New Weber pellet grills for 2020


 
Bruce said:
OK, for the 2/3 guys, who remembers JC Penneys Plain Pockets?
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<raises hand> Never fit me worth a darn either.

Shoot, who remembers Montgomery Ward's? Or Kresge's for that matter?

Oops... Sorry, Chris. Just a little off-topic. :)
 
Kresges: I spent a lot of time in that "Dime" store as a kid. Actually, I didn't realize it was a chain. I thought it was a local store to my home town.
 
Yeah Rich it makes me laugh that places like Sears, Penny's, and so on now cannot do business in the environment they pioneered 100 years ago with catalog sales. There is really no difference between the Sears/Wards, what have you catalogue of old and Amazon today (other than one resides in the cloud and the other in a giant book). Both allowed convenient shopping from home, delivery and returns right from your home and so on. But then Sears and so on blames online (basically catalogues) for their demise yet they started the whole thing and set the model in motion
 
It is a progression. It is natural in the world and culture. The big department chain stores just never adapted. Sears could have become the Amazon of today, but they were too stuck in their ways. It took a startup with a "New" and unclouded vision and business model to make it happen. Sears and Wards and the other big stores were just too scared to let go of their B&M base.

Walmart and Best Buy have done a better job of adapting but they have been losing ground as well. Of course, they are newer businesses and didn't have their roots in the huge B&M stores and catalogs.

Some people complain about the loss of the B&M stores, but they have been quick to adapt to and embrace the online Amazon experience at the same time.
 
LMichaels said:
Yeah Rich it makes me laugh that places like Sears, Penny's, and so on now cannot do business in the environment they pioneered 100 years ago with catalog sales. There is really no difference between the Sears/Wards, what have you catalogue of old and Amazon today (other than one resides in the cloud and the other in a giant book). Both allowed convenient shopping from home, delivery and returns right from your home and so on. But then Sears and so on blames online (basically catalogues) for their demise yet they started the whole thing and set the model in motion
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That's accurate from the standpoint that you can order something and get it delivered to you.

What's not accurate is that Bezos has completely changed the money flow from the old catalog/mail-order model. Amazon depends on paying the vendor/distributor/manufacturer after the product is delivered to the buyer, they live on the float. And beyond that, Amazon will act as an intermediary for nearly anybody who signs up. You had to convince the catalog buyers that your product should be carried by them, but you'd get paid based on product delivery from your warehouse, not well after it finally shipped to the final buyer.

Edit: Jeff Bezos is a genius from the standpoint that he's convinced a lot of people to send him product, to be stored in his warehouses, sold on his terms, and paid well after the final sale.

Unfortunately, these days on the Internet is like the days back in the Olde West with the travelling salesmen. You had little guarantee that you'd get any product he didn't have in his wagon, and little recourse once he'd left town.
 
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Lynn Dollar said:
Amazon loses money on product sales. Their profits come from the cloud, Amazon Web Services.
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I'd bet that AWS is supporting everything else. I never said I thought the basic business model behind amazon.com was sound. Bezos is a modern day P. T. Barnum.
 
I don't get what it is how people hate innovators so much. Puzzling, but, than I guess people who ran general stores hated the catalogue stores, like Sears Roebuck and so on. Really Bezos IMO is not a Barnum but a genius. Funny too, I hear people saying how people shop at say an Amazon because they're too lazy to go out. Not true. I avoid many B&M stores like Walmart for example because I get tired of dealing with people who are either ignorant, don't care, or what have you and will sometimes pay MORE for an item because I just don't want to deal with other people's crap. I still shop at Best Buy for instance because they really do right by me as a customer. That is what B&M store need. It's not just price driven. Also sometimes you buy online because you cannot buy what you need at a store. Example: I just picked up a second Honda snow blower. (Don't ask deal was too good to pass :D). I need a new recoil starter for it. Think I can find one? Not on your life. Yet Amazon and it will be here in a couple days. FAR faster than trying to buy one from a local shop.
100 some years ago Sears and the rest changed the marketing landscape of America. They failed (all of them) to keep up with their own innovation
 
JKalchik said:
I'd bet that AWS is supporting everything else. I never said I thought the basic business model behind amazon.com was sound. Bezos is a modern day P. T. Barnum.
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Amazon stockholders are good with it. There must be a lot of money in advertising, because it seems these companies who sell data are rolling in the green. And Amazon probably has some pretty rich data.
 
