It’s April Fool’s day, but what may not be a joke is that Blackstone is developing a pellet grill. A patent was released this week of yet another pellet grill design from the griddle maker. This one has some innovative features, namely a gas powered ignitor and battery power.
Another innovative patent this week came from Oklahoma Joe’s. They designed a pellet grill with two zone control. The grill has two exhaust vents and an intake vent that all could be operated by the controller. This would allow two zone cooking as well as a more uniform heat gradient in the grill.
From ideation to new products, Breeo released a couple new accessories for its fire pit. The first is a stainless steel disc for searing food in conjunction with its cooking system. The second is an organizer that neatly stores all of the accessories for the fire pit.
Over at Middleby, they announced some promotions in their Residential Kitchen ranks. The current head of outdoor products was promoted to EVP of the larger Residential segment. In conjunction with that, they announced a new outdoor boss. The third promotion was a new addition to Residential operations.
Within Middleby at Kamado Joe, they’re working on growing the brand internationally. As part of that they’ve enlisted the help of Silverpoint Displays to build 1,000 displays for expos and stores in Europe.
On the retail side, The Home Depot has some new offerings this year. They’ve expanded the brands in their line-up and are carrying the Gozney Roccbox pizza oven, FOGO lump charcoal and Jealous Devil lump charcoal. Both premium charcoal brands are available in-store.
Finally, we did a review of the Ooni Koda 12 pizza oven. The oven lived up to the hype, and we really liked it. One issue worth pointing out though, is we had problems with the ignitor in cold, breezy conditions.