Instant Brands, maker of Instant Pot and Pyrex cookware, files for bankruptcy

I wish everybody on the planet had the same couple of ovens too. Then your recipe for preparing cookies or whatever will have one big variable removed.

But because we don't have that, we waste time and energy pre-heating the oven, just to be sure that we're all cooking at the same temperature. And even then, ovens will vary in how they control temperature and grrrrr.

Same for soft/hard boiling eggs: the only error-proof way is to boil your water first and stick eggs in there for X minutes and then drench them in cold water. But that's a huge waste of the heat in the heating process. If we all used the same amount of water on top of the same heating source in the same place, we could use that pre-heating process as a part of cooking.

The original was good, but the version I got later has issues. Like sone of the button controls stopped working, and the pressure seal leaked and sputtered even when it was “locked” in the close position.

1 rice cup produces 1 cup of rice when cooked

It makes sense because 1 rice cup is the right amount of uncooked rice to make a decent serving for 1 person. A metric cup is too much!

...which is either a lot of confusion, 1000kg of confusion, 2000lb of confusion, 2240lb of confusion, 2400lb of confusion, 1 giga calorie of confusion, 7 giga calories of confusion, 10 giga calories of confusion, 12,000 btu/h of confusion, or 100, 10000, or 100000 unitless amounts of confusion.

Even more confusingly, this originates from a Chinese unit which was standardized differently in modern China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge_(unit)

Anyway, it continues to be a safety hazard. Shame on corning for making the change (without just killing the brand name).

My instant pot’s fine though. I dropped the lid from 10 feet on to concrete, and the heat sheild cracked, but it didn’t affect the seal or safety.

They're supposed to have recurring maintenance fees. One might do the maintenance themselve, but a significant part of the user base will ask a shop to do it, probably the dealer where they bought it.

> furniture, kitchen appliances, other home appliances

On the higher end it survives by charging years worth of purchase. Like a 4000 bucks oak dining table. Kitchen appliance also either cost an arm and a leg or won't last for 10 years (including buying replacement for the perishable parts)

The lower end is the market IKEA dominates.

> television

They exactly saw this problem front and center and started pivoting to selling viewing data and pushing ads, getting "smart"

> computers

That's exactly why companies (the biggest cmputer purchasers) are led to leases instead of purchases, and those renew every 3 years. On the user side cheaper computers are also the mainstream, and people don't expect those to last 10 years.

The instant pot is like the Bialetti Moka pot - it's a simple device, that doesn't wear down quickly and isn't used enough to wear it down quickly. New devices don't differentiate nearly enough. And the used market is likely flooded with cheap ones that others stopped using.

because there is now a good change everyone with one of these devices is likely no longer going to get support, warranty, or updates. apps will become outdated and fall off the app store parts to repair will no longer be available etc

devices/a brand people enjoyed using is now gone because PE did what PE does and destroyed the brand for a quick buck

The Atlantic: When Private Equity Firms Bankrupt Their Own Companies https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/05/private-eq...

> Interesting, "pension laundering" is a tactic that seems quite abusive.

Why do active investment funds survive (when the evidence for passive indexes is so overwhelming)?

Because people think they can make money.

"U.S.-based Instant Brands Holdings Inc. (formerly known as Corelle Brands Holdings Inc.) is issuing a new $450 million first-lien term loan. The company will use the proceeds, along with $100 million in cash, to refinance its existing $200 million term loan due 2024, $100 million seller notes, and fund a $245 million dividend to shareholders."

If you subtract out the refinanced debt the new owners walked away with $100M in company cash and another $150M in borrowed money.

In its purest form resembling instance, PE is a decomposer. It takes a business that isn't particularly healthy (due to mismanagement, sector headwinds, etc.), and efficiently disintegrates it into raw material (various forms of capital, essentially) for eventual re-allocation elsewhere. It profits and reproduces as a side-effect of playing its role in the recycle of raw material.

It's sad because a company that played a meaningful role for people and other companies is dying and being sold for parts, but it's the cycle of life – not every company is meant to endure indefinitely.

The people approving these loans get to report better quarterly numbers and by the time the chickens come home to roost, they’ve already moved on.

From the article: "Broadly speaking, the CCAA is the Canadian equivalent of Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code. Companies enter both processes when they are seeking the court's help to protect them from their creditors while they try to come up with a way to restructure the business and continue to operate."

