$500,000 Outdoor Kitchens Cool Off
BOSTON (TheStreet) -- In America's Southwest, cooking and pouring beer in an outdoor kitchen in mid-January can be a rite of passage. In the Northeast and Pacific Northwest, it teeters between dedication and masochism.
The flush pre-recession years brought the outdoor kitchen and its 56-inch grills, infrared searing surfaces, warming drawers, sinks, wine refrigerators and keg tappers into chillier, previously undiscovered country. Luxury outdoor kitchen supplier Lynx Grills, for example, began complementing its lineup of $3,000 to $7,000 built-in grills with $2,000 to $2,500 hoods and vents for partially enclosed spaces and $1,400 patio heaters. Like those of their competitors, these products are made of Nor'easter resistant stainless steel that can weather New England snow and salt or a Seattle soaking.
As a result, the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association says that, of the 82% of North American households that owned grills or smokers in 2009, 56% used them year-round. For Lynx customers -- who average $150,000 a year in salary and $500,000 in home value -- geography hasn't been a deterrent.
"Some of the markets that you wouldn't believe to be successful for outdoor kitchens are some of our fastest-growing markets," says Brian Eskew, marketing director for luxury outdoor cooking outfit Lynx Grills, which is based in Commerce, Calif. "New York and New Jersey? Huge."
Lynx Grills sells a line of built-in outdoor grills for $3,000 to $7,000. |
Steve Sheinkopf, chief executive officer of Boston-based Yale Appliances, stocks Lynx, Viking and Wolf outdoor kitchen items and has noticed an uptick in customers asking for side burners, infrared searing equipment, rotisseries and refrigerators. Sheinkopf questions the practicality of outdoor kitchens when most Northeasterners north of Washington, D.C., will neither grill nor entertain "when the wind chill is below zero," but notes that customers have spent $6,000 to $8,000 on outdoor islands they may use only three months out of the year.
"It really makes sense in the Dixon part of the Mason-Dixon line," Sheinkopf says. "In the Northeast, what it comes down to is do you enjoy entertaining outside, do you have a nice backyard and do you have the dough to do it?"
The third part of Sheinkopf's equation has become a bit of a problem. Customers who would have bought high-end Lynx and Viking products from him two years ago were purchasing Weber grills last year. His grill sales were up, but base selling prices plummeted.
"What happens in a recession is that everybody gets knocked down a few pegs," he says. "We sold more Weber grills than we ever did last year, but that was at the expense of stuff like Viking and Lynx products."
Part of the problem is that, by their nature, outdoor kitchens are not cheap. Companies like Lynx, Wolf and Kalamazoo Gourmet charge $3,000 to $7,000 for base-model grills alone. The $8,000 that Sheinkopf's customers spend on their entire setup comprises about half of what Eskew says an "aggressive" customer will spend on his or her grill and accessories alone. While a frugal shopper can put together a full, stationary outdoor kitchen for $8,000 to $20,000, masonry, utility hookups, granite, furniture, water features, fire pits and labor costs can bring the final tally anywhere from $75,000 to $500,000. Those numbers are only less absurd when paired with the cost of toys like Kalamazoo's Artisan Fire Pizza Oven ($6,500) or 180-degree stainless steel martini bar ($11,000).
The recession took a big piece of meat off the grill industry's plate. According to the Arlington, Va.-based Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, shipments of gas, charcoal and electric grills dropped 10.2% from 2008 to 2009 as retailers burned off inventory. Last year,
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closed its 34 EXPO Design Center stores, which Sheinkopf credits with introducing many Northeasterners to outdoor kitchens by "merchandising like a Southern retailer" and dedicating a disproportionate amount of space to such items. While those stores spread the outdoor-kitchen concept beyond its traditional boundaries, they also benefitted from the real-estate boom that Eskew says seduced people of limited means and engorged home values into a segment normally reserved for the affluent.
"There are the customers who were building outdoor kitchens because their neighbors were building them and they were trendy -- some could afford them, some couldn't," Eskew says. "What we're seeing is that aspirational customer, with those lines of credit and that inflated sense of equity that they had in their homes, has gone away."
-- Reported by Jason Notte in Boston.
Jason Notte is a reporter for TheStreet.com. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Esquire.com, Time Out New York, The Boston Herald, The Boston Phoenix, Metro newspaper and the Colorado Springs Independent.









