[HN Gopher] Instant Brands, maker of Instant Pot and Pyrex cookw...
___________________________________________________________________
Instant Brands, maker of Instant Pot and Pyrex cookware, files for
bankruptcy
Author : colinprince
Score : 145 points
Date : 2023-06-13 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't care about Instant Pots, but NOOOOOO!!! Not my Pyrex!!!!
| ksaj wrote:
| Too late to be worrying about that now. The glass change was
| quite a while back.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm of a certain age that my pyrex is from a while back
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I assure you this bankruptcy won't affect your existing
| Pyrex.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Well, you can keep using it after the company went
| bankrupt.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Until they disable the licensing server so the next time
| it needs to renew the license it fails and becomes
| unusable. So glad I bought that smart home pyrex set of
| dishes
| siddarthd2919 wrote:
| They should have introduced the InstantPot AI line up with
| ChatGPT 4.0 to save the company.
| zwieback wrote:
| Everyone who wanted one has one and whoever wants one now gets
| their friends' cast-offs or duplicates.
| luckman212 wrote:
| So where can we buy quality oven-safe glassware now in the US?
| proggy wrote:
| Anchor Hocking is still around. For now. But if this pattern of
| private equity destroying trusted brands continues, one can
| only imagine how difficult it will be as a consumer to purchase
| well-made household commodities. I do not want to navigate a
| world where the provenance of every product is unknown, its
| white-label manufacturing origins hidden behind an alphabet
| soup name like MALACASA, KOMUEE, or M MCIRCO (all actual names
| of oven safe glassware products for sale today).
| zwieback wrote:
| Thrift stores.
| katbyte wrote:
| import the good stuff from the EU:
| https://icedteapitcher.myshopify.com/
| quacker wrote:
| OXO sells borosilicate cookware.
|
| I'm unsure if all their glass cookware is borosilicate but they
| clearly marked it as such when I last looked.
| [deleted]
| chazeon wrote:
| If Instant Pot goes out of business, I wonder where people should
| go to get electronic pressurized pots?
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Someone will buy the brand/IP/factories/contracts/etc during
| bankruptcy and will continue manufacturing them
| dylan604 wrote:
| Amazon? Or have they already come out with an AmazonBasics
| version?
| pjscott wrote:
| They're almost certainly not going to stop making Instant Pots.
| This is a chapter 11 bankruptcy -- the kind where the business
| gets restructured but continues to operate.
| sparrish wrote:
| We bought a Ninja. It's bigger, which is wonderful for our
| large family, and works great. Has lids for air frying and
| pressure cooking.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| The ninja foodi line is pretty good. I've had mine for a few
| years now. I use the air fry, pressure cook, slow cook, and
| sous vide functions weekly.
| ksaj wrote:
| Interestingly, Canadian Tire (very well known establishment
| up here!) used to sell InstaPot, and pretty much always had
| it on special. Lately they've shifted toward Ninja brand
| items.
| bombcar wrote:
| Faberware and Ninja make some, and I'm sure if the IP IP
| doesn't get slurped up, Walmart and friends will make store-
| brand ones. They're not very complicated.
| snuxoll wrote:
| I <3 my Ninja multi-cooker, but they do a HORRIBLE job of
| marketing the thing with the name alone: Ninja(r) Foodi(r)
| 14-in-1 8-qt. SMART XL Pressure Cooker Steam Fryer with
| SmartLid(r)
|
| It's like something I'd read for some white-labelled Chinese
| product on Amazon; but it's the single most heavily used
| appliance in my kitchen!
| bombcar wrote:
| It slices, it dices...it even makes Julienne fries!
| dtgriscom wrote:
| I have an Instant Pot, and love it a lot. But, here is some
| perhaps relevant anecdata:
|
| 1. The original stainless steel removable liner is embossed with
| nice, legible capacity levels. Unfortunately, they're way off:
| the "9 cup" line is actually about 12 cups. (Not a big deal; we
| just don't use the markings.)
|
| 2. I bought the Instant Pot Air Fryer Lid lid add-on, which was
| supposed to support temperatures of up to 400degF. But, after a
| lot of testing, I found that it was seriously limited as to the
| heat it would supply. Basically, the internal temperature never
| got over 360degF, and in fact after eight minutes of running the
| heater would turn off and the unit would cool down to 270degF and
| then maintain that temperature. All the while, the external
| temperature would happily show 400degF.
|
| My guess: they discovered late in the development cycle that the
| air fryer lid would overheat and kill older Instant Pots. They
| couldn't fix this after the fact, so they modified the lid
| firmware to limit the actual temperatures, but keep displaying
| the desired temperature, hoping users wouldn't notice. (I
| complained, and they promptly send me a new lid. But, it had the
| same flaw.)
|
| My Amazon review with the details:
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2D14J5XXHC2GA . (Yes:
| I may have too much time on my hands...)
|
| IMHO, a company which ships clearly flawed products and hopes
| their customers don't notice is just burning their reputation.
| sk0g wrote:
| Maybe the temperature is meant to be "oven equivalent"? Our air
| fryer goes up to 200C, but at that range it's closer to 250C on
| convection ovens.
|
| Your theory is probably right though, of course.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| While I don't disagree, I think the main reason they failed had
| to do with spreading themselves too thin. Competing where they
| had no business competing.
|
| When they launched, they made an Instant Pots, and it was a
| fairly good product, with good marketing. There were other
| pressure cookers before, but this was beyond easy to use -- and
| super Instagram and Facebook friendly to share cooking videos.
|
| But then they expanded out to... Air Fryers, Coffee Makers,
| even Air Purifiers... and it's just too much. They weren't
| going up against old pressure cookers that hadn't really been
| updated in 40 years, they were going up against established
| modern brands like Nestle and Keurig, and whoever else.
|
| And they never really established a reason for all the
| different devices to live under that brand... and probably lost
| quality control (as you said). And yeah, I mean... I got an
| Instant Pots as a housewarming gift in 2010, and I loved it. So
| I gave Instant Pots to a bunch of friends as housewarming
| gifts... and it never seemed like a hit with the people who
| received it. At one point someone told me, "Thanks, but I
| already have one..." So I figured I'd replace my old one, and
| holy hell the quality in like 2017 or so was not good.
|
| Like you pointed out the measurements on the sides were not
| accurate. And every dish I had made in the old Instant Pot
| didn't cook right in the new one. (Probably because the temps
| were off.) I was an idiot and tossed the old Instant Pot I had
| before really trying the new one out... then when the new one
| sucked I stopped using it all together and never bought another
| one.
|
| Edit... here's a pressure cooker from like 2004. It was such a
| pain to clean and no matter what I did it splattered steam and
| liquid all over when it was turned on. Instant Pot was so much
| easier to use than this thing was.
|
| https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Wolfgang-Puck-7.5-qt.-...
