September 12, 2025 • 43 mins
Ever ruined an expensive brisket? You're not alone. The fear of wasting time and money keeps most of us from attempting serious barbecue—until now.
Christopher Huang, founder of Brisk It, joins us to reveal how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing home cooking, starting with the intimidating world of smoking and grilling. What began as a mission to make barbecue more accessible has evolved into a vision for transforming our entire relationship with food preparation.
"I'm much more passionate about eating barbecue than making it," Huang confesses, explaining how this philosophy drove Brisk It's development. Unlike traditional "smart" appliances that simply follow pre-programmed instructions, Brisk It's Grills employ what Huang calls "agentic AI"—technology that adapts, learns, and makes decisions based on real-time data and your personal preferences.
The technology is impressive: adaptive temperature algorithms maintain perfect stability; the system detects and addresses common issues like temperature stalls automatically; and the more you use it, the better it understands your preferences. One early user assembled their grill and successfully smoked a perfect brisket on their very first attempt—a feat that would typically require multiple failed attempts and cost hundreds of dollars.
We explore Brisk It’s unique approach to product development, including their decision to hire industrial designers from Apple and automotive backgrounds rather than traditional grill designers. This fresh perspective, combined with Silicon Valley-style rapid iteration, has allowed them to create something truly revolutionary.
Looking toward the future, Huang shares his vision for automating the entire home cooking experience, meal selection and grocery shopping to preparation and sharing. The goal isn't to remove humans from cooking, but to eliminate the stress while ensuring consistently delicious, nutritious results that match individual preferences.
Check out Brisk It Grills on their website, Amazon, Lowes.com, or Sam's Club, and stay tuned for their next big announcement at CES 2026.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steven Ruffin (00:02):
Welcome to the Four Worlds podcast from
Tomorrow's World.
Today, we're diving into thelatest in tech, science and
sustainability, from nature'smysteries and the world of
inspiration to the hands-oncrafts of creation, the bold
breakthroughs of innovation andthe scaled-up wonders of
production.
This is your ticket to thestories shaping tomorrow.
(00:22):
Welcome back, everyone, toanother episode of the Four
Worlds podcast.
We're looking forward to thisone.
Christopher Huang joins us fromBrisket.
We have a good one coming foryou, talking about smart grills.
Just in time for that latesummer, maybe early fall, where
we're still able to get outthere, enjoy the weather and
(00:43):
cook up something great.
Christopher, thank you so muchfor joining us today.
We're really happy to have you.
Christopher Huang (00:48):
Thank you, Stephen, for having me Happy to
be on.
Steven Ruffin (00:50):
Yeah, we're looking forward to this one.
So I came across Brisket andCES.
So we're talking January.
So this is yeah, this is a longtime coming, so we're super
happy to have you.
I just want to jump in it.
Give us a general background,Explain to the people that may
not know who Brisket is, whatBrisket Grills do.
(01:11):
Just a general idea to kind ofkick this thing off.
Christopher Huang (01:15):
Yes, definitely so, brisket.
What Brisket really is allabout is we are an AI home
kitchen company.
We're really focused onleveraging ai and generative ai,
especially agentic ai, toautomate as much or I don't even
say as much the vision is intothe entire home kitchen and home
cooking process.
So that means everything fromdeciding what to eat, even
(01:37):
figuring out, even learning whatto eat, of course, to cooking
it, but also you perhaps,shopping, also post-cook, also
sharing with friends the wholesocial aspect of it.
All that is within our visionto really have a fully
effortless and seamless homecooking experience.
Steven Ruffin (01:55):
So when we were out at CES in Las Vegas, what on
showcase was the brisket grill.
So what you're saying isthere's a lot more to that.
So anything that makes thatcooking process or grocery
shopping, like you said, alittle easier, you kind of cover
it all right.
Christopher Huang (02:12):
Yes, so we started off with grills.
So just to give a quickbackground, you know, founded in
the 1920s and really focused oninitially on grills, and that
continues to remain our primaryproduct that's on the market.
And the reason we started withgrills is, first off, you know,
I have a well two reasons right.
So first of all, I have apersonal love of a barbecue,
eating barbecue particularly,and then, second actually you
(02:32):
know, this is the engineercoming out to me, the product
manager coming on me grillingand especially slow smoking, is
kind of the scare, franklyspeaking, the scary, one of the
scariest form of cooking.
So we felt, I felt that if wecould tackle smoking or grilling
, then we kind of start off withthe hardest and we can really
transfer, you know, use it,transfer a lot of that knowledge
into other, into other forms ofhome cooking.
Steven Ruffin (02:54):
I like the way you work.
I'm kind of the same way.
If I have tasks at hand, I'mcovering the hard one first, so
I can just kind of ease my wayin and and kind of and.
So when it does come to thosebrisket grills, you touched on
it a little bit, but I'd lovefor you to dive into those
problems or gaps that you saw inthe traditional pellet grill
(03:14):
market or the smoker process,the smoker market.
What was that problem or thosegaps that you saw yourself that
made you want to get into makingit smarter?
