In this week’s episode of the Barbecue Tips Podcast, I took you to the Kitchen and Bath Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In the podcast, you’ll hear about the amazing partnership between Hestan and Grillworks. Two of my favorite grill companies. I have both of them in my backyard.
Well, while I was at the show, I had the unique opportunity to interview Ben Eisendrath, who’s the owner of Grillworks as well as Basil Larkin, who’s the vice president of sales for Hestan Commercial.
Because I had the opportunity to interview both of these gentlemen, I wanted to be sure to include that bonus footage with this week’s BBQ Tips Podcast.
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Table of Contents
Ben Eisendrath, owner of Grillworks
“I was just going to a lot of shows when I walk the floors at shows cause we don’t really usually bring any grills to any of these kind of conferences. I was always looking at Hestan and going, those are beautiful suites, and I love Orange. I have to admit, I love orange, and their booths are always covered in beautiful orange equipment .
A couple of months ago, I literally emailed them and said, ‘Why aren’t we working together? Because I’d seen that other equipment could be built into their suites. And I was like, Why? Why haven’t we done this before?’
They said, ‘We think the same thing.’
And so we built a grill to be built-in, and we already make this model, but we just sent them the drawing and then built a grill, and they slotted into the suite
And now we’re talking about putting our grills into all their showroom type installations. What I really want to do is put a full size Inferno into one of these suites.
Finding like a beautiful base for the superstructure of our professional grills, I think would be a gigantic win for both of us.
We could take care of the spectacular top and the action part and the functionality. And they can they can answer the questions I get all the time about refrigeration or storage or having a pretty cabinet setup.
It’s it’s just a win win win, I think.
What we were doing with the Langelier grills is taking the Inferno and offering it to people for their houses, which is a little crazy, but it’s very popular.
I mean, in our world, we sell a lot of units of these of the Langeliers. It’s a big hit. So I think doing this with them is going to be a big hit for them, too.”
Basil Larkin, VP of Sales for Hestan Commercial
“Obviously it’s an attention getter from, you know, the way it’s set up and the fact that the open fire cooking is really taking off, and people want that flavor, but they want the adjustability.
They want to be able to do everything they can do on a gas grill, but they want that that taste. They want that real, true infrared cooking.
And the nice thing that’s going on here is that we, at Hestan, are doing all the jacket, what I would call. So we’re we’re covering up the the mechanisms themselves and we’re making a complete lineup or suite.
So here you have Grillworks inside let’s say maybe a Hestan commercial lineup like you’re seeing here, it fits in perfectly. It looks as if it was it was made to be. It doesn’t look like two different products combined together. It looks like it It’s a uniform set up.
So for us, to give that addition to our line up with a brand like Grillworks and their performance is perfect. It’s perfect.
The interesting thing is, although this has been out for a little while, it’s bizarre to me that all of a sudden it’s just exploding right now on residential and commercial. A lot of people are asking us for open fire cooking, all this type of thing, you know, hard fuel cooking.
And so I personally believe that there is a place for this on the residential side. There obviously is. But under the Hestan brand.
And where I see it fitting right now is what we call our outdoor living suite. Similarly, the outdoor living suite came from the commercial world like a lineup or a suite of everything.
It’s kind of uniform and put together as one piece. So we offer that in eight and 12-foot islands. And so I’m thinking we have probably over 20 configurations that go from side burners to power burners to, you know, even accommodate a kamado-style, even though we don’t make something like that.
But to have a spot in that outdoor living suite fit a spot for a Grillworks, I think it would be a killer combination. I mean, there’s no question in my mind. And that’s that’s where I see it.
But I do think that for us in the future, the outdoor living suite, the island that we have, that’s completely made by Hestan countertop included, you can get it with without countertop in case you want to use a Cosentino surface, Dekton or Silestone or something, the future will continue to expand there, and I hope that that expansion includes a space for Grillworks.”
I really appreciate the fact that both of these gentlemen took time to share their thoughts with me. I hope you appreciated this bonus footage,
I’m really excited to see the future of the Grillworks and Hestan partnership.
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