LMichaels said:
I don't get what it is how people hate innovators so much. Puzzling, but, than I guess people who ran general stores hated the catalogue stores, like Sears Roebuck and so on. Really Bezos IMO is not a Barnum but a genius. Funny too, I hear people saying how people shop at say an Amazon because they're too lazy to go out. Not true. I avoid many B&M stores like Walmart for example because I get tired of dealing with people who are either ignorant, don't care, or what have you and will sometimes pay MORE for an item because I just don't want to deal with other people's crap. I still shop at Best Buy for instance because they really do right by me as a customer. That is what B&M store need. It's not just price driven. Also sometimes you buy online because you cannot buy what you need at a store. Example: I just picked up a second Honda snow blower. (Don't ask deal was too good to pass :D). I need a new recoil starter for it. Think I can find one? Not on your life. Yet Amazon and it will be here in a couple days. FAR faster than trying to buy one from a local shop.
100 some years ago Sears and the rest changed the marketing landscape of America. They failed (all of them) to keep up with their own innovation
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Yep, Amazon as a company, is smarter than the average bear.

But lately, I have been trying to give other people a chance. I get Amazon's best price and then go search for it elsewhere.

And its not always about the best price. Amazon has been known to source knock offs of popular American made products from China, and then sell them well below the original American company. The issue that Adrenalin BBQ had with the cheap Chinese Slow N Sears is just one of many where Amazon was complicit.

This is theft of intellectual property by the Chinese and Amazon was enabling them ............here's several more of just barbecue products. I can't imagine what they do across the entire spectrum and especially in the tech field.

https://www.hearthandhome.com/magazine/2017-10-16/stealing_creativity.html

If we don't wake up, we're gonna sell our collective souls for cheap products.
 
OK, pump the brakes. Let's get this thread back on-topic. My bad, I apologize for my part in taking us off-track. It's what happens when we have NO NEWS to talk about when it comes to these Weber SmokeFire grills...we veer into other topics. :)
 
First Impressions

I know this isn’t about the Weber product but pellet grills are become more popular so I thought I would give you my impressions of another product that will be sitting with our 10 Weber’s.

Barb and I finally got the Camp Chef pellet grill assembled. We were freezing in the garage but we were able to get the legs on.
We have an island in the kitchen that has castors so we moved it out of the way and dragged the monster into the kitchen and assembled in the nice warm house.

Good Things

Well packed and damage free
Quality of the unit seems good
Like the standard flip up front shelf
The pellet lid is over size and makes for a nice second side shelf
Not too difficult to assemble.

The not so good

Instructions for assembly were pretty vague.
Small drawings made it difficult to see which way parts went on. Photos would have been better.
Some parts attached from screws in the parts bag and some the screws were in the body of the grill and you had to take them out and put the part on then put the screws back in making it a guess as to what you needed to do.
Also no message in the instructions as to this procedure.
About 150 pounds when loaded no front castors a real bear to move.

The weather here is going to be miserable for the next few days after it clears up I’ll do a burn in and first up will be some St. Louis ribs done L&S
 
Rich, I read your list of "The not so good" thinking for sure that you were going to end it by saying that once the grill was all assembled in the kitchen, that it would not fit through the door to get it back outside. hahaha
 
Bruce said:
Rich, I read your list of "The not so good" thinking for sure that you were going to end it by saying that once the grill was all assembled in the kitchen, that it would not fit through the door to get it back outside. hahaha
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You have no idea how close it was, I would not have been a happy camper if I would have had to rip the door out. But that sucker was going out one way or another.:p
 
Bruce said:
Rich, I read your list of "The not so good" thinking for sure that you were going to end it by saying that once the grill was all assembled in the kitchen, that it would not fit through the door to get it back outside. hahaha[/QUOTE

You have no idea how close it was, I would not have been a happy camper if I would have had to rip the door out. But that sucker was going out one way or another.:p
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<chuckle> Any chance that you build boats or cars in the basement? :D
 
My brother and I built a 13 foot Adirondack guide boat in his basement but did realize that had we done the planking we would not be able to get it out so we ended up taking out a post at the bottom of the stairs and carefully got the ribbed frame out, then quickly reinstalled the post! You have no idea how close we were to begin the planking!
Dodged a bullet on that!
Glad that no door frames had to come out to get your smoker out Rich!
 
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