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As of Thursday fall is officially here. It feels like it here in Michigan with the temperatures dipping down this week, hinting at the impending winter.
Even though grilling weather is cooling down, new product releases are heating up. Before this week, there were no pellet and wood hybrids and now there are two. Camp Chef wowed us with a teaser of their Woodwind Pro hybrid, then Pitts & Spitts released a cool pellet / offset hybrid later in the week. We’ll get more details on the Woodwind Pro on Monday.
ThermoWorks also had a new product this week. The RH SPOT is easy to put anywhere that you need to keep a close eye on temperature and humidity. This is perfect for beef aging.
If you’ve noticed the price of pork (and meat in general) getting much more expensive than it used to be, it could be because there is price fixing going on. Large producers control 70% of the production and there are lawsuits alleging they are exchanging data to limit the supply of hogs. While admitting no wrongdoing, one large producer, JBS settled a price fixing suit this week for $20 million.
Much like Traeger and Weber, grill maker Napoleon just laid off workers. They pointed to seasonality and that they usually staff up for the summer. The difference this year though, is the layoffs were from permanent workers.
Elsewhere at Grilla Grills’ parent company, American Outdoor Brands, an investment firm took a 7.5% stake in the company. While they say it’s just because the stock is undervalued, that’s a large position to stay on the sidelines.
We ended the week with a review of the Masterbuilt Portable Charcoal Grill. This small charcoal grill is a great answer to portable pellet grills. It brings their Gravity Series technology to a portable grill. It’s a perfect tailgate grill, just don’t store it lit under your car like this fan.