Two burners give the chef the ability to cook at two different temperatures simultaneously, which is crucial whether making breakfast for the family or hosting a backyard barbecue. And, again, it would have been really easy for us to do. We’ve had a lot of our customers request that we have a Blackstone pellet grill, but again, we’re really disciplined. And that’s hard for me because I’m such an entrepreneur.
We’re catching up, because I’ve hired a lot of people into product development and we’re catching up and getting ahead. But there’s a lot of creative people in this country, and they’ll buy a product and tweak it and make it better and come up with a cool idea. It’s awesome, and so yeah, we watch social media a lot for that. So we pulled back on TV advertising every year for the last three and a half, four years.
The flat, non-stick surface of a Blackstone griddle is perfect for cooking a large variety of foods, from fluffy muffin mix pancakes to fried rice. Because the cooking surface is a solid sheet of metal rather than a metal grate like a blackstone grills traditional grill, you don’t have to worry about smaller foods falling through the cracks. Even if you already have a smoker or gas grill, griddles are a great bonus way to make the perfect meal for a small or large crowd outdoors.
Walmart has different models than Lowe’s has different models, than Home Depot has different models, than Ace Hardware. Every category of product is a little bit different on how it reacts to social marketing black stone griddle versus traditional TV spend. It’s not necessarily for creating huge numbers of followers, if that makes sense. We spend money advertising our brand and what you can cook on a Blackstone, and how fun it is.
You’ll have everything you need at your fingertips in your outdoor kitchen space. That’s our main sweet spot, right in that $200-$500 range right now, as of today. We’ll be introducing some higher price points and we even have some items that retail for $1,000 right now. And we will see more of a push in that direction, for sure. And we just came out with a 17-inch earlier this year and we’re now just barely shipping the 22-inch electric griddle.
And then clearly in the case of a Roku app, you’re just doing it, and that’s a different kind of advertising. And it hasn’t caused any of the problems we usually see. And I think that push and pull is fascinating to me, because I think it’s coming for every company. Later in life, as I got into my career and started doing what I’m doing, I, again, was intrigued by griddles, but you couldn’t go to a store anywhere and buy ‘em.
One of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show was to talk about your social media strategy. What you’ve described is a pretty traditional product distribution strategy. Steaks, chicken, and burgers are thrown on the grill and for some of us, using a grill becomes our primary way to cook food during the season. On the other hand, if you’re going to be cooking the perfect Blackstone steak, then you’ll want to preheat for a longer time so that your steak can get a nice sear. Blackstone’s line of griddles is some of the best on the market.
Seasoning is paramount when it comes to any flat-top griddle, and Blackstone griddles are no different. Season the Blackstone’s cast-iron cooking surface before cooking with it by carefully following the manufacturer’s instructions. It’s also important to clean the grill between each use by scraping it with a spatula, scrubbing it with a scouring pad, and wiping it clean with paper towels. Never use detergents or cleaners, as they could ruin the seasoning layer. The surface also needs a good recoating of oil in between each use. When the grill is not in use, cover it to protect it from the elements so the cooking surface doesn’t rust.
It’s really one of the cool things about our product, is we are so diverse in our demographic. We are doing okay in Canada, blackstone grills but we need to expand there. In fact, we just hired an international sales manager, the first one in the company, this week.