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| There's a whole generation of pressure cookers after that
| thing with electronic controls, presets for different food
| items, etc, that precede the Instant Pot. I have one that I
| got for free somewhere that has all of those features. Which
| was why I wondered what the big deal was when everybody
| started raving about the Instant Pot.
|
| https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/OdoAAOSwPFNkUgOY/s-l1600.jpg
| bsima wrote:
| Instant Pot has become a cultural icon, everyone has one. How
| does such an iconic brand go under so quickly? Just bad
| management? I'm not buying the excuses of "its the macroeconomic
| climate blah blah"
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| "...everyone has one." Going to be difficult to sell more then.
| :^)
|
| Also, they don't fully replace more traditional cooking
| apparatus, like a pressure cooker, a crock pot, or rice cooker.
| We have all 4, and what the Instant Pot got a lot of use
| initially we found that the for purpose cooking pots worked
| better and got better results. So the Instant Pot slowly fell
| out of favor.
| duped wrote:
| But now you need to store three appliances instead of one,
| and not everyone has a large pantry or kitchen.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| What do crockpots and pressure cookers offer that the instant
| pot doesn't? I have a breville instant pot-equivalent and
| can't see ever needing a crockpot. And I understood it to be
| fundamentally just a pressure cooker with some
| programmability
| ornornor wrote:
| I have both but we use the instantpot (EU name) more often
| because it fits more jar when canning, but mostly because
| of the electronics controls that makes it reach the optimal
| temp for pressure without making any noise from excess
| steam releasing. You can achieve it with an analog pressure
| cooker by it's harder and you can't get it completely
| silent like the instapot without running the risk of being
| under pressurized (and under temp), which affects cooking
| and sterilization effectiveness.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Our Instant Pot makes great rice - I barely use my Zoji
| anymore. The IP clearly beats it for brown rice both in speed
| and flavor as the Zoji's seem to be optimized for white. My
| Instant Pot also has a slow cooker function as well that
| works just fine.
|
| About the only place the Instant Pot falls down a bit as a
| pressure cooker is when you need the full 15psi, like the
| Modernist Cuisine recipe that pressure-cooks squash with a
| bit of baking soda to kick in the Maillard reaction. The
| recipe works great in a stovetop pressure cooker that hits
| 15psi but fails in an Instant pot that only hits around
| 12.5psi or so - you can always taste the baking soda when it
| is done cooking. The pressure difference might also impact
| making stock but I haven't tried a side by side (though the
| Instant Pot is non-venting so I'd expect it's stock to at
| least have superiour clarity).
|
| If I could only pick one out of the four, it would be the IP.
| No question.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Probably depends which rice cooker you have. My Zojirushi
| (highest-end non-pressure model when I got it a few years
| ago) clearly outclasses my IP for any kind of rice, though
| is much slower.
|
| I used to have a Cuckoo pressure rice cooker that made the
| best rice, fast, but it eventually started leaking even
| after replacing the seals, and professional repair would
| have been prohibitively expensive in Canada
| AlanYx wrote:
| Just curious, can you adjust the cook time upwards by 10%
| or so to overcome the pressure difference?
| bombcar wrote:
| Wait, I thought the Instant Pot _just was_ a pressure cooker?
|
| Or by pressure cooker do you mean a "on the stove double
| boiler-like" setup?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The instant pot in the most basic pot serves as all of
|
| (1) An electric pot that can be used like a regular
| stovetop pot,
|
| (2) A pressure cooker, and
|
| (3) A slow cooker (and a few other things that are
| typically specialized single-use devices but are really
| slight variations on those 3 things)
|
| More advanced models are also:
|
| (4) immersion circulator ("sous vide" cooker), and
|
| (5) air fryer.
|
| In many of these roles it is often seen as sonewhat less
| good than a dedicated device, though even people who feel
| that way may see it as useful as a multitasker and because
| it can more conveniently do dishes that require more than
| one function without changing pots.
| bombcar wrote:
| I need to look into this, I didn't know it could be a
| slow cooker; that would save me two devices if I get rid
| of the slow cooker and the rice cooker (though it is
| really nice to make teriyaki chicken in the instant pot
| and rice in the rice cooker).
| alanbernstein wrote:
| I got one to replace all three of those, and it works great.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Not that this means your response is wrong (I largely agree)
| but funny enough in my household our insta-pot is essentially
| just a rice cooker. We basically use it for nothing else, but
| it's also _really_ good for rice! Fluffy and perfect
| everytime.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| "...our insta-pot is essentially just a rice cooker." Yeah,
| ours pretty much boiled down to that, too. :^D
| bombcar wrote:
| Or boiled _up_ as it may be, they get nice and hot
| inside.
| goatforce5 wrote:
| I think the problem is that _everyone has one_.
|
| > The company's meteoric growth trajectory has slowed down in
| recent years. According to S&P, sales declined by almost 22 per
| cent in the first quarter of 2023, the seventh consecutive
| quarterly contraction.
|
| We got one for the house ~4 years ago. It's still working fine,
| and we don't need to upgrade to one with Bluetooth connectivity
| or anything like that.
|
| I'm guessing they found the size of their market wasn't
| infinite.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Yes, no commenter here ever said: I own at least 3
| generations of pots. Unlike an iPhone, no one is willing to
| swap the model.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Isn't that fine though? I mean, if you've created a popular
| product, and make margin on every sale, why would only making
| 100 million dollars instead of 400 million dollars in profit
| push you into bankruptcy?
|
| Did they take out a ton of loans to expand their
| manufacturing capabilities with out of touch sales
| projections or something?
| hooverd wrote:
| Private equity debt, mostly.
| karaterobot wrote:
| But then why wouldn't the same process result in the
| bankruptcy of all (relatively) durable goods manufacturers
| with a limited set of products? For example, why hasn't
| Vitamix (blenders) or Zwilling (knives) gone into bankruptcy?