Christopher Huang (03:24):
that you saw yourself that made you want to
get into making it smarter.
Okay, so I'll start where youknow what initially kind of
sparked the idea for brisket,and then kind of how it led into
a larger discussion on or notdiscussion, but a larger thought
process on home cooking ingeneral.
So, talking about barbecuingspecifically, so around 2016,
that's when the first Wi-Fipellet grill started to come in,
and pellet grills before thatwere already very revolutionary,
(03:45):
especially with the inventionof or I shouldn't say invention,
but the proliferation and theremarkable growth of Traeger
around 2010, 2014.
And that really, compared to,say, a traditional charcoal
grill or offset grill, reallybrought convenience and ease
that the grilling world hasnever seen before.
The great part of pellet grills, though, is that it actually
(04:07):
has a lot of input data throughtheir temperatures, through the
control electronics that theyhave, and also the fact that
they use electrical power topower an auger to power the
pellets, which then controls theflame and the temperatures.
The fact that they're able tocontrol all this via electrical
inputs means that you can alsoextract the inputs into a model
or whatever like that.
So I felt that when Wi-Fi camearound 2016, it was an advantage
(04:30):
, but by that time.
If you look at any otherindustry, especially the Nest
right, the Nest Lab with thethermostat, by that time it was
already at their heyday, so tospeak.
So I really felt, hey, therewas, there was, yes, it was an
improvement, but it's still fiveyears behind and it's really, I
think, not taking fulladvantage of the ability and the
(04:53):
fundamentals of a pellet grill.
So that kind of leaves me okay,well, if you can automate it,
you know, you should, really, Ishould, I should mention this.
There is one thing also Ididn't know this, despite the
convenience given my pelletgrills and it, this is also not
reflected by own data at Brisket, most people still only
barbecued.
They barbecue more frequently,but they only barbecued still on
special occasions.
(05:13):
And there was still anintimidation factor.
There was still a factor of hey, what if I mess up?
So I'm only going to cookthings I'm unfamiliar with and
I'm only going to do when I canclear out my weekend.
Steven Ruffin (05:29):
So I wanted to thought, to do, and I can clear
out my weekend, so I wanted that.
Christopher Huang (05:31):
What if you?
Steven Ruffin (05:31):
could but notice that, myself included, I would
you know.
My doctor says don't do it, butI would eat barbecue every day.
I think a lot of people mayagree with you.
Your blood pressure might not,but yeah, yeah, you know depends
who you know, depends whatindustry they come from.
Christopher Huang (05:39):
But right, you know the stomach says yes,
you know, the brain maybe saysno, but unfortunately the
schedule regardless says no,because we have other
commitments, whether you're adad or whether you're at work or
whether it's too intimidating.
So I thought really, why can'twe just target that pain point?
And I'll close out with thisAfter I found this company, a
(06:01):
lot of my friends they asked ohChris, you must really really
enjoy making barbecue.
And I say yes.
Lot of my friends they ask ohChris, you must really really
enjoy making barbecue.
And I say you know yes and no.
And of course it takes them alittle bit, back a bit, because
people say wait, you say no,you're not passionate about your
company, your company's product.
I said no, I didn't say that.
I'm much more passionate abouteating barbecue, and so that is
what I want to do more of.
So that is where brisket comesin.
Steven Ruffin (06:20):
And I could almost guarantee that there are
so many people just like you.
They love eating barbecue, butthey may not have that knack for
it or they're intimidated aboutthat process because it's long.
I mean sometimes, whateveryou're smoking, it could take 16
hours.
You're up the crack of dawn andyou're smoking all day.
So when you're in this earlydevelopment stage or trying to
(06:46):
think of this idea, how did youenvision this smart technology
combined with these grills, toappeal to those modern grillers?
Christopher Huang (06:57):
There is a lot of.
You could say.
There are tech-oriented,tech-savvy people that are
willing to invest into gadgetsto optimize their lifestyle.
Optimizing many things can meanjust making it more convenient,
but actually I think it's notjust convenience and time-saving
, but it's also optimizing theresults.
(07:18):
That's why a lot of peopleinvest into things like ana ring
or they invest into the smarthome system.
It's not just to save time, butalso to improve the results
they would have gotten.
They would not have got withoutthese technologies.
Peloton is another example.
So now, in terms of takinggrilling to target these people
(07:41):
with these kind of attitude andpain points, we really had to
take a look, a look at.
Okay, what do they really careabout?
Right, you know, as they careabout.
They care about results andthey care about convenience.
They care about havingsomething that is very different
, very high tech, but whatreally prevents them from having
better results, better and moreconvenience, time, and that
(08:02):
really comes down to an entireyou know.
First we thought, okay, that'sall made the cooking, right?
No, that's, that's obvious,right?
Okay, if you don't have tospend 16 hours sitting at a
grill, you know, that is, thatis the.
You know, you save a lot oftime, right and.
But then that's just, that'sjust time consuming.
So then we thought, okay, howdo we make the results better?
Okay, if you know, gets you toyour location without crashing.
You know it doesn't just saveyou the effort but also improves
(08:29):
the results.
