Kettle Inflation???


 
Jon Tofte

Jon Tofte

TVWBB 1-Star Olympian
I recently received the Memorial Day sales flyer from Ace Hardware. One of the "Red Hot Buys" was this Weber 22" Premium Original Kettle. You can get it in the very nice special Ace color of "Indigo" which I personally like better than Deep Ocean Blue. Anyway, check out this price:

Ace Weber Kettle Ad.jpg

I bought this exact same kettle (Indigo) back in October for $175. My math says that this is a 36% price jump in seven months! Inflation is certainly hitting kettle grills.

One small silver lining in this is for those of us who sometimes restore and try to flip grills, the asking price for a nicely restored kettle should be higher.
 
Welcome to the new reality. It’s going to be a ****ty couple of years....

But, this is nothing new and not worthy of mention. We ALL know prices are up
 
yeah things are not going to get better any time soon and I cant see these prices coming back down even if inflation gets back under control. I say if you are in need of something get it now , I dont think this mess has peaked yet and no telling what new prices companies will roll out next year
 
I agree with David - there are good reasons for prices going up (scarcity of materials due to what's going on in eastern europe, drought, energy prices, population growth, spread of consumerism from the US to the rest of the world and continued high demand despite increased prices. I think some of the raw material suppliers finally woke up and decided to make some profits... now manufacturers (like weber) are passing that along, as well as their own higher conversion costs, and consumers are feeling it. It will be interesting to see how long it's going to take the raw material prices to go down after the drop in consumer demand and when/if things settle down in the Ukraine...Some companies will continue to drive high price for as long as they can to maximize profit/ROI.

I was thinking about stainless steel as a commodity the other day.... you ever think about how many things are made of SS today that weren't 20 or 30 years ago? When I was a kid, all of our appliances were painted carbon steel sheet (fridge, stove, washer/dryer) now probably more than half of what you see in stores is SS. (my washer dryer is still painted white). Then think about gas grillls, and even fancy coffee mugs and the like... no wonder SS is so expensive now vs years ago.. THEN think about the value of stainless steel as an engineered material in chemical processing... is it smart to convert that raw stainless steel into coffee mugs and appliances so they "look good" or should we turn that raw material into pipe that helps keep energy production running?

I'm not an economist, Just a few thoughts from a guy that's still in the rat race and has the day off...
 
John K BBQ said:
This is true. We don't get much finished steel from Ukraine.

However, Ukraine is exporting iron ore/pig iron/semi-finished steel to other countries that we do import steel from (such as China).

Click to expand...
We were having steel supply issues well before the Ukraine situation. Working in the saw blade manufacturing industry we saw 4-5 months lead time back in December getting our blade bodies. Our sister company was able to get us steel in under 4 weeks. Interesting situation. We also saw steel and aluminum being a problem in the automotive industry recently before Ukraine invasion. In short, it's not the Ukraine issue that is the big problem. Much is still the supply chain problems being experienced from mid-summer of last year.
 
Don't hear as much about it now but the shipping container costs had reached stupidly high levels. They seem to have eased a bit but still 4 times higher than pre-pandemic.

Also China is suffering from lockdowns which affects productivity and price.

The Weber Traveler I bought in August last year had a retail price of £400. I paid £200 in an end of season sale!
The same retailer now has them priced at £500 ($630). 25% increase in 9 months.
 
Well, the cost of some items should be coming down as demand eases. Consumer spending has shifted from items in high demand during the pandemic into other products. During the pandemic, barbecue grills and smokers were in high demand, along with seasonings as people were cooking at home. But now they're getting out again. Some retailers may have large inventories that they will have to liquidate.

Target and Walmart posted bad earnings last week and scared the market into thinking the recession was here, but earnings from other retailers say that those two just did not adjust to a changing consumer.

PK Grills has lowered the price of their PK300 by $50, down from $600.

I heard an Academy ad this week, they were selling bicycles, camping equipment, kayaks ... all items that were in large demand during the pandemic. There may be some bargains to be had for people looking for those items, along with barbecue grills.

This fella in NYC says consumers are now spending money traveling ....

https://twitter.com/x/status/1529789443141410816
 
This is not good. However, Kamado Joes are on sale, with the Big Joe I well under a $1k on Amazon, and they are heavy (+400lbs in the box) and must be expensive to ship, though the shipping is included.
 

Attachments

  • E9B9E25B-A344-4145-B0F8-3B1DA59DFA2D.jpg
    E9B9E25B-A344-4145-B0F8-3B1DA59DFA2D.jpg
    95.5 KB · Views: 7
Last edited:
I'm not interested in the politics. I'm interested in the possibility of good prices on smokers and grills.
 
I suspect come August, there will be some really good prices on patio furniture, etc. And this winter, I might be looking to upgrade my Masterbuilt 560 to a 1050 .
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

 

Back
Top