|
| Also, I don't think the market for this stuff is ever truly
| saturated: every day, plenty of people get their first
| apartment and need to buy appliances. Instant Pot seems
| similar to other things like microwaves and toasters, which
| we don't think of as a dead end due to market saturation.
|
| I think the "bought by private equity and wrung dry"
| explanation makes more sense. Or if not that, perhaps just a
| poorly run business.
| ksaj wrote:
| I would compare that to the bedroom industry. How often do
| you buy a bedframe or a new dresser? Those businesses are not
| going out of business, yet the turnover per-household is
| equally slow.
| alexb_ wrote:
| Pyrex in particular switched to a new type of glass that is
| miles worse than their old glass, to the point where the brand
| name now is a negative.
| kgwxd wrote:
| The awful noise they used to make when 2 pieces touched was
| the brand.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The (urban legend?) I heard was that they changed the formula
| so that Pyrex couldn't be used for drug manufacturing.
|
| They still handle all temperatures a home chef will ever
| need, but a drug operation will reach the limits and the
| glass breaks.
| katbyte wrote:
| the new formula was cheaper to make. think thats all you
| really need to know
| wavefunction wrote:
| Definitely an urban legend. Heat and narcotic substances do
| not mix very well beyond the barest threshold of baking
| temperatures.
| jbay808 wrote:
| They do not handle the _rapid temperature differentials_ a
| home chef often encounters when they aren 't careful
| enough. Especially when they are expecting the resilience
| of borosilicate glass.
| katbyte wrote:
| unless you are in the EU, pyrex glass from there is still the
| good stuff
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Because everyone has one...you have explained it yourself.
|
| Every consumer brand that expands quickly will keep expanding
| to the point that they saturate their market (GoPro, Doc
| Martens was a recent IPO in the UK that has self-destructed, it
| happens over and over). What is unusual about this case is
| that, afaik, they didn't IPO. Usually the IPO is the prelude to
| saturation and then bankruptcy because the incentives get
| totally skewed (and because companies will usually fiddle with
| supply before the IPO to boost the sale price).
| harimau777 wrote:
| Declining quality might also be an issue. Doc Martens no
| longer have the quality or guarantee that they used to.
| Similarly, other posts have mentioned that Pyrex has
| apparently changed their formula to a lower quality
| substitute.
| ksaj wrote:
| If Doc Martens went public in the 70's, they'd probably be
| in a lot better shape today. They aren't nearly as popular
| now as they were in the 70's thru 90's. They picked a weird
| time to go public.
| branon wrote:
| They changed the formula for Pyrex glass many years ago and the
| new formula is inferior to the old one.
|
| Somehow I doubt the current incarnation of these companies has
| much at all to do with their origin.
| quercusa wrote:
| Look down the length of a Pyrex pan or measuring cup - if
| it's green, it's the cheap stuff, if colorless it's old
| Pyrex.
| Larrikin wrote:
| It's much easier to just look at the logo. The fake stuff
| is easily spotted
| zinekeller wrote:
| > Somehow I doubt the current incarnation of these companies
| has much at all to do with their origin.
|
| The origin of Pyrex is Corning, the Gorilla Glass maker. They
| divested Pyrex because they've got tired of dealing with the
| consumer market and wanted to focus on B2B sales.
|
| The US market was acquired by (as shown) eager to make a
| quick buck on brand recognition. The European market was
| acquired by a different company which still manufactures
| borosilicate cookware to this day (and are not affected by
| this bankruptcy).
| myself248 wrote:
| Aye, and this drives me nuts. For 50+ years, "Pyrex" was
| the name of a material, borosilicate glass, with known
| material properties. You could count on it being safe in
| certain situations.
|
| Then Corning somehow decided that it was the name of a
| _brand_, and they could use whatever inferior material they
| wanted, and if you put it in those same situations it would
| explode and cover your kitchen/lab in glass shards.
|
| How that was even legal, I will never understand.
| retrac wrote:
| Pyrex, the term, was originally a brand for borosilicate
| glass. It has become partially generic over the years,
| like Aspirin or Kleenex.
|
| Aspirin is still a trademark of Bayer in Canada; if they
| want to switch to ibuprofen instead of aspirin as the
| active ingredient, and sell it as Aspirin, they could.
| Similarly, if Kimberley-Clark decides to start selling
| sandpaper and call them Kleenex, they could.
|
| If a trademark becomes fully generic it can be ruled so
| by a court, at which point the trademark protection is
| lost. Aspirin is like that in the US. But that is pretty
| rare these days.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| Aspirin is different - the US trademark for the name was
| explicitly expropriated from Bayer by the US government
| during WW1 and became a generic... that didn't happen to
| Kleenex or Pyrex.
| myself248 wrote:
| But if someone sold ibuprofen as "aspirin", doctors would
| rightfully decry the move as likely to get someone
| killed. It's a generic but it has a specific meaning.
|
| Selling soda-lime glass as "pyrex" has gotten plenty of
| people injured, but evidently none severely enough to sue
| Corning's pants off.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| What you want is borosilicate glass. Bodum I think still
| makes it but other brands Do too. Pryrex is no better than
| generic Chinese glass
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Here is a really good Wirecutter article that discusses the
| differences. TL;DR: they don't consider the switch away from
| borosilicate to be a big deal, but borosilicate-based
| products are still out there if you want them.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/tempered-vs-
| borosili...
| mholm wrote:
| I've been skeptical of the Wirecutter for a few years now.
| It seems their reviews are starting to lean away from
| quality products, and start pointing towards companies with
| a bigger marketing budget. Example, their handvac
| recommendations are entirely Black & Decker, but I've tried
| a few of them and found them vastly overpriced compared to
| others on the market.
| bombcar wrote:
| Anything like Wirecutter is good until the marketers
| catch up with it.
|
| Even consumer reports is gamed; they test toilets by
| flushing golfballs and whatnot and if you talk to
| plumbers, they recommend different brands.
| Clamchop wrote:
| This one looks well-cited though.
| bonniemuffin wrote:
| Corelle still uses the same really excellent formula they've
| always used, though. I have a mixed set of new and old
| Corelle dishes (<1 yr old and >10 years old), and I can't
| tell the new ones from the old ones.
