The long-anticipated Cinder grill is finally making its way to customers.
Earlier this month the company announced on Facebook that production units will be shipping to those who pre-purchased the Cinder. The grill, which uses two aluminum cooking plates with embedded temperature sensing in an enclosed (but not airtight) cooking chamber, has been available for preorder for the past year at a price of $399, $100 below the MSRP of $499. The company expects to have all US preorders delivered by the end of February and Canadian preorders shipped by the end of March.
Shipping product marks the end of a long journey for CEO Eric Norman and Cinder, which have been working on the grill for five years. The company filed patents in 2012 and 2013 for precision cooking techniques, and has been working to bring the product to production ever since.
As the company neared production at the end of last year, they experienced slight production delays due to the complicated nature of the grill, which Norman explained in a recent blog post:
“…we analyzed the build rate using data from a sophisticated measurement system and discovered the rate of production was far below our goal. Factory estimates were off because Cinder is an order of magnitude more complicated than any electric grill ever produced. The accuracy and testing requirements of Cinder are high, requiring different part suppliers to coordinate in unfamiliar ways. This was the cost of going for super high-quality while shooting for a reasonable cost. Sometimes logistics or communication were not smooth, requiring more time and effort than expected.”
Cinder now joins a growing group of companies bringing precision cooking products to the consumer market. At this year’s big tech show in Vegas, leading sous vide circulator company Anova announced a refreshed lineup and showed off a demo model of its precision oven, FirstBuild announced a new version of the Paragon with guided cooking capabilities, while upstart Gourmia continued their aggressive rollout of products.
With all of this action, there’s no doubt precision cooking will have an interesting 2017.
I want this. I like the idea of sous vide without plastic. $399 is a bit much, but I may bite the bullet.
Can you still buy this at the preregister price? Want.
Yep – you can still order it here: https://cindercooks.com/products/cinder-sensing-cooker
– Mike