You know it reduces the chanceof crashing because it has the
safety sensors and everything.
We want to improve the chancethat the grill, the food, comes
out great.
So we thought, okay, we have alot of, for example, software
that attacks.
If you make a mistake, it'llcorrect for it.
If you accidentally forget tocome to the grill when the
food's done cooking, it'll makesure that it doesn't overcook,
right.
So all these improve theresults of the grill, in
addition to the saving time.
Then we came to kind of what yousaw at CSL this year, which is
(08:52):
or sorry, yeah, what you saw atCSL this year that we actually
released last year, which isokay.
Well, this is now the cookingaspect.
We've improved results, we'vesaved time, and maybe I can ask
you what really is the beginningof, like you say, the friction,
the pain point and some wouldeven say the dread of a
home-cooked meal.
It starts long before youactually fire up any stove or
(09:14):
cooker, it's deciding what canyou make so that actually you
know people joke that.
Hey, that's.
You know couples, you knowfamilies don't fight over.
You know when they're sittingat the stove or the grill they
fight long before that.
You know people, you knowcouples.
You know families don't fightover.
You know when they're sittingat the stove or the grill they
fight long before that.
You know.
The worst question thateveryone wants to hear is what
do you want to eat tonight?
Or what do you want to maketonight?
Steven Ruffin (09:31):
Right, so how bringing up those points?
It brings up a great point.
Let's say who's doing thegrocery shopping.
What are we getting?
What do we need?
What do we having?
How does Brisket help thosepeople that have those questions
or concern, even before firingup a grill?
Christopher Huang (09:48):
Yeah, so this really comes to where I really
emphasize on using agentic AI toreally make this and solve this
pain point.
So and I'll talk about now andalso talk a little bit about
feature, of course we can'tshare too much.
So the agentic part is before.
And if you look at othercooking devices, you know not
just grills, ovens, whatever,air fryers they'll often have
(10:08):
recipe books, right, and thoserecipes, they have cooking
programs, but those cookingprograms are much more like
basic cruise control.
They have steps, they'll changethe temperature, but there's no
flexibility, there's no agency.
Hence the term agentic AI.
There's no agency in thoseprograms.
So, instead of saying so, theagentic AI that we're using
right now is the idea that,instead of having to look for a
(10:30):
recipe, I'll make sure therecipe works and then send it to
the grill.
We use what we call our Vera AI, which is a generative AI too.
You just say make me a brisket,right?
So then the AI knows thisperson's goal is to make a
brisket, and then maybe I'll askquestions of this person only
has this ingredients, thisperson likes this flavors, this
person only has this much amountof time, and then it'll.
(10:51):
Then, of course, I can createthe program based on just a
simple goal of making a brisket.
So that is what we currently do, that's available on the market
right now.
Where we do want to proceed tothat is something that's kind of
one level above, or you can saytwo, I don't know how many
levels, but it's another levelof autonomy of agency and just
kind of tease that a little bitand then I'll you know I know
(11:11):
I'm talking a lot.
I get passionate about aproduct.
Steven Ruffin (11:14):
We love that.
We love that.
We love when people come onhere and are passionate about
what they're doing.
Christopher Huang (11:18):
That's good to know.
Yeah, so just to kind of closethat out yeah, so in terms of
where we really want to go, whatwe'll be showing at CES is not
just what if the user does noteven have to say make me a
brisket, we know based on.
You know, and I can't say toomuch, but we know based.
We know how they use the grill,we know what they like, we know
you know what's their flavors,you know how often they use the
(11:41):
grill, you know all that stuff.
What if, in the same way thatyou know facebook and tiktok,
know what you like on theircondo plan, when netflix knows
what movies you like?
We know this person eats atthis time, eats at this
frequency, eats this kind ofduration of food for this many
people, for this kind of flavors.
He doesn't have to say I wantbrisket.
We know what he wants, we giveit to him and automate the thing
(12:01):
interesting yeah, it's.
Steven Ruffin (12:02):
It's just kind of like I know there's there's
some things that you you knowcannot say just yet, but if you
think about machine learning ingeneral in very simple terms,
the more data you have, thesmarter it gets.
So it kind of seems like that'swhat you're pointing to, the
more more quote unquote it knowsyou knows what foods you like,
(12:22):
kind of is.
Am I kind of on the right trackwith, without saying?
Christopher Huang (12:27):
it.
Yes, you know, definitely, youknow we, you know I can say it
may not be released to publicyet but for sure you know
there's a lot of, you know,reinforcement learning with you
know, human feedback and finetuning going along.
Steven Ruffin (12:37):
Yeah, sure, sure know human feedback and
fine-tuning going along.
Yeah, sure, sure.
So that's kind of a little bitabout how you started, how you
know this idea in this productstarted.
But as you get into thatcreation process, what did those
original kind of prototypeslook like?
How did you prototype theunique control systems or the
(12:57):
hard hardware?
What was that creation processlike?
Christopher Huang (13:01):
yes.
So at first you know I'll talkabout the company history at
first, we thought, okay, youknow, my background is, frankly,
software, it was not hardware.
