PicoBrew, which launched a Kickstarter campaign for its third generation beer brewing appliance this last April, announced this week that it has shipped the Pico C to all US backers and will begin general availability of the $549 brewing appliance both at retail and online.
The company will make the Pico C available at a variety of brick and mortar retailers on November 1st, including Williams-Sonoma, Macy’s, Best Buy and Bed Bath & Beyond. The Pico C will also be available on Amazon.
The new additions round out a retail portfolio that already included a big-box retailer (Best Buy) and a high-end kitchen retailer (Williams-Sonoma). With Macy’s, the company will now sell its beer brewing appliance at arguably the country’s most prominent department store retailer, while Bed Bath and Beyond allows the startup to reach budget conscious consumers who normally avoid tony retailer Williams-Sonoma.
PicoBrew also updated us this week on the release timeline for all the extras launched in conjunction with the Pico C. The PicoFerm connected fermentation tracker rolls out next month, while the PicoStill, a whiskey-maker essential oils accessory for the Pico, will be available this January. The company’s first mobile app, which will allow brewers to track the progress of their fermenting beer, will be available for download this Friday.
If there’s a startup in the connected kitchen space who’s shown itself to be a model of consistency, it’s PicoBrew. For the last couple years, they’ve launched new appliances on Kickstarter, then turned around and delivered the products reliably to backers before eventually moving the product to general availability within six months or so. The Pico C, essentially a cost-reduced version of the original Pico (now called the Pico Pro), followed the same template.
The company has hinted it plans to follow the same template in the future, so I would expect an even lower priced ($400 retail or so) beer brewing appliance to launch on Kickstarter next year.