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We kicked off a new dealer spotlight series this week, where we tell the story behind popular grill shops. For this week’s edition, we focus on Texas Star Grill Shop and founder Rick Martin. It’s the first of a two part interview of Rick, where I focus on his founder’s story.
We go through where the idea to start a store came from to where it is today. The second part will focus on what he’s found that’s successful and what isn’t, so stay tuned for that.
December is here, which means the holiday shopping season is in full swing. The early results for Black Friday and Cyber Monday have been good. Ace Hardware reported record online sales over the shopping holidays.
Grilla Grills reported that they also saw strong numbers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Parent company American Outdoor Brands (AOB) reported earnings this week and said they’ve been seeing strong sales for Grilla Grills overall.
They said that 50% of their sales are from return customers, which is really impressive. They just officially closed all operations in Michigan, where they’re founded, so we’ll see if that has any impact on customer loyalty in the future.
For Traeger, one thing they weren’t thankful for on Thanksgiving is their IT infrastructure. They had widespread outages on their app and website. They sent out an apology email with a 20% of promo code for current customers.
Hopefully their hiccup wasn’t due to Amazon Web Services (AWS), because it was announced this week that they’ve deepened their relationship with AWS. Traeger is an early adopter of the new AWS Supply Chain that gives real-time data on inventory and uses machine learning to optimize the product flow.
Big Green Egg came out with a new accessory this week, it’s a wedge that keeps the Kamado style grill open, so you can use it as a pizza oven. It’s a neat way to use the Egg for other types of cooking.
One problem with other, smaller pizza ovens is customers may not have anything to put them on. Ooni has offered up a solution with a new collapsible table that has a stainless steel top. It fits all Ooni pizza ovens.
Finally we did a review this week on the BioLite CampStove 2+ with the Complete Cook Kit. This innovative camp stove is portable, versatile, and can even generate electricity, so be sure to check it out.