The linked article talks to management about how unsustainable the $500 million in debt is without noting that it was half of that amount until these jokers took out loans worth $450M to gave themselves $250M.

I use mine exclusively for single items that I want to cook efficiently in bulk - eggs, beans, potatoes, yams, etc. (Most recently, made a pot full of chick peas this weekend to split between hummus and a quinoa salad.)

She uses hers for single-pot soups, stews, etc. that are ready to eat as-is.

A top of the line Breville toaster oven was the first, it's fantastic, but it is also silly to compare it to our 25 y/o Viking duel fuel range, waiting to reenter our life.

A week ago I got my Instant Pot Pro, and I've been putting it through its paces. I boiled some eggs. This is what really irks me about IP fans: it does not take 5 minutes. It has some indeterminate amount of preheat, the 5 min., and then a cool down. The eggs are just fine, as flawless as the following method on a quality gas burner stove: Put eggs and water into pot to just cover, turn burner high"ish"; when bubbles just start, turn down to a very very slow bubble generation and set timer for 10m (12-13min at 5500' elevation), scoop out the eggs when the timer expires and put on the counter, peel when cool enough. I very rarely had to spend any attention monitoring this. The IP is just, but only just, as good.

BUT ITS NOT FIVE MINUTES.

Shouting because why do instant pot fans do this?

Now, I am quite interested in the yogurt thing. That sounds very cool, we love yogurt and industrial yogurt, meh. Also strawberries are cheap right now and I'm thinking of making some exotic French confitures, and mixing that with the yogurt.

Risotto? No brainer on a decent stove. Dried beans? I also have a 30 y/o Magefesa pressure cooker that has a thicker bottom than the instant pot "pot" and does dried beans perfectly. No magic, or even "instant", there.

Another gripe: compared to the Breville that roller knob in the center is a gawdawlful POS. Reeks of cheap.

Compared to the 15 y/o electric range that is going to be tossed out the back doors, and then shot multiple times with 12 gauge 3" buckshot loads, the IP is great, so maybe I'm a little sad that the inevitable PE bankrupt/shitify it happened to it too.

But it's constant and blatant and somehow seems to still be legal.

The PE firm here is Cornell Capital.

Private Equity, as a distinct industry, is fully engaged in looting of the type contemplated by the principal-agent problem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem

> Macellum’s campaign resulted in the addition of 4 of 13 directors. Also, as a byproduct of the pressure applied during the campaign, the company sold non-core assets equal to approximately 75% of the market capitalization. Macellum’s price objective were met and we exited the position at the beginning of 2021. Subsequently, a fractured board and new CEO were unable to oversee and execute the turnaround plan Macellum outlined during our campaign and results deteriorated.

If the company drags on long enough, all that profit gets eroded away. Pyrex has been around since the early 1900's for instance.

I agree, might not be 100% of what happened here, but it surely has to be a component.

Then Corning somehow decided that it was the name of a _brand_, and they could use whatever inferior material they wanted, and if you put it in those same situations it would explode and cover your kitchen/lab in glass shards.

How that was even legal, I will never understand.

I remember reading the Amazon reviews and the amount of 1 star stories about how a plate landed them in the ER was concerning.

I bought some vintage Corelle at a private sale and it seems different to me at least but maybe I am buying the wrong contemporary stuff.

I used to have a Cuckoo pressure rice cooker that made the best rice, fast, but it eventually started leaking even after replacing the seals, and professional repair would have been prohibitively expensive in Canada

(1) An electric pot that can be used like a regular stovetop pot,

(2) A pressure cooker, and

(3) A slow cooker (and a few other things that are typically specialized single-use devices but are really slight variations on those 3 things)

More advanced models are also:

(4) immersion circulator (“sous vide" cooker), and

(5) air fryer.

In many of these roles it is often seen as sonewhat less good than a dedicated device, though even people who feel that way may see it as useful as a multitasker and because it can more conveniently do dishes that require more than one function without changing pots.

> Also, I don't think the market for this stuff is ever truly saturated: every day, plenty of people get their first apartment and need to buy appliances. Instant Pot seems similar to other things like microwaves and toasters, which we don't think of as a dead end due to market saturation.

The market for microwaves isn't, because people use them. Outside of that craze, I don't know of anyone who uses their instant pot anymore. It was a fad, PE came in and gutted it. but the fact is, it probably wasn't going to be this huge performer either way.