You know, I used to be asoftware engineer and move more
and more to the productmanagement side.
So I thought, okay, why don'twe just take the software, which
is what I'm familiar with andput it onto an existing grill?
We explored this in 2020.
And then what we realized is, inorder to, like I said, we
(13:24):
talked about this type of usermodern griller, as you mentioned
, you called it, there cannot bea traditional looking product
and also, frankly speaking, thecontrol electronics was not
adequate enough to that we couldfind out there.
It was not adequate enough togather the data and drive the
automation that we want with ourproducts.
So everything, to answer yourquestion directly, everything
(13:45):
that you see on our grills andall our future products, from
the cloud infrastructure to theAI, to the electronics, of
course, to the industrial designis all designed and built
in-house.
So, in terms of prototypes, ofcourse, partly because of being
new to the industry, but alsobecause we really wanted to make
sure it was right we created.
(14:06):
I think it took about from 2020to 2022, so two years to create
our first grill that we wentthrough, I think, 13 physical,
you know, of course, in threedesigns we went through many
proactive versions, but in termsof actually creating pro
designs, we did 13 revisions, somany different designs.
We still have some of them inour warehouse.
(14:28):
We really wanted somethingthat's sleek, something that
really evoked the brand.
Actually, I'll end off withthis to really emphasize how we
really want to be differentiatedIn industrial design as well.
We intentionally looked forindustrial designers that did
not have any grilling experiencebefore.
So actually, the designer thatwe end up using a lot of
experience really end up comingfrom, uh, automotive actually,
(14:50):
wow, yeah and yeah.
And it's for this designer.
You know she's very talented.
If you ever looked at herresume, you would not think she
designed grills you know, rightnow.
Yeah, she was apple.
You, you know, add to device,apple device.
Of course, that was one of thethings she worked on, and also
military hardware too.
Very recent, I noticed.
Steven Ruffin (15:08):
So when you're making that choice, how do you
make that?
I guess how do you make thatdecision?
I'm fascinated by that.
When you're making grills andmaking hardware for grills, how
do you settle on someone with anautomotive background?
I find that fascinating.
Christopher Huang (15:22):
Yes.
So first, like I said, we'relooking at within the industry.
Let's find an existing grill,let's find some grill designers.
If we can't find a grilldesigner, let's look at someone
who's designed appliances beforeand then it's transferable.
But then that I think there's aterm out there and you've
probably heard of it sustainableversus disruptive innovation or
(15:43):
continuous innovation.
Sometimes people say forsustainable and that feels safer
, feels less risky, feels moreconfidence-inspiring.
But what we realized or I guess,actually what I realized back
at that time is if we reallywant to do something different,
that doesn't just ride thecoattails of an existing big
player and we have to take arisk and do something different.
(16:05):
And yes, if we bought inHouston Grill, we probably would
go on the market and there'splus and minuses.
I'm not saying it's the rightdecision.
I think it's the right decision.
But you know, if we use anexisting grill model, then we
will have gone to market whenthe grill market was at its peak
, probably in early 2021.
When Traeger had a huge stock$35 or whatever price.
The IPO very successfully.
(16:26):
Don't look at the Traeger stockprice right now.
It's a little bit saddening.
But yeah, that would be anadvantage peak time of market,
but we wanted to really dothings right, so that's been a
big in everything custom.
Steven Ruffin (16:39):
Yeah, I think to your point.
You want to do things right.
So that's in a big andeverything custom.
Yeah, I think to your point.
You want to do it right.
You want something new and youwant to make sure it's your way,
it's your vision and you wantto make sure it's exactly how
you know you and your team wantit to be.
So when you're having thosediscussions, what were some of
those quote unquote must havesin that creation process that
probably drove a lot of thesediscussions in the prototype
(17:02):
process, the 12 versions orrevisions that you had?
What were those must-haves?
Christopher Huang (17:07):
Yeah.
So four things very clearly andI'll go through them briefly,
but they're all very critical.
So first, of course, let's talkabout technology.
First is smart technology,wi-fi and later on, the agentic
AI.
If you look at our productlineup, we have no non-Wi-Fi
grills and none of our grillsare de-featured software-wise
versus another.
And software-wise, yes, butthere's different
(17:28):
differentiation features.
But not software-wise, everygrill is just as intelligent as
the other, whether they're atthe low price point or the high
price point.
Price point is the second thing.
So, price point our our currenttagline, which will probably
change next year.
But, uh, our current tag sloganas a company is everyone's
smart grill.
And what does that mean?
You know that doesn't mean youknow.
It means, uh, you know that.
(17:49):
Uh, you know everyone's able tohave time in the grill.
Doesn't matter how talented youare, how much time you have.
You can make great home-cookedbarbecue.
But as a part of beingeveryone's smart, which you know
gives, really gives the storyof accessibility.
It means your AI.
You know, most advanced grill,high tech grill, cannot cost
$3,000, right?
And the only be available tothe early adopters.
(18:09):
Who's willing to blow the kindof money, right?
So that's why, if you look atour grill prices, they're very,
very competitive.
