2022 Weber Price List


 
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Brett-EDH said:
But you’ve worked in a business and businesses don’t survive without quality employees. Don’t discount your perspective or experience.

I own a business and have been in startups prior to that for now over 25 years.

Running a business is hard. Running a successful business is even harder. You have to ride the ups and downs as that’s they way business works. Unless of course I’ve been doing it wrong all these years.
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Amen! Business is much harder than non owners think, especially through all this pandemic!! If you are very skilled and, very lucky, you can survive. My favorite Sausage guy (Youze guys) sadly cold not weather the whole thing, three of his commercial accounts went under that snowballed into him having to close. I was buying as much as I could to try to help but, one person can only do so much. I have great respect for small businesses that survive, it’s a hard road!
 
For some reason lately it has been really hard to keep a business open, unless you are huge...something like a wal mart comes to mind.
Again I don't own or operate a business, so I am not sure what really changed all that much.
 
Chris Allingham said:
No one pays the MSRP of $519, they routinely pay the MAP of $419. Still high, though...the 18" WSM sold for $189 in the late 90's, adjusted for inflation that would be about $343 in 2022 dollars.
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Another interesting point to note is that we kept the MAP of the 18" SMC static at $299 for a decade (2009-2019) despite the rising costs of materials and transportation over that period of time. #IworkforWeber
 
We are in inflationary times and the price of everything is going up. Problem is, we have to purchase the necessities. A grill in a discretionary item and will take a back seat. If someone has to get a grill, they may have to look at less expensive products. Either way, it is going to hurt Weber and any other higher end companies. Weber still has entry level grills, but not at entry level prices. They will have to maintain good customer service with good warranty support if the expect to do well.
 
Brett-EDH said:
Running a business is hard. Running a successful business is even harder. You have to ride the ups and downs as that’s they way business works. Unless of course I’ve been doing it wrong all these years.
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And unfortunately running a successful business into the ground is actually pretty damn easy to do by comparison. That happens all day long everyday. No company lasts forever. My own family had a small regional candy company that was the family business for 82 years before changes did it in. The changes that did it in were the advent of air conditioning. Air conditioning made chocolate able to be made and kept widely. This caused hard candy consumption to decline. The early sodas were bottled more locally as well and that changed to regionally and nationally, putting the small producers out of business.

Times change, markets change, products have to change with them, and be constantly reinvented. So do companies and ways of doing business..... There was a time years ago when we figured my own employer had to turn over our product profile about every 12 years. In 1 year we went from operating with 95% of the people in the office 100% of the time to virtually nobody in the office..... And now we hire people to work for us who live anywhere in the country, not just where we're located.

What worked in 1972 doesn't necessarily work in 2022. Most people cannot discern why a Weber porcelain coated kettle should cost $200 more than a knock off type painted kettle that appears similar.... That they can buy it any Walmart. There's nothing that says the Weber will last you 10 to 20 years and the other one will rust out in 2 yrs.

Weber is now a publicly traded company and they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. And a single fund owns like 48% of the stock. In retrospect it did precisely what 75% of all IPOs do.......die.
 
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I agree with Martin on these two points:

1) Weber has given little attention to WSM improvements over the years. The first change in the early years was from steel door and legs to aluminum to prevent rust on those parts. Then essentially no improvements until 2009 with the intro of the 22" WSM and updated 18" WSM...got to give them credit big-time for those changes that year. Then bringing back the 14" WSM in 2014 and the addition of the silicone grommet to all three WSM versions. But that's it for 41 years of WSM history.

2) The aluminum door is fine with me, in concept, but not in execution, especially on the 22" WSM where it's commonly well off the curvature of the middle cooking section. I'm baffled by how Weber has never fixed this...it does make on feel they just don't care.
 
No beef with Weber I'd like to see them succeed, but I really don't think $500 for 18-in WSM is the way to do it. It's a 1970 cooker basically.

As 95% of people here know the grommet is useless. The vents are too hot to manipulate by hand because they have no insulation or handle on them. The bottom rack is useless most of the time cuz it's considerably hotter than the top rack. The thermometer in the dome doesn't reflect the temperature at the grate level where your food is . Almost nobody uses the water bowl. It doesn't hold enough charcoal for a long cook. There's no handles to lift off the hot shell if it needs to come off because the fire went out or something. .Everybody complains about the fit of the door.. gaskets should be standard to solve some of the leaks. It doesn't come with any handles it doesn't come with any wheels. And the 18 is just a tad too small to cook ribs on or put a full brisket on without putting something under the middle of it for the first half of the cook. And we can't forget the top lid design allows rain in which makes it mold.

The 22 in is also too darn big for most people unless they're cooking for a large group, it uses too much fuel


Common Sense would say hey maybe make an intermediate 20-in model and fix all the dang problems.? That might be worth $500. But why do that when you can try and grab a share of that hot new pellet pooper market with a high dollar pellet pooper grill thingy.

It's almost like they've never considered asking customers how they can make their products better.....
 
