While Traeger is known for making pellet grills, they may be looking at expanding into other adjacent categories. High end coolers haven’t seen the same sales slowdown that grills have, likely because they are compatible with experience driven consumers. Traeger has been developing a temperature controlled storage container than improves upon what’s in the market.
According to a patent that was released, Traeger has been working on a temperature controlled storage container that both cools and heats. Like Traeger’s other products, the design has an on-board controller and interfaces with your phone wirelessly.
The storage container works by having battery packs (110 in the figure above) that power a heating and/or cooling element (402 in the figure above) underneath storage compartments. This all works in accordance with the temperature that the user sets on the controller.
While this has obvious applications for keeping food hot or cold, the patent also outlines another use. The user could keep their lunch or dinner cold, then when it’s time to eat, the heating element gets hot enough to heat up the meal. This could be made even easier with programmable functions on the control unit.
A patent doesn’t mean we’ll ever see the temperature controlled storage container come to market. It’s an interesting idea though, so we’ll eagerly watch for more news on it.