So that you know, as a result,that kind of led into the third
thing, which is we only putfeatures in there that really
improve the user experience.
You know back then, you knownow and continue to this day,
which I'm a little bit surprisedby the innovation was very much
(18:32):
continuous innovations.
How did?
How did grills innovate?
You know, they added a higherresolution screens, they added
more stick, thicker steel, theyadded bottle openers, they added
a toolbox system, all greatthings.
But what ended up happeningfirst is they don't really
change the user experience ofthe grill.
They don't change the food thatcomes off the grill, they don't
make it any easier to get thatgreat food.
(18:53):
And second is they slowlycreeped up in price.
So we want to do the oppositefor both of those things price.
Steven Ruffin (19:00):
So we want to do the opposite for both of those
things Interesting.
So just speaking on all ofthose terms, including that
price point in the technologythat you put into it, what are
some of those things that youwould want to tell let's say,
traditionalists when it comes togrilling, that are not used to
all this technology beingimplemented into what they think
(19:21):
would be a common grill?
Christopher Huang (19:23):
Yes, that is a challenge, right?
Sure, and every industry hasthis, you know, with enthusiasts
Sometimes it's, you know, theenthusiasts and the mainstream
and the early adopters all havedifferent opinions and needs,
right?
So, in terms of grilling, it'scalled the grilling enthusiast
or traditionalist.
Their traits is usually theywant to, you know, know, they're
very talented at what they doand they feel that to really get
(19:47):
the first, of course, theyenjoy the it's like, enjoy the
journey, it's, you know, it'slike work plus, very rewarding
for them, and I get that feelingas well.
And then, secondly, is, ofcourse, they want to, they care
about, they create the bestbarbecue, you know, no questions
about it, and they want whatthey care.
What they're worried about is ifyou give something that's
(20:08):
automated, you know, that's kindof like, almost like cheating.
Does that mean that the peoplethat give to you are kind of
deceiving them by giving themless quality barbecue and saying
, oh, but it's easy, so you know, you deal with it right, you
have poor results, but it'seasier, so it's worth it.
That's why, in early on, I saidyou know, I didn't just say
time-save.
And then our messaging we sayconvenience, but we don't just
say, oh, you save time.
(20:28):
That's it.
It's also how you control yourresults.
So what would a traditionalgrill and he may want to know.
Okay, if I want a certain typeof a nutritional factor, right,
(20:52):
I want to, you know, I want.
You know, one of my kids or oneof my friends has a certain
dietary restriction.
I want to make sure that he'staken care of so you can use the
ai in that aspect of a verycommon.
I'm not sure I'm familiar withgrilling, but are you familiar
with something called a stall?
Steven Ruffin (21:05):
I can't say that I am okay.
Christopher Huang (21:07):
So this is something that is very common
and can be very, I guess, fearedby or not feared, that's strong
term but something like that byall grillers.
So when you in slow meat, whenyou there's something called a
stall, which is when the meattemperature stops to rise, so it
seems like it's stuck, and thereason behind that is because
the liquids inside of it, thecollagen, et cetera, are
(21:29):
evaporating and cooling the meatdown as it's cooking.
That is probably the number onecause of the scenario where
people are sitting around hungryat dinner and they're all
waiting for the meat to come,come up, but it's just not done
cooking and the temperature'snot coming up at all.
That is the number one cause ofthat.
So that that impact doesn'tmatter how skilled you are, it's
just a.
Steven Ruffin (21:48):
You know, it's a simple thing that happens,
basically right, it's be.
It's beyond excuse me, it'sbeyond our cooking capabilities
exactly so our grills.
Christopher Huang (21:57):
They can monitor for stalls and then when
it detects that you know, itcan give recommendations.
Hey, you know, first of all itnotifies the user.
So an enthusiast will know okay, my meat is stalling.
Now I know what to do now andI'm happy because I didn't
notice it like one hour later,which means I basically lost an
hour or 30 minutes of cooking.
So those are examples of that.
(22:17):
So that's why I know I'm goinglong here, but I'll close out.
When we say everyone's smartgrill, that doesn't mean novices
and people with no time.
It also means the enthusiastsand that's why I always keep
adding one more thing.
I'll close out with this one.
I know I give long answers, butthat's why, when AI does
automation, it never takescontrol away from the user, as
(22:41):
much as autonomous or asnon-autonomous as you want it to
be.
Steven Ruffin (22:45):
Yeah, absolutely, and, chris, I promise you never
have to apologize for passionon this podcast, so you're OK.
Anything that you want to add,please, please, feel free and.
I guess, staying on that topicof novices versus enthusiasts
what was some of that feedbackthat you got in those early
testing that kind of shaped yourfinal product and the final
(23:08):
hardware?
Christopher Huang (23:09):
Great?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So let's start with novices.
So one of our first reviewsthat we ever got so in 2022,
when we had a very small, justmarket test launch was this
person said he assembled thegrill.
Well, I guess he got the grilldelivered, he assembled the
grill and then for his firstcook, he decided to cook a
brisket and then he ate it andit tasted great.
