Grill companies have been looking to spur growth by expanding their product offerings. One popular area of expansion is into outdoor kitchens. It makes sense, there are some market conditions that point to an opportunity to disrupt.
Outdoor kitchens traditionally have required finding a contractor and spending a ton of money on construction before you even get to picking a nice grill setup. Companies like Charbroil and Grilla Grills have started serving the DIY market by developing modular outdoor kitchen lines.
Beyond the opportunity to take the hassle out of an outdoor kitchen build, there’s also another attractive aspect for grill companies. Outdoor kitchens are usually equipped with premium grills, which carry higher margins that entry products.
Weber Outdoor Kitchens
Weber on the other hand doesn’t have an outdoor kitchen line, or even built-in compatible grills. In the US market, they only offer their Summit gas grill in a built-in configuration. Contrast that with the Australian market where they offer built-in options for the Genesis and even a Built-in Q, in addition to the Summit.
Blackstone recently moved into the outdoor kitchen space with both built-in grills and also whole pavilions, so that may translate to more Weber outdoor kitchen products once the two grill titans merge. Regardless of that happening though, it appears that Weber is also developing their own grill for an outdoor kitchen.
A new trademark was made public from Weber for a product called Horizon. The filing description is for “outdoor cooking appliances, namely, built-in barbecue grills”.
Trademark filings in the grill industry have been a pretty reliable indicator of an upcoming product release. Usually, the trademark filing comes out around a year to a year and a half before the product is released. If that holds true here, we can expect to see a new Weber grill for an outdoor kitchen on the horizon.