![]() Therein lies the problem, or at least one of the problems. There was no slick branding exercise foundational to the Instant Pot’s success. The Instant Pot flourished because the company found a tiny bit of white space in a crowded market, and it sold a machine that did a serviceable job at helping out a particular type of very common home cook: someone who cooks regularly for more than one or two people, more out of necessity than because they find the process creative or relaxing. ![]() The average American just doesn’t have that many problems left that can plausibly be solved at the level of inexpensive gadgetry. Those failures are not infrequently a result of the products themselves at this point, it’s very difficult to come up with a novel idea for a consumer good that addresses some kind of real and reasonably common issue. As the device became more popular, it seemed to generate endless word-of-mouth praise for its ability to generate one-pot dinners, and Facebook groups, websites, and cookbooks sprouted up to teach new users how to get the most out of their machine.Īll of this amounted to the kind of public-relations coup that companies are constantly trying and failing to buy for their own new launches. At the height of its popularity, in the 2010s, you could get a basic model on Amazon for less than $100, so giving it a shot wasn’t much of a risk, even if you ended up using it only occasionally. If you weren’t sure how much you’d use the pressure-cooking feature, that was fine-the IP billed itself as a “multi-cooker,” and it also slow-cooked, steamed, sautéed, cooked rice, and made yogurt. The Instant Pot certainly didn’t invent at-home pressure cooking, but it did introduce the concept to lots of Americans, and it did so in a plug-in, set-it-and-forget-it format that wasn’t as intimidating (or as explosion prone) as using a stovetop pressure cooker. In fact, it’s central to understanding exactly what went wrong. Perhaps counterintuitively, that the Instant Pot remains a useful, widely appreciated gadget is not unrelated to the faltering of its parent company. A few years and one pandemic later, the company filed for bankruptcy on Monday, weighed down by more than $500 million in debt after years of supply-chain chaos and limited success expanding the Instant brand into other categories of household gadgetry. ![]() Sure enough, in 2019, when the private-equity firm Cornell Capital bought the gadget’s maker, Instant Brands, and merged it with another kitchenware maker, the combined company was reportedly valued at more than $2 billion. Since its debut in 2010, the Instant Pot has sold in the millions and spent years as a must-have kitchen sensation. Once you get the hang of the electric pressure cooker, it seems to basically deliver on that promise, chugging along gamely through years’ worth of weeknight dinners of pork green chili or chicken tikka masala. ![]() The IP, as the device is known to its many devotees, is a kitchen gadget in the most straightforward sense of the term: It’s a classic labor-saver, promising to turn ingredients into family meals while you clean up, tend to your kids, and do all of the other things you could be doing instead of keeping an eye on the stove. ![]() The Instant Pot is, by all indications, a perfectly good machine-maybe even a great one. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. ![]()
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