(23:31):
His family loved it.
That was it, very frankly,mundane review.
To him it was mundane.
He just thinks, okay, greatgrill, I had a great meal.
To review.
To him it was mondaniel.
He just thinks, okay, greatgirl, I had a great meal.
To us.
When we saw that review, wewere very, very ecstatic,
because I'm not sure if you'vesmoked brisket before, but if
you look at even enthusiastforums if you look at reddit,
you know, if you look at traegerforums etc.
(23:53):
Smoking forums, you'll see thatto the brisket is a very elusive
, can be a very elude,deceptively el elusively
difficult dish.
It's very easy to overcook it,but if you undercook it, it's
also very easy to undercook itwhere it's very chewy and tough.
So, long story short, and Iwent through this rite of
passage.
Basically, it's a rite ofpassage for any smoker, backyard
(24:13):
griller to burn or ruin yourfirst three briskets or first
two briskets.
I know I did and these are like$100 pieces of meat, especially
in 2021.
Steven Ruffin (24:22):
It's not cheap, yeah, yeah.
Christopher Huang (24:23):
It's not cheap.
So this person wrote thisreview.
Obviously, I could tell he's anovice from the review, but he
just did that.
One of the most challengingdishes did that as first cook.
He used the cooking automationand then he went to bed.
Right, that's all he did.
He doesn't know what he did,but and I wish I could reach out
to him, but it's probablyprobably right years.
(24:44):
But uh, yeah, that to us was,you know, very, very huge, yeah.
So that's, of course, on thenovice side.
Then to quickly touch on themore expert side, I'll be honest
in the beginning the automationaspect has and continues to
have resistance, skepticism fromthis type of user.
And it makes sense.
I'm also a car enthusiast.
(25:05):
I was quite skeptical ofself-driving cars.
Now I'm very into self-drivingcars, so it takes time.
But what we did find is, firstoff, they appreciate the build
quality.
They appreciate the fact thatthe car control at the time,
which is now, you start to see,more common by the time we were
the amount of few, onlyfull-color, higher resolution
LCD controllers.
And they appreciate ourtemperature stability.
(25:26):
Right, temperature stability iswe continue to test competitors
.
We're still we still have themost stable temperature control
algorithm.
So they appreciate that.
And of course then, as time wenton, we started to notice, hey,
they appreciate the fact thatthey're able to the grill will
go into keep warm mode if theyget too busy and they forget to
take the food off when it's donecooking.
(25:47):
They appreciate the fact thatwe let them know about stalls.
We appreciate the fact thatthey appreciate the fact that
they can remote ignite the grilland schedule ignitions and
things like that.
Yes, maybe they're not goingfull on, you know Tesla style
full self cooking, but there's,like I said, it's everyone's
smart growth.
There's a lot of conveniencefeatures that make things just a
little bit easier for them toachieve, to achieve the results
(26:09):
that they consistently doachieve enthusiast.
Steven Ruffin (26:24):
It's nice getting that feedback, and no matter
how in-depth it is, as we heardwith the novice feedback but I'm
sure it really did help helpshape this final design and
really help you help you andyour team move along yes,
absolutely yes, and we continueto, you know, both in terms of
interviews and in reviews, butalso in terms of and the great
thing about ai is we get thatcontinuous, uh, human feedback
(26:45):
loop.
Christopher Huang (26:45):
So even the fact that they thumbs up a
recipe, or they launch a recipeand or they reject the recipe,
thumbs it down.
That constantly tunes in realtime, not just for our product
in general, but also for theirprofile, for their preferences
and then, and so as longer theyuse the grill, the more they
they use it, the more customizedand hyper-profile to their
experience it will become.
Steven Ruffin (27:05):
Yeah, it's a smart grill, it is.
So let's talk about some ofthat.
What kind of, let's say,proprietary technologies or
algorithms that are poweringthese AI systems that help
manage temperatures, smoke andeven fuel automatically?
What are some of those piecesof technology that you guys are
dealing with?
Christopher Huang (27:25):
Okay, I'll talk a little bit more about the
traditional side and then go,of course, into our centerpiece,
which is our AI.
So the traditional side reallyis the temperature control
algorithm, so that and I shouldclarify you know right, these
days most Wi-Fi pellet grillsthat are above a certain price
point are algorithm controlled.
Now, there's different levelsof, I guess you could say,
intelligence in these differentalgorithms.
(27:46):
Some is just a, and they callit PID algorithms, some are just
they base it off of temperatureand then a motor speed for the
algorithm to feed pellets andit's a flat.
It's the same logic for everyscenario.
In our case, we once againreally try to be adaptive.
We call it adaptive or dynamic.
So in a sense that if you'rejust trying to maintain
(28:08):
temperature, it'll have certainlogic to make sure it maintains
it.
If you jump from a smalltemperature to a high
temperature, it'll adjust tomake sure that it speeds up it
doesn't need the same logic andthen adjust the logic and
increase the temperature as fastas possible without you know.
Igniting a fire, same thingwith shutdown, same thing with
ignition, et cetera.
(28:28):
But you know something that'sunique to us.
