The managing director of a major cooking supplier is asking why retailers selling major kitchen appliances aren’t stepping up to the plate when it comes to selling outdoor cooking solutions to consumers.

Bunnings Outdoor Cooking

Arisit managing director Simon Taylor believes Australian appliance and electrical retailers are missing a huge opportunity within the alfresco outdoor cooking category.

“How can indoor cooking be such a strong category for appliance and electrical retailers and the outdoor cooking category be dominated by Bunnings?,” Taylor asks.

“The leading indoor brands are state of the art and the successful specialist retailers when they are quoting an indoor kitchen are asking ‘what are you doing with your alfresco area?’. The better retailers are demonstrating that they are able to bring that sale into the equation.

Arisit offers a good, better, best offering for retailers

“Our Smart barbeques are mainly sold through Harvey Norman and the Narta retailers and provide a good entry point price-point from $1299 to $1999. The new Smart range has just arrived on the retail floors over the last two weeks and is endorsed by brand ambassador, Gary Meighan from MasterChef,” Taylor said.

“The next level up is the Steel range which is made in Italy and priced between $3500 and $4500. This range provides a jump up from 12 megajoules to 21 megajoule burners and also provides flame failure safety feature. In states like Western Australia it is mandatory that barbeques in alfresco have with a flame failure device and it is likely to be mandatory nationally in the near future. At the top end is the Capital range which is commercial grade with 33 megajoule capacity that start at $8,500 and go up to $13,000.

“As wholesalers, we gave up when it came to $10,000 premium barbeques like the Capital range for many years. The best thing that happened was the Fisher & Paykel DCS barbeque as it established a price-point. As we have seen in the market before with other product categories, when you have multiple brands on the same platform people feel comfortable and it helps to grow and legitimise the category.

“Arisit, in my opinion, is the only wholesaler that can offer the whole solution for an alfresco retailer and consumer as demonstrated by our website – myalfresco.com. We sell Starion composite benchtops with 10 year warranties; we sell strip heating as well as sinks and taps. We sell Sirius alfresco rangehoods starting at $1999 from 720mm depths up to 1500mm depths and they are also available in marine grade stainless steel which is particularly popular in the coastal regions. We also sell full glass door refrigeration with single, double and triple configurations starting at $1199 under the Husky brand.
“My message to retailers is that consumers want to have a good quality barbeque area in their home. It is up to the retailers to offer the range and sell the features.”

For more information on the Outdoor Cooking and Barbecue Category, look out for the comprehensive feature in the September edition of Appliance Retailer magazine.