| salad-tycoon wrote:
| This is certainly not my understanding. After production
| left USA quality is worse. Breaks more often and when it
| shatters, it doesn't just break apart. It's like a kinetic
| blast sending forth hair and bigger sized razor sharp glass
| shards in a surprisingly wide radius. It's like a mutually
| assured destruction event and will require heavy clean up
| and you still might end up with glass in your feet and
| eyes.
|
| I remember reading the Amazon reviews and the amount of 1
| star stories about how a plate landed them in the ER was
| concerning.
|
| I bought some vintage Corelle at a private sale and it
| seems different to me at least but maybe I am buying the
| wrong contemporary stuff.
| nrclark wrote:
| Corelle plates have always been that way, I think. I was
| raised using them, and I still buy them now that I have
| children of my own.
|
| For me, they're 100% shatterproof until they're not. You
| can drop them over and over again, and never notice any
| visible change. But then when they finally do shatter,
| it's almost like an explosion.
|
| I think this is because they're built from a pressurized
| metal/glass layered composite. Very sturdy until enough
| internal damage builds up.
| snuxoll wrote:
| More or less matches my experience, including having been
| raised eating on Corelle dishes. They'll take drop after
| drop and then suddenly the last one leaves a giant mess
| to sweep up. Every time.
| Sunspark wrote:
| I have discovered that if you leave a Corelle plate
| outside during the winter, in the spring it will be
| broken into little bitty pieces. It can't handle the
| freeze and thaw cycles which surprised me.
| bonniemuffin wrote:
| I wonder if some of the bad Amazon experiences are due to
| counterfeit/fakes, and/or the product lines that are made
| in china? Their products vary in materials and country of
| manufacture. The ones I like are made of Vitrelle, come
| directly from Corelle, and it's one of the product lines
| they still make in New York:
| https://www.corelle.com/product/winter-frost-
| white-78-piece-...
|
| I think they're all (even the vintage ones) subject to
| risk of shattering into pointy shards if they break,
| though. They're not magic. :)
| bradfa wrote:
| Corelle is owned by the same conglomerate as Instant and
| Pyrex, it seems.
| goerz wrote:
| Does anyone have a specific recommendation for a glass
| measuring cup that is safe to boil on a gas stove (like PYREX
| before they changed their glass)?
| bonniemuffin wrote:
| I use borosilicate lab beakers in the kitchen. The main
| disadvantage is that they don't have handles so you'll need
| a pot holder to use them for hot things.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I went full tilt and bought beaker tongs! Lab coat works
| great instead of an apron too.
| tstrimple wrote:
| And another "food scientist" was born.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Okay, so i might have intentionally left out the eye
| protection as well, but it's perfectly natural to have a
| triple beam in place of the instant pot, yeah?
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Oxo would be a good brand to check - when I looked for a
| baking dish, I noticed that Oxo specifically mentioned
| borosilicate on the label.
| wavefunction wrote:
| Oxo is one of the finest examples of mass-market consumer
| industrial design and quality I've ever seen. Every
| product of theirs I've purchased has been exemplary, even
| years later after heavy and extensive use.
| branon wrote:
| I had an Oxo digital thermometer that broke after a
| couple weeks, outside of that all their products have
| been fantastic
| alwaysbeconsing wrote:
| I have been satisfied with Anchor-Hocking. They have a
| different kind of glass than borosilicate but it is still
| specially made for resisting heat.
| https://www.anchorhocking.com/why-choose-glass/
| bob1029 wrote:
| Strongly recommend AH. I've got a lot of their products
| in varying sizes. Integrated measuring feature makes them
| easily the most practical pieces of glassware in my
| kitchen.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Sounds like they took on lots of loans to grow the business,
| relying on interest rates staying at ~0%.
|
| When those loans come up for renewal and they have to pay 7%
| corporate bond rates, of course they're going to collapse.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| That's the crazy part of the "free money" short term loans of
| the past couple of years. Did these companies not think that
| they'd need to be refinanced?
| coldpie wrote:
| More likely the execs know they can take their piece and
| then bounce when the check comes due. There's no downside,
| they can just move on to the next victim and repeat until
| they have enough money to retire.
| dylan604 wrote:
| When the interest rates bump up, that's not a per company
| thing. Where's the "next victim and repeat" opportunity
| going to be when there's no 0% available?
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Why do you think the acquisition of single family homes
| picked up so much? They took their war chests and
| switched investment vehicles
| londons_explore wrote:
| Well we've had 2 decades of super low rates... Thats
| plenty to build up a nice big retirement fund...
| dylan604 wrote:
| is retirement the next victim?
| OGWhales wrote:
| Related post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301612
| [deleted]
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| I'm shocked by this. We have an Instant Pot and use it. All. The.
| Time. It is a well made product that is simple to use, has a good
| feature set, is useful, and relatively inexpensive (even better
| when it goes on sale, which is frequent). All the people I know
| that have one (and that is a lot of people) feel the same way.
| How can't you make money when you have something like this on
| your hands?!?!?!
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Counterpoint, we were gifted an instant pot and used it about
| half a dozen times before realizing it was an extra piece of
| kitchen equipment that did absolutely nothing for us in terms
| of food quality or ease of cooking. It sat in the back of a
| deep cupboard for a couple of years until we threw it away when
| we moved.
| bombcar wrote:
| Ours is mainly a glorified rice cooker that sometimes does
| something else.
|
| As a rice cooker, it cooks rice.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You're missing out, because you should be using it to make
| _beans._ As a bean cooker, it turns a annoying multi-hour
| job into from dry to beautifully cooked in an hour. As a
| rice cooker, you should just use a rice cooker, they 're
| like 1/3 the price and you can run it at the same time as
| the bean cooker.
| bombcar wrote:
| I really do need to get into the bean scene, but we have
| had issues [1] in the past.
|
| [1] https://www.whelenmassnotification.com/wp-
| content/uploads/si...
| irrational wrote:
| That is interesting. Like OP, we use ours constantly. I
| consider it to be the kitchen appliance I would never do
| without. I wonder if it comes down to OP and we making more
| similar foods than what you eat.
| nikole9696 wrote:
| This is quite possible. I use mine to cook wild rice, which
| takes awhile stovetop. And hard boiled eggs, which come out
| great. Everything else I've tried with it, I might as well
| just cook with the stove or oven. I don't like most recipes
| I've seen and am somewhat of a picky eater.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| It is wonderful to use instead of an oven since it
| doesn't heat up the whole room and you can pressure cook
| dry beans without soaking to fully done in about 20 - 30
| minutes.