I guess I shouldn't you know, Idon't.
I guess I shouldn't say I guessyou could say it's unique, but
I'm going to that, do it as well, sure, yeah, but that is kind
of where we kind of showcasethat, hey, we always want to be
adaptive, intelligent, even insomething as simple as a
temperature control algorithm.
Yeah, now going of course intosomething that's you know, of
(28:50):
course that's kind of our coretechnology, which is the AI
algorithm component.
So of course, we have our ownmodel, you know we have, we have
our own recommendation engineand we build our own user images
or profiles, local columnprofiles, images, et cetera.
And this technology, of course,is designed to not just
accomplish the automation, theuser profile generation, the
(29:12):
feedback loop that we currentlydo, but it's really designed to
be transferable.
So the great thing about thisis and I'll leave it there
because I can't, this isfortunately as much as I can
share is this technology whereour AI engine that automates the
grill, that generates therecipes, generates the cooking
programs, understands the userprofile, adapts fine-tunes, etc.
(29:33):
It's very transferable toBeyond Grills.
So I think it's pretty obviousto say that we don't intend, we
want, to really expand thisconcept to the entire home
kitchen.
Grills is the first stop andthe next stop you'll see at CES
2025.
Steven Ruffin (29:49):
We love that, we love that.
So let's shift from thattechnology and shift a little
towards the user, becauseessentially, that's what it
comes down to.
The user is very important insituations like this.
How do you enhance that userexperience?
You talked about thosedata-driven cooking profiles,
but also the mobile app.
How are these enhancing thatuser experience?
Christopher Huang (30:11):
Great question.
So, once again, we always use afeedback loop.
You may use the term severaltimes.
A feedback loop, fine-tuning,reinforcement, learning we do
that.
That's an AI concept, but wealso do it as people, as product
managers as well.
So what does that mean?
That means we are not afraid,unlike traditional, like
appliance companies, where theypush an update.
You know once every, you know ayear or something like that,
(30:33):
and when they push updates, it'slike a bug fix.
We are constantly pushingupdates multiple times, I don't
know I times, I don't know, Iguess multiple times a month
really.
And, yes, most of those aresmall changes, but we also push
many new features.
If you look at our app in 2020versus or I guess 2022, versus
our app now, the feature andcapabilities are very, very
different.
So, just to give an example,probe calibration.
(30:55):
This is very, very mundane task.
So sometimes when you put in aprobe, it's you know probes are
temperature probes and sometimesyou know they get out of
calibration because you know,because, just from wear and tear
or whatever, we automateInstead of having to just
manually touch it.
We automate that.
That did not exist when wefirst launched.
That existed later on.
Of course, the AI, the recipeAI, generation, generative AI,
(31:17):
which we launched in 2024, thatdid not exist when we launched
in 2022.
And then it exists in 2024 andthen so, and then now it's much
more powerful today than it iswhen it first came out.
Those just examples.
But to really kind of underscorethe philosophy, we're not
afraid, because you know, Ithink our users know that we're
kind of a startup.
You know we're newer, we'retrying something different.
They have a little bit morepatience with us, to say the
(31:38):
least.
So, in the same that, so Ithink this is more like a
Silicon Valley attitude, wherewe don't mind trying new things
with our users and they don't,because they, you know, they
can't trust that.
You know we're not going tomake their grill blow up or
something like that, right?
So you know, for example, thetone of our AI.
Sometimes it's going to be verystraightforward.
(32:00):
Sometimes it's going to be verycomplimentary.
Maybe something will besarcastic, right, we try things
out, we fine-tune it.
Maybe we tune it towards meatrecipes more, you know.
Make something.
More you know safer, or moreyou know more risky, right?
And then some people say.
Some people say no, what areyou?
What are you doing?
This?
I liked my recipe.
Safe is to stop giving you know, stop trying to put, uh, you
know, these crazy ingredientsthat I never tried on on the you
(32:23):
know, on these dishes, right?
So then if we just go too far,we tune it back so that constant
iteration is what allows us toreally really move quickly,
especially on the software sideI love that.
Steven Ruffin (32:36):
it seems like just based on our conversation,
very user forward.
You really take feedback intoconsideration and I think a lot
of people would appreciate that,and I'm sure they have already.
Christopher Huang (32:50):
And the great thing about software and
hardware of course you have tojust get it right and do it
right, because you can't changeit once it's out the door.
Steven Ruffin (32:56):
You can't keep making that.
You can't be updating thehardware Software.
Christopher Huang (33:00):
you know, the great thing is, you know, if
you yes, of course we want to dothe interviews, we do.
You know, we have tons ofdocumentation to define
requirements et cetera, butnothing beats user feedback.
And so why not just see whatcertain users think?
If they like it, grow out moreusers.
If they don't, you know, maybepull it back a bit.
And that's how you know, that'show, frankly, a lot of great
(33:23):
software products are made.
Steven Ruffin (33:24):
Right, and so one of the most important parts of
these processes scalingscalability.
You're making this product.
Give me some insight on yourmanufacturing or supply chain
setup.
