The new designs were larger and more expensive than earlier models and proved to be the company’s testament to product diversity. These models featured more powerful motors, more blades, more attachments, and higher prices. Cuisinart also excited the high-end appliance sector with hand-mixers and toasters. In particular, the company introduced hamilton beach smoothie blender a long, extra wide slot toaster in 1996 that was one of eight preferred toasters Good Housekeeping magazine selected from a field of 25. Without its contract to manufacture and distribute Cuisinart’s food processors, Robot-Coupe launched its own model in 1978. In 1988, the Sontheimers sold Cuisinart to a group of investors for $60 million.
In 1984 and 1985, Cuisinart began promoting culinary education and awareness through cookbooks and other media. Anne Greer’s American Southwest, published by Cuisinart, won the Tastemaker Award presented by the R.T. French Company as the best American cuisine cookbook of 1984. The following year, Cuisinart began a cooking videotape series to enhance the culinary education of consumers. The year 1996 marked Cuisinart’s 25th anniversary in culinary appliances. To commemorate the occasion, the company adopted “Your Kitchen Resource” as a new advertising tag line.
At this point in its history, Cuisinart had products in 70 percent of all small appliance categories. To gain acceptance, Sontheimer showed his food processor to James Beard, Julia Child, and other notable culinary experts. Their endorsements&mdash well as favorable articles in Gourmet magazine and the New York Times–likened Sontheimer’s Cuisinart food processor to landmark inventions hamilton beach blender such as the cotton gin and the steamboat. Cuisinart continued to add to its product line in 1998 with a cordless percolator in the Coffee Bar line and a new electronic hand mixer. The SmartPower CountUp Hand Mixer featured the lowest mixing speeds available and came equipped with a digital timer. Cuisinart has been perfecting the art of great cooking for over 25 years.
In addition, Cuisinart was required to clarify for retailers that compliance with any suggested pricing was purely voluntary. Nonetheless Cuisinart impressed the industry with a line of coffee makers introduced at the 1995 Gourmet Products Show. These coffee makers reduced the acidity common to many home models. In addition, Cuisinart models responded to consumers’ tangible needs such as color and design. Moderately priced coffee makers started to look like Euro-styled top-of-the-line models.
Cuisinart Corporation is a well-known manufacturer of small kitchen appliances. Best known for its food processors, Cuisinart established this home appliance as a market segment in its own right. The company eventually expanded its product line to include coffee makers, hand blenders, hand mixers, and toasters, among other housewares.
Whatever the kitchen convenience, the Cuisinart brand has been equated with quality construction and top-of-the-line pricing. Other well-known kitchen appliance manufacturers–Sunbeam and Hamilton Beach, for example–began to enter the food processor market around 1977. By the end of that year, consumers could choose from more than 30 models of food processors, varying in price from $30 to $400.
Around 1983, Kitchen Aid introduced a direct competitor to the Cuisinart food processor–a high-priced food processor manufactured by Robot-Coupe. In response, Cuisinart instituted a trade-in allowance on its food processors to encourage existing food processor owners to upgrade their equipment. Consumers were allowed up to $66 in credit toward the purchase of a newer, more advanced Cuisinart model when hamilton beach smoothie blender they returned their older models. Soon the company accepted any brand of food processor for credit when upgrading to a new Cuisinart model. Though Cuisinart emerged from this litigation victoriously, the company was less successful later in 1980 when a grand jury accused it of price fixing. The courts fined Cuisinart $250,000 and prohibited the company from suggesting retail prices for one year.