| Marsymars wrote:
| If I'm being really miserly about heat output and/or food
| smells I'll walk my pot out to the back deck to release.
| (Could also plug into an outdoor outlet to cook, but gets
| logistically complicated with timing if I'm not already
| hanging out on the deck.)
| taylodl wrote:
| > It is wonderful to use instead of an oven since it
| doesn't heat up the whole room
|
| Energy efficiency is a big point. Between my Instant Pot
| and Air Fryer I have few opportunities to turn on the
| oven. These devices heat up faster, cook faster, and
| provide more consistent results. This is especially true
| now that I'm an empty nester and no longer cooking for a
| large family. It also makes it easy to resist the
| temptation to rely on processed foods.
| nvy wrote:
| I primarily use mine to make rice, beef stews, and
| hummus.
|
| All of those take less time and are just as good if not
| better than stovetop.
|
| Once I made shawarma in mine, that was pretty neat.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You use it to make hummus? Is there a good recipe that
| you use, or are they just floating out there?
| nvy wrote:
| I have one from my sister-in-law, that she got from her
| (Israeli) partner's grandmother, which is a very
| traditional Israeli hummus recipe. That recipe is for
| stovetop and I adapted it to the instant pot.
|
| The trick is to use baking soda when you cook the
| chickpeas in the instant pot, because it
| dissolves/softens the shells. Then you take them out and
| rinse thoroughly in water to get rid the baking soda
| taste, before slapping them into a food processor with
| tahini and whatever else.
|
| Good quality tahini also makes a difference. Lots of
| north American brands have a wildly different taste than
| what's common in the middle east.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Interestingly, different people also use pressure cookers
| in entirely different ways, which I learned when my partner
| and I moved in together, and we both brought an Instant Pot
| the household.
|
| I use mine exclusively for single items that I want to cook
| efficiently in bulk - eggs, beans, potatoes, yams, etc.
| (Most recently, made a pot full of chick peas this weekend
| to split between hummus and a quinoa salad.)
|
| She uses hers for single-pot soups, stews, etc. that are
| ready to eat as-is.
| js2 wrote:
| Things I use mine for regularly:
|
| - Hard-boiled eggs. Takes just 5 minutes. Not much time
| savings, but the eggs are consistently easy to peel and yes,
| I've tried it Serious Eats way too.
|
| - Incubating yogurt. Makes a perfect batch of four mason jars
| worth every time.
|
| - Risotto. Saves the 30 minutes of attending to rice where
| you slowly ladle in the broth.
|
| - Black beans. Start from dry beans in a pinch, no soaking
| needed.
| downut wrote:
| I'm doing a complete tear down remodel of the kitchen so I
| bought some devices to make our 95% cooked from scratch
| meal lifestyle bearable through the awful times.
|
| A top of the line Breville toaster oven was the first, it's
| fantastic, but it is also silly to compare it to our 25 y/o
| Viking duel fuel range, waiting to reenter our life.
|
| A week ago I got my Instant Pot Pro, and I've been putting
| it through its paces. I boiled some eggs. This is what
| really irks me about IP fans: it does not take 5 minutes.
| It has some indeterminate amount of preheat, the 5 min.,
| and then a cool down. The eggs are just fine, as flawless
| as the following method on a quality gas burner stove: Put
| eggs and water into pot to just cover, turn burner
| high"ish"; when bubbles just start, turn down to a very
| very slow bubble generation and set timer for 10m (12-13min
| at 5500' elevation), scoop out the eggs when the timer
| expires and put on the counter, peel when cool enough. I
| very rarely had to spend any attention monitoring this. The
| IP is just, but only just, as good.
|
| BUT ITS NOT FIVE MINUTES.
|
| Shouting because why do instant pot fans do this?
|
| Now, I am quite interested in the yogurt thing. That sounds
| very cool, we love yogurt and industrial yogurt, meh. Also
| strawberries are cheap right now and I'm thinking of making
| some exotic French confitures, and mixing that with the
| yogurt.
|
| Risotto? No brainer on a decent stove. Dried beans? I also
| have a 30 y/o Magefesa pressure cooker that has a thicker
| bottom than the instant pot "pot" and does dried beans
| perfectly. No magic, or even "instant", there.
|
| Another gripe: compared to the Breville that roller knob in
| the center is a gawdawlful POS. Reeks of cheap.
|
| Compared to the 15 y/o electric range that is going to be
| tossed out the back doors, and then shot multiple times
| with 12 gauge 3" buckshot loads, the IP is great, so maybe
| I'm a little sad that the inevitable PE bankrupt/shitify it
| happened to it too.
| jerf wrote:
| "why do instant pot fans do this?"
|
| You may hatenjoy the discussion at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36038796 .
|
| (Hmmm... with hatenjoy I may finally have ticked "create
| a legit googlewhack" off my bucket list. I see some
| usages that appear to be "Hat Enjoy" jammed together as a
| domain name or company name but a portmanteau of hate-
| enjoy Google is not finding for me. Of course Google
| isn't what it used to be...)
| cdumler wrote:
| It's a tool. What you get out of it will depend on what you
| expect of it. What I try to tell people is that Instant Pot
| is not something that makes food better nor does it
| necessarily cook things faster. When you factor in the time
| it takes to get up to pressure and the time it takes for it
| release it, it isn't necessarily faster than normal cooking.
|
| What is does do it take care of itself. In other words, I can
| throw a bunch of stuff in the pot, configure it for cook time
| then turn off the heat, set a timer and know that in 45
| minutes it will be ready to serve. In a house hold where
| multitasking is a necessity, that is a huge boon. Finally,
| one pot to clean up.
| jerf wrote:
| For me, culinarily, it is basically a slow cooker that
| produces acceptable results, and also isn't necessarily
| slow either. We do ribs a lot in the instant pot and while
| I disagree with just about every recipe on the internet and
| add 10-15 more minutes than they specify, it is still
| faster than conventional methods because the extra heat
| does matter. We also use it as a rice cooker a lot; whether
| or not it is faster it is convenient, and, you know, we
| have one, which makes it cheaper than buying a dedicated
| rice cooker.
