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The soft grill market has claimed its first grill casualty. The newcomer Spark Grills appears to be out of business. They created a phone enabled charcoal grill with proprietary charcoal. It was selling well enough to allow them to expand earlier this March, but sales must have fallen off a cliff. Now they’re likely gone from the grilling landscape.
While Vista Outdoor is in a much better financial position than others, they released earnings this week and said that they’ve absorbed $90 million in additional costs over the past two quarters. They’re pushing some of those additional freight and input costs on to consumers on their higher price point products, but still anticipate another $90 million over the next two quarters.
Middleby announced that they’re going to release earnings next week. It’s shaping up to be a big week for outdoor cooking earnings. Middleby, Solo Brands and Traeger all release earnings within a day of each other.
Solo Stove keeps releasing new outdoor products and fire pit accessories. This week it was the Surround, which is a shelf like structure that goes around your fire pit to make it more substantial. It’s a neat accessory for people that have their Solo Stove fire pit in a fixed location.
Electric grills continue to come to the market. There’s multiple trademarks out there for ones in development and Kenyon this week released a new one. Their whole grill line-up is electric and their new stand gives you the ability to make their grills freestanding outside.
Ooni keeps expanding into the grocery market. While in the US they have a partnership with Williams Sonoma for a pizza dough mix, they launched a new one in the UK for grocery stores. There’s no word on if it will make it over to the US, but it’s a big step for Ooni to compete for shelf space.