FirstBuild, GE Appliances’ innovation arm, has launched its latest crowdfunding campaign, and this one looks like a potential home run.
The same group that brought you the Opal ice machine and the Paragon induction cooktop are now bringing an indoor pellet smoker called Arden to market via a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. The Arden can smoke up to two racks of ribs at a time or a small brisket, all inside your home without setting your fire alarms off.
The Arden uses a smoke-elimination technology that requires no additional filters to clean or replace. According to FirstBuild, the technology was first developed for GE’s smart hearth oven and has now been incorporated into the Arden.
The unit uses the same pellets used with other smokers. Once the smoke is pulled out of the chamber and into the smoke eliminator, it eliminates all smoke and just CO2 and water are exhausted into the kitchen. This allows users to sit the Arden on a countertop and smoke a slab of meat without any special venting.
You can take a look at the Arden and hear some of the answers about the technology in the video below.
The Arden is just the latest product concept to emerge out of FirstBuild, GE Appliance’s incubation hub and micromanufacturing facility located in Louisville, Kentucky. While some FirstBuild products have been home runs (like the Opal ice machine), others have been small hits (like the Mella mushroom fruiting chamber) or didn’t make it out of the infield at all.
With the Arden, it looks like FirstBuild may have another extra-base hit on its hands. The machine hit its crowdfunding target within two minutes of launching today on Indiegogo and hit $300 thousand within 30 minutes. The Arden is at over $433 thousand from 653 backers as of this writing.
Those interested in picking up the Arden indoor smoker can buy it for $649 on Indiegogo, a 40% discount from the unit’s expected retail price of $1,099.
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