| ksaj wrote:
| There is also the pressure cooker option. That's where our
| household gets the most mileage out of it. Pressure cooking
| is easy. Instant Pot pressure cooking is automagic.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Pressure cooking is magic. Your dhal is reliably done
| after 30 minutes, even with an old batch of beans.
| Before, I might have waited 2 hours, and dinner was till
| not ready because the beans were too old.
| koolba wrote:
| Pressure cooking itself is magical but the InstantPot is
| like a level one mage casting magical missile. Even the
| "high pressure" setting is pretty low compared to a real
| pressure cooker.
|
| Thankfully most meals have low HP.
| ksaj wrote:
| Yes, you might not use it as an industrial broaster,
| which requires a significant amount of pressure. But for
| most home use, InstaPot is painless. And the cleanup is
| really easy.
| sp332 wrote:
| They merged with a private equity company. It got turned into a
| financial instrument instead of a business.
| dpflan wrote:
| How does PE survive? If these companies become instruments
| and now forced into bankruptcy, the PE must write off the
| bankruptcy (some economic advantage must exist for this
| path). But then the PE has to move on and find another
| company to possess, right? I wish we had Instant's
| financials, they did _seem_ to be selling well, so their
| value was based on expected sales /profit in
| perpetuity...bankruptcy stops that because bankruptcy has a
| cap, right?
|
| I need help understanding how PE continues to exist, beyond
| the assumption that they got money out of the deal and will
| move on to another one...
| govg wrote:
| PE exists because the cases you hear about are the
| failures. It would be like looking at the products of
| Google that never made money and then wondering how Google
| runs, you're not looking at the full picture. For every
| failure story like this, there are numerous other firms
| where PE has come up, removed a bunch of inefficiencies,
| driven up profits, and then moved on. It is just a more
| involved form of VC investing, and in that world failures
| are even more common.
| dpflan wrote:
| Sure, PE is bigger than this. But isn't the issue people
| are having is that this "failure" isn't a failure (PE
| gains something)...it's part of doing business as a PE
| firm?
| Zigurd wrote:
| PE continues to exist by gaming the system: As others on
| this thread have speculated, driving a company into
| bankruptcy can shed pension obligations and enable breaking
| other contracts, leases, etc. Hence the paradox of everyone
| having these seemingly very popular products while the
| company is "bankrupt." Bankruptcy is not a loss for PE,
| yet, anyway. Which is why there is a perverse incentive to
| "go bankrupt" in large measure due to LBO loans, while
| there is plenty of brand equity and other assets to propel
| future sales.
| lmm wrote:
| PE is the Ticketmaster of finance. They charge a bunch of
| fees, take a bunch of money, take all of the heat, and
| quietly funnel the money back to the founder/early
| investors/etc. who sold out but don't want you to know.
| gruez wrote:
| >and quietly funnel the money back to the founder/early
| investors/etc. who sold out but don't want you to know.
|
| I don't understand this attitude. If you're in the arts I
| can understand why you don't want to be a "sellout", but
| founders/investors? Isn't the point literally to sell
| out?
| dpflan wrote:
| A basic HN Search yields some interesting top articles: htt
| ps://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu..
| .
|
| The Atlantic: _When Private Equity Firms Bankrupt Their Own
| Companies_
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/05/private-
| eq...
|
| > Interesting, "pension laundering" is a tactic that seems
| quite abusive.
| robd003 wrote:
| Pensions should be outlawed. If employees want retirement
| savings they should be given money for 401k plans, not
| outdated and inefficient defined benefit plans.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| More importantly, company-ran pension plans should be
| outlawed because they are a morass of perverse incentives
| and opportunities for quasi-legal theft. To put it
| simply, it is often the incentive of the people who make
| decisions about the pensions to mismanage them.
| wnevets wrote:
| Isn't that what happened to Bed Bath & Beyond? Can someone
| explain to me why this happening isn't a bad thing?
| katbyte wrote:
| > explain to me why this happening isn't a bad thing
|
| because there is now a good change everyone with one of
| these devices is likely no longer going to get support,
| warranty, or updates. apps will become outdated and fall
| off the app store parts to repair will no longer be
| available etc
|
| devices/a brand people enjoyed using is now gone because PE
| did what PE does and destroyed the brand for a quick buck
| wnevets wrote:
| that sounds like a bad thing tho
| katbyte wrote:
| oh that is my bad, i read your comment on why this IS a
| bad thing not isn't :(
|
| sorry
| pessimizer wrote:
| Like real estate.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Yep. There's always the assumption that just because a
| business sells a product or service that it is in business to
| sell a product or service. This is not always true.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Private Equity. Instant Pot had great cashflow but slowing
| sales, so the PE owners issued $450M in new debt and then
| immediately paid out $250M in dividends to themselves resulting
| in the company carrying 8x leverage compared to the 4x it had
| prior to the financial engineering. Further slowing sales and
| all the cash being stripped from the company ends up with
| bankruptcy every time.
| rossjudson wrote:
| You've got a few numbers there, and I'm really really curious
| about the whole story.
|
| Besides killing the company/jobs, the debt-holders are left
| holding the bag?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Yep, pretty much. PE Owners get rich(er), debtholders get
| wrecked, employees lose their jobs, any assets (pension
| contributions etc) are given to the debtholders. The
| company will likely continue to exist and Instant Pots will
| still be made/sold, but with a much smaller footprint in
| the future.
|
| The linked article talks to management about how
| unsustainable the $500 million in debt is without noting
| that it was half of that amount until these jokers took out
| loans worth $450M to gave themselves $250M.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| No reason to think the company or jobs are in jeopardy.
| Maybe they are, maybe not. The really bag-holders are the
| lenders who will take a haircut. Most companies emerge from
| bankruptcy stronger than before, having never ceased
| operations.
|
| From the article: "Broadly speaking, the CCAA is the
| Canadian equivalent of Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy
| code. Companies enter both processes when they are seeking
| the court's help to protect them from their creditors while
| they try to come up with a way to restructure the business
| and continue to operate."
| falcolas wrote:
| I'm apparently stupid. I can't understand how that can be
| even remotely legal.
| soganess wrote:
| I know basically nothing about this, but hear money peeps
| talking about it all the time like it is common practice.
| Some version of it happened to the B&M store Clarie's.
| taylodl wrote:
| The company's officers are in on the take. Legally they can
| take these actions on behalf of the company, as long it's
| clear and in the open.
