort of gouging way or anything like that.
We actually are picking the most premium finishes, nonstick coatings, um, you know, our rivets, for instance, our 304 stainless steel. That's so that they are not a point of failure over the lifetime of the pan. Um so then it's about how you get that across on the internet. Well you have that section that says why is it cost this? Exactly.
Like on everything, you're like, why is it costing this? All right, one last question for me if they before uh Joe cuts me off here. Uh, how do you decide what factory you're gonna go to? Your Japanese stuff is made by the Sabatier kind of style factories in how do you pronounce that town? T H I E R French man?
Tears. Tears? Anyway, I actually really love old sabatier stuff. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like I really freaking love old old, old Sabatier.
I mean, like I sliced my steak with it because I was like, whoosh, it feels so good. But like what made you like how do you choose which factory you're gonna do what with? We love to go to places that have been making the product for hundreds of years and where we can find family-owned factories that are still running it and are passionate about making it the right way. All right. Uh well, you want to say anything on the on the way out?
I mean, you've already you know broken your PR rules and like told us about the new utensil set coming up. I'm I'm ready to talk about some more collabs with you. All right, cool. All right. Well, thanks guys for coming on.
Cooking issues. Thanks for having me. Thank you.
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