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I wonder how much money the overhaul would be.......I assume its a high number. Would it be worth it????
How big of a team and how much time would it take to engineer a better product.
How much more can they charge to recoup the cost of the WSM upgrade?
If $500 is too much now would $600 be too much for a better product?
Would everyone think it is better or would it just be new customers?
How many new customers would there be available?
Lots of " business " questions........

MartinB said:
It's a 1970 cooker basically.
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Not sure I would base age of an item as being old means its not as good as a current model.
A lot of the time newer is not better, some of the time it is......
I am young enough to have had a pretty good cassette collection when I was young.
I now have a receiver and a turntable and they were both made before 1974.
The quality that they produce made me put my 3 month old USA made stereo receiver back in the box and put under the stairs.
They work very well.......My close to 1000 pc. record collection is much better than a cassette or a CD.
 
I can manipulate the three vents on the bowl of my Sequoia, I’m sure one can manipulate the vents on a Smokey Mountain…hot and no protection.
 
Darryl - swazies said:
I wonder how much money the overhaul would be.......I assume its a high number. Would it be worth it????
How big of a team and how much time would it take to engineer a better product.
How much more can they charge to recoup the cost of the WSM upgrade?
If $500 is too much now would $600 be too much for a better product?
Would everyone think it is better or would it just be new customers?
How many new customers would there be available?
Lots of " business " questions........



Not sure I would base age of an item as being old means its not as good as a current model.
A lot of the time newer is not better, some of the time it is......
I am young enough to have had a pretty good cassette collection when I was young.
I now have a receiver and a turntable and they were both made before 1974.
The quality that they produce made me put my 3 month old USA made stereo receiver back in the box and put under the stairs.
They work very well.......My close to 1000 pc. record collection is much better than a cassette or a CD.
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No doubt, hi-fi equipment is crap today by comparison to what it was in 1985.

Nobody wants big quality speakers, and big high-powered components

They just want Bluetooth stuff they can stream from their phone, and put on their bookshelf.

The market dynamics are completely different.

This is a good example of how you can make the best product there is but you can't sell it anymore. We used to have home stereo stores... And superstores.... Your general run of the mill speakers had 10-in woofers and maybe you also had a 15-in subwoofer hidden somewhere.

My Hi-Fi stuff and big speakers is in my garage and has been for about 15 years. Dual cassette decks, CD changer, etc. . There was a time where that was a central component in the living room.... It kind of went away with the dawn of the internet starting around 2000. Or maybe we just outgrew it? . Now we care more about streaming video and streaming some music in the living room. I do know my kids never had any interest in a stereo system in the rooms. A Bluetooth speaker was all that they needed. And even when they got high powered ones in their cars they were not nearly as good as what I had in 1984.

I have a pioneer double DIN head unit in my truck. The FM stereo sound is horrible on it. They don't even list the stereo channel separation in the specs. Not important to them. I actually got one with HD stereo because it's stereo separation sounded a little better but it's still poor by comparison to what my OEM stereo in my truck came with. It sounds very monotone. It also sounds pretty poor playing from mp3s on a thumb drive. But it sounds great streaming over Bluetooth and just amplified, because that's actually coming from my phone and it's just being amplified. It's just an example of how companies do not care about that anymore it's an afterthought. Features features features, not quality. It's sold to a different type of customer today than it would have been sold to in 1985. In 1985 half of your listening or more was probably to the radio.... The other half to your cassette collection. Today virtually none to radio. I personally stream only from my phone 100% since getting that capability. Listen to music, comedians, podcast, etc while I drive. Good luck even going into a car stereo store and listening to anything today before purchasing it, Even when you shell out $1,000 plus for a head unit. Somewhere along the line, nobody cared anymore.

But back to the WSM..... It would be interesting to know sales numbers statistics on the WSM over the past decade or so. My gut instinct would be the pellet poopers took a huge chunk out of it. It's too old school. It's too simplistic, it's too much work, It doesn't Bluetooth to your phone, it's simply not what the current generation of 20 to 30-year-olds wants. And that's a big demographic that gets married and sets up housekeeping, and purchases desired things like grills etc. I imagine major retooling in the US would be prohibitive today. But there are some small things they could do that would be improvements. For the rest, there's Mexico and China
 
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This is true........
When I was younger I was in sales for a number of years....
One of the best things I got the chance to learn was that what is important to one person......100% of the time may not be nearly as important to the next customer. Once I got that wrapped around my head, I was able to be more successful. Asking open ended questions that gave you a good base to sell your product was basically my only ammunition.........You also had mere minutes to do all of this.
That's why I wrote a whole bunch of silly questions in my last post.

I see a very high percentage of the population wants everything easy and they want it now.....I understand why, but the trend is that way.
To me, I get the chance to listen to music which has been a big part of my life in it's best possible quality.
I do have to stop what I am doing and cruise over to the record player and flip the record over every 22 minutes or so.......but that's part of it and it doesn't bother me. You get the chance to hold the product of one of your favorite bands and see what neat things they could do to their 12 inch by 12 inch creation.......vs. click best of____________ _____________ ____________.
Just listening to an album in it's entirety is amazing as well.....mind you I have a lot of old records and not so much newer music on record.