| pavon wrote:
| It is the bankruptcy part that I don't understand the
| legality of. Parent company pulls a ton of money out of
| subsidiary, claims bankruptcy, then magically parent
| company isn't liable for subsidiary's debt?
| Zigurd wrote:
| PE isn't a parent company. LBO debt is debt carried by
| the acquired company. So there is no sleight of hand in
| bankruptcy. The poison is already in the acquired
| company's bloodstream.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Yep, all correct. The sleight of hand comes _just_ before
| bankruptcy when the assets are stripped and sold to a
| different entity so the debtholders are screwed with
| worthless assets and are stuck filing longshot lawsuits
| to recover assets while the ghouls who raided the company
| invest their ill-gotten proceeds while tying the mess up
| in court for years.
|
| https://archive.is/LsqUp
| youainti wrote:
| Really disappointed that this happened.
| No1 wrote:
| Who in their right minds lends to a PE-owned company? You
| know they're going to raid the piggy bank and leave the
| lender holding the bag. There can't be that many rubes with
| $450 million laying around. Are the investors government
| pension funds or something?
| hef19898 wrote:
| I guess those loans are rather quickly sold on to third
| parties, either as bundles or stand alone. Kind of like
| what happened to MBS, mortgage backed securities.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Also, a lot of the time, the government will bail them
| out, and they can continue doing that.
| Zigurd wrote:
| LBO lenders charge high rates. This means a loan that
| eventually settles for less than face value can still be
| more profitable than a low-interest loan that gets paid off
| on schedule.
| [deleted]
| civilitty wrote:
| Just another in a long list of the awful long term
| consequences of zero interest rate environments interacting
| with the principle-agent problem.
|
| The people approving these loans get to report better
| quarterly numbers and by the time the chickens come home to
| roost, they've already moved on.
| CPLX wrote:
| The money was stolen.
|
| This is an utterly textbook private equity play, the kind of
| thing that has been wrecking American business and jobs.
|
| There's nothing subtle about this at all, it's looting with a
| pen.
|
| They acquire the business, load it down with massive amounts of
| debt, do reckless short term things to boost growth (aka
| "eating the seed corn") and then take the money and keep it
| leaving someone else holding the bag.
|
| It has nothing at all to do with how much people do or don't
| like cookware.
|
| It's a bust out, a racket, just an inch away from organized
| crime. It happens daily in this country.
| clairity wrote:
| to be clear, PE isn't always purely extractive, but when it
| is, it can be highly destructive. sometimes a business is so
| mismanaged that debt (and the pressure it adds) and new
| management is all that is needed to right the ship.
|
| PE itself is a bloated industry because we have too much
| money being extracted out of the real economy going into the
| pockets of the already wealthy who don't know what to do with
| it, so they hand it to a money manager (i.e., PE) to make
| more money for them, not knowing what to do with those
| potential future earnings either. this is the kind of
| economic inefficiency that concentrations of capital brings,
| in direct refutation of the common economic argument that the
| wealthy are better at investing money (i.e., more capital
| efficient, which in turn supposedly adds more real
| productivity to the economy).
|
| small, local amounts of wealth are more capital efficient,
| but large, distant amounts are not.
| CPLX wrote:
| Private equity, as a concept, just means a firm or group of
| people that owns something. We're posting these comments
| right now on a website owned by a private equity firm.
| Technically if I sell my lawn service to some guy with an
| LLC it's private equity.
|
| Private Equity, as a distinct industry, is fully engaged in
| looting of the type contemplated by the principal-agent
| problem:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-agent_problem
| clairity wrote:
| not sure what point you're making here, but my point was
| that there is room for little PE, but not big PE, because
| little PE can have the effect of making capital more
| efficient for the overall economy. it's the same with
| arbitrage--a little arbitrage is good for the economy,
| but large, systemic arbitrage is extractive for no
| overall benefit.
|
| the principal-agent problem emerges in any business where
| professional managers are employed (which usually happens
| when a business gets too big for its britches), so it's
| not PE-specific.
| MandieD wrote:
| A little piece of classical music on this theme:
| https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Pretty_Boy_Floyd.htm
|
| "Yes, as through this world I've wandered I've seen lots of
| funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a
| fountain pen.
|
| And as through your life you travel, Yes, as through your
| life you roam, You won't never see an outlaw Drive a family
| from their home."
| coldpie wrote:
| If that's true, I wonder why the article doesn't make this
| clear. All it says is the company has a half-billion in debt,
| without any explanation for how that came about. It doesn't
| even mention that the company is owned by a PE looter.
|
| Quotes from the article:
|
| > In 2019, his company merged with Illinois-based Corelle
| Brands, the owner of Pyrex, CorningWare, SnapWare and
| Corelle.
|
| > In 2021, at the height of its popularity, the company
| borrowed $450 million US worth of bonds, due in 2028, to
| expand its business.
|
| Is Corelle the PE firm? Is "expand its business" the standard
| figleaf PE firms use when looting a business?
| CPLX wrote:
| For some unknown reason this all still happens right out in
| the open without a major media narrative built around it. A
| few activists and lawmakers have tried but it's still not
| in the public consciousness.
|
| But it's constant and blatant and somehow seems to still be
| legal.
|
| The PE firm here is Cornell Capital.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The business press is in on it. I don't mean in the sense
| that they get financial kickbacks, but business reporting
| is a cushy job where 90% of the work is rewriting press
| releases and boilerplate 'analysis' of stock movements.
| hungrigekatze wrote:
| A while back I was reading up on private equity as an
| 'industry' after a prior employer was bought up by PE, carved
| into bits, with each 'chunk' being sold off to the highest
| bidder.
|
| If you look up the names of some of the PE companies they're
| quite on the nose: https://macellumcapitalmanagement.com/
| Macellum literally means "meat market":
| https://m.dict.cc/latin-english/macellum.html 'Take an animal
| (company); chop it into parts and sell those off'
|
| Wikipedia page for Macellum:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macellum
| Alupis wrote:
| > We have an Instant Pot and use it. All. The. Time. It is a
| well made product that is simple to use, has a good feature
| set, is useful, and relatively inexpensive
|
| You may have just described why they're filing for bankruptcy.
|
| While I do not own an Instant Pot, I do own an awful lot of
| Pyrex cookware that I bought well over a decade ago... My
| mother has Pyrex cookware she's owned for decades and will
| likely pass down one day.
|
| It's hard to build a lasting company when your customer's buy
| once and never again. Perhaps there's really such a thing as
| "too good".