I'm just rambling now, but I was just trying to touch on the subject of a 1970's cooker that is still for sale...and it maybe not being as best as it can.
Would an overhaul really be an improvement.......it all costs money, it would have to be more expensive I would think......
How many current happy Weber customers would jump up and replace their very old styled units for the new one. I wouldn't if I had something I liked and it worked good.......my daily driver is a model from 2005. I could get a new car, I just don't want one.
 
The world today wants...... IKEA. Cheap, buy it through the mail.
My kids purchased furniture for their apartments...... Mail order. Dining room sets..... Mattresses..... Came in the mail. Furniture in a box just screw it together. Those new style mattresses without box spring etc that come vacuum rolled.

This generation doesn't even buy quality furniture. They buy disposable stuff that's convenient, and cheap. No one cares cares if any of it is any good, it was cheap. When you move you just throw away stuff that you don't want to bring with you.


Exactly the opposite of me......
 
MartinB said:
What worked in 1972 doesn't necessarily work in 2022.
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you're spot on on many points. i might add that what worked in 2021, didn't work in 2022. and our plan for 2023 is even more different as the economy shifts and our competitors leave the market.
 
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MartinB said:
The thermometer in the dome doesn't reflect the temperature at the grate level where your food is
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i have had he same problem since EVER with every grill i've owned. and this includes my S6 and Summit S670. A thermometer at the top of any hood/dome tells me the temp at the top of the hood or dome, never the food. BUT NO BBQ/GRILL/SMOKER tells you the temp of your grate evel unless you have a grate level probe reding those temps and telling you such.
 
Brett-EDH said:
i have had he same problem since EVER with every grill i've owned. and this includes my S6 and Summit S670. A thermometer at the top of any hood/dome tells me the temp at the top of the hood or dome, never the food. BUT NO BBQ/GRILL/SMOKER tells you the temp of your grate evel unless you have a grate level probe reding those temps and telling you such.
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Well that's pretty true of most cheap uninsulated smokers and grills.

But especially on the vertical WSM , with low air flow, at least as compared to a side feed stick burner I think the temperature distribution is about as bad as you can get in a smoker. But sometimes that temperature in the dome reads higher from the air flow that's coming up the walls, and sometimes it reads the lower due to the 40° chunk of cold meat below it. When I have put food on lower grate it cooks substantially faster at then the top grate. I couldn't even get the ribs out they fell to pieces. Which brings up an obvious improvement WSM could make.... Why not just have it so we could put our grates any place we wanted easily? Positions every inch or so. Why do we have to modify everything to make it work better?

Now if you want to talk about a well insulated gravity feed..... Then you might find a 10 to 15 degree temperature variation at most throughout the whole smoker. 400 to 900 lb of steel does something for temperatures stability
 
Have a lot of spare parts and bought some nice grates for most of my Webers, after reading this though I went and pit all the covers back on. Hahahaha gotta make em last a while.
 
MartinB said:
Well that's pretty true of most cheap uninsulated smokers and grills.

But especially on the vertical WSM , with low air flow, at least as compared to a side feed stick burner I think the temperature distribution is about as bad as you can get in a smoker. But sometimes that temperature in the dome reads higher from the air flow that's coming up the walls, and sometimes it reads the lower due to the 40° chunk of cold meat below it. When I have put food on lower grate it cooks substantially faster at then the top grate. I couldn't even get the ribs out they fell to pieces. Which brings up an obvious improvement WSM could make.... Why not just have it so we could put our grates any place we wanted easily? Positions every inch or so. Why do we have to modify everything to make it work better?

Now if you want to talk about a well insulated gravity feed..... Then you might find a 10 to 15 degree temperature variation at most throughout the whole smoker. 400 to 900 lb of steel does something for temperatures stability
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hahahahah. i run a back yard bbq. the last thing i need to 25 new friends coming over to eat my grub each weekend.

one you learn a WSM, all cooks are pretty much the same. the WSM is one of the easiest and most forviging smokers around. and it's dirt cheap to own and run.

the peeps doing a WSM are not the same peeps doing a 400-900# gravity fed thingamabob. sometimes less is more.

for what i'm cooking and the people i'm serving, my S6 does it all and makes me very happy. and i stil have the tousands of $$ i didn't spend on the 400-900# gravity fed thingamabob.

i could look around me and find 1,000 things i don't like. life is just too short to give free rent in me head for things that just won't change my world. i could make Q on a WSM and still be proud and happy with the results.

and what makes me super happy is no electricity needed. no motors. and the WSM can throw up some really good smoke and flavor. and my S6 is just a slighlt better version of the WSM with more real estate for larger cuts.

live life and be happy. it's such a simple recipe to find pleasure in the small things. like watching the bees enjoy my plants. the humingbirds hovering at many stops in my backyard. and my dog enjoying the backyard couch with me. i work way too hard each week so that I can ejoy making a real fire and burn up some real wood chunks.

call me simple. just don't call me late for dinner, please.
 
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