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Not at all - as long as they're earning a profit on each one
| large enough to justify having produced it, then they lose
| nothing by their products lasting a long time. The worst
| outcome might be that the market becomes saturated and
| everybody already has one or two, in which case the business
| just scales down and goes away, having earned a lot of money.
| But I doubt even that outcome in this case.
| Alupis wrote:
| Maybe, but in the same time duration I've bought multiple
| sets of pots/pans, wooden spoons/spatulas, several wooden
| cutting boards, mixing bowls, etc.
|
| If the company drags on long enough, all that profit gets
| eroded away. Pyrex has been around since the early 1900's
| for instance.
|
| I agree, might not be 100% of what happened here, but it
| surely has to be a component.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| It sounds like you're getting a lot of value from your
| purchase, which is great. But this doesn't mean that the
| company made any money by selling it to you. Maybe they did or
| not, but that's a different question.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Instant Pots are awesome, broadly useful, and last a long time.
| They reached market saturation, though, and the company kept
| trying to find a way to keep up the growth curve it had when
| Instant Pot was being adopted. And then, of course, the Private
| Equity "extract money and load the firm up with debt" maneuver
| of death.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I recently bought their sous vide gadget and it seems pretty
| good. I wish it would remember its setting after erroring
| out, but that's very minor. It seems very accurate, within a
| degree.
| bonniemuffin wrote:
| Everyone who wants one already has one, and it's not the kind
| of thing you need to upgrade every year. I'll keep using my
| Instant Pot for the next 10 years, but that won't help Instant
| Brands make money.
| Mimmy wrote:
| By that logic, the following industries would not exist:
| automotive, furniture, computer, kitchen appliances, other
| home appliances, television, bicycle...
|
| The article itself and mikeyouse's comment explain the
| situation most clearly. Standard PE financial
| (over)-engineering was the primary cause of their problems.
|
| Slowing sales obviously don't help, but changes in the macro-
| environment can typically be weathered if the companies'
| financials are appropriately managed.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > automotive, bicycle
|
| They're supposed to have recurring maintenance fees. One
| might do the maintenance themselve, but a significant part
| of the user base will ask a shop to do it, probably the
| dealer where they bought it.
|
| > furniture, kitchen appliances, other home appliances
|
| On the higher end it survives by charging years worth of
| purchase. Like a 4000 bucks oak dining table. Kitchen
| appliance also either cost an arm and a leg or won't last
| for 10 years (including buying replacement for the
| perishable parts)
|
| The lower end is the market IKEA dominates.
|
| > television
|
| They exactly saw this problem front and center and started
| pivoting to selling viewing data and pushing ads, getting
| "smart"
|
| > computers
|
| That's exactly why companies (the biggest cmputer
| purchasers) are led to leases instead of purchases, and
| those renew every 3 years. On the user side cheaper
| computers are also the mainstream, and people don't expect
| those to last 10 years.
| digikata wrote:
| Or you recognize that the product area it's in, and size the
| business to market and make it efficient for a long term run
| (probably growing shrinking according some metric of market
| adoption gap, demographics, household growth...). But that's
| crazy talk.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| This is a shame - I have one of their combo air-fryers/pressure-
| cookers and although it is only a passable air-fryer, it is the
| best pressure cooker I have ever used and very good value for the
| relatively cheap price.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I tried their air fryer. Could not get rid of the toxic smell
| despite numerous, extended burn-in sessions, cooking in it, re-
| cleaning it, spraying oil in it, etc. Eventually gave up and
| got rid of it. It had great features but the smell was
| terrible.
| chris_va wrote:
| So, taken over by private equity in 2017...
|
| It'll continue to operate... I'm curious what fraction of the
| creditors are backed by Cornell Capital (PE owner), and if they
| just are using this to wipe out retirement plans/other
| creditors/dump a bunch of debt, or if they actually messed up.
| kurthr wrote:
| So I wonder how much was that the PE didn't feel like they were
| getting a large enough coupon (2017-19 rates) and wanted a
| quicker bankruptcy to redeploy their efforts? A rational corp
| would have refinanced the debt at 2021 rates.
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/instant-brands-to-m...
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Has instant pot ever made a dual voltage version that works in
| USA and Europe? I really want to use mine for nomad'ing but not
| have two versions. It seems like this is probably more expensive
| when high voltage is involved? I noticed there is no dual voltage
| Vitamix product as well.
| jeremy_wiebe wrote:
| I'm not too surprised. Since introducing the Instant Pot there
| has been a lot of competition on their main product (pressure
| cooker). It seems like a race to the bottom for cost and so they
| must have faced shrinking profit margins. Also, they were
| diversifying their product offering into products that seemed
| like they were grasping and not really aligned with their main
| offering.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| Yup, they were trying really hard to break into the pod coffee
| game by making machines (but not pods, lol razor/blade model
| backwards) the machines were neat, they have a combo
| Nespresso/Keurig machine we bought but it was kinda bad at
| both.
| prh8 wrote:
| For all the discussion about Pyrex manufacturing below, here's a
| quick helper-
|
| The original (and good quality glass) is sold as PYREX.
|
| The worse glass is sold as pyrex.
|
| Those 2 are licensed out separately.
| tecleandor wrote:
| There's a simple explanation:
| https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-the-difference-be...
|
| From the EU Pyrex webpage, when they talk about their materials
| in the French factory, they say it's borosilicate:
| The Pyrex(r) glass is unique. It is a borosilicate glass that
| is tempered, of superior quality and has a great thermal and
| mechanical shock resistance. [...] The Pyrex(r) glass is made
| of pure sand (80%), soda (4%), Alumina (2,5%) and bore (13%).
|
| So I'd say that at least EU Pyrex is safer (when talking about
| thermal shock, I guess).
|
| PD: Following the life of Pyrex, Duralex and Saint-Gobain is
| quite a thing...
| zwieback wrote:
| Wow, I had no idea, thanks for the tip. I've been snatching up
| old PYREX in thrift stores when I heard the new stuff is no
| good. Now I know...
| katbyte wrote:
| you can still buy the good stuff from various websites in NA:
| https://icedteapitcher.myshopify.com/
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