What does that look like,whether you're assembling
in-house or partnering withthird-party producers?
How does that look for Brisket?
Christopher Huang (33:45):
Yeah, so we do use contract manufacturers,
but we also have our own supplychain team.
Actually, supply quality andmanufacturing make up about a
quarter of our headcountactually.
So in terms to answer thefirst-party question, which is
on the manufacturing side, sothe most obvious designs are
ours, industrial designs, and wego through prototyping to make
(34:06):
sure it passes testing and wetest them rigorously.
You know, from fall damage to,you know, to a high temperature,
you know all the things.
You would expect a grill thathas basically a fire inside of
it and it's going to get coveredin grease, and we go through
you know even electromagnetictesting.
You know testing to make surewhen you touch a controller the
electric current from yourfingers doesn't cause a problem.
(34:28):
We test all those too.
Of course, when appropriate wealso go through third-party
certification Intertac etc.
Bluetooth, all that stuff.
That's, I think, all theexpected things.
I guess I'll staystraightforward.
Of course we do manufacture inChina and China does have a
(34:49):
mixed reputation right Ofmanufacturing, of quality, of QA
, of processes, of speed, and weneed to make essentially the
reason why a quarter of our headcount is manufactured in qa,
because we need to make sure weget the, get the best parts of
manufacturing asia and and avoidyou know the you know the not
(35:13):
so great parts of it.
So what does that mean?
Just to put it bluntly, we testour team whenever we run
production, our team.
That team basically lives atthe factory and I visit there.
You know, our CTO visits thereto make sure and they inspect
every single grill that comesoff the line to make sure that
they pass the factory doesn'tcheat us.
Basically, Right.
Steven Ruffin (35:34):
So, when it comes to addressing product quality,
the safety standards and all ofthe regulatory compliance, would
you say that you and your teamit seems to be the case is being
hands-on, something that'simportant to you and your team?
Christopher Huang (35:48):
Absolutely yes, and that's why all our
engineers, you know we don't usethird-party agencies.
Unfortunately, we know we'renot, we're starved, we cannot
own, we cannot fund andcapitalize on fact, obviously we
would.
But you know things that we canknow engineers, software
engineers, industrial engineers,qa team, the designers, all
in-house.
You know we tried some external, but you know it's one thing
(36:08):
that really stuck to me.
This is now coming more tostartup culture, which is, we
believe, and I believepersonally, that in order for
startups to succeed, you'reeither on the bus or you're off
the bus.
So you cannot be, you cannot behalf half right.
So that's why we really want totry to keep things internal as
much as possible.
Steven Ruffin (36:25):
Yeah, again, users listening out there or
potentially future users.
I think that's something thatthey would like to hear and
something that they really,really would appreciate.
So let's go into some of thoseprototypes and shipping models,
like the Origin and the Argo.
What were some of thoseproduction hurdles that you had
to solve to get those on theshipping?
You know, scaling them, gettingthem ready to ship definitely
(36:49):
so.
Christopher Huang (36:50):
The biggest challenge, and this is you know
I'm maybe you probably heard ofa book called uh, good to good
to great.
Right, you know the chicken andthe egg, where the chicken you
know, overnight, you know whenthe hatchet, when the egg
becomes a chicken, it's a toeveryone who watches it.
It's a complete change.
But to the chicken, right, hespent like I don't know how much
a chicken just dates for, but,uh, but you know it spends, you
(37:11):
know, a month or whatever,working hard, growing, and no
one ever saw it.
Right, so chicken's breakfastis very different, right, so
it's the same thing here.
So, in the beginning, especiallyin 2021, right, the grill
market was on fire in a good way, so we were just small fish.
We didn't have the capital toproduce, to order a million
units from the factory, so itwas very difficult for us to
(37:32):
stand out.
You know everyone was saying,oh, why, when?
Why you're just a small player.
You know I'm.
These guys are orderinghundreds of thousand units every
year.
You just want to order.
You can only afford to order athousand, so why should you even
pay attention to you, right?
So that was very much achallenge, but so we had to
really convince them based onfact, hey, demonstrate.
This is not just another OEM,odm type of grill.
(37:54):
This is something that's verydifferent and, yes, we're small
now, but if you look at ourtraction, we're in an industry
that's frankly struggling.
We are growing very rapidly andactually this happened maybe a
few weeks ago we're actually thebest selling smoker on amazon
at the moment love that, socongratulations so.
(38:18):
But talking about scalingscaling there's two ways to
scale right, there's or twothings we have to scale first.
First is the manufacturing sideand then second is the software
side.
Software, you know, maybe it'snot talked about as much,
especially in the grilling world, because we don't want a
situation where every userincreases the cost of our you
know, our AWS bill, linearlyright Then, of course, then it
becomes really not sustainable.
(38:39):
Yeah, really not sustainable.
Yeah.
So in that sense, the greatthings that as we get more users
, the ability to first we getmore data, we really learn hey,
this is how you really use thegrill, that's what that makes
our changes, allows us to makechange both the hardware and
software.
But also on the production side, I guess the way to kind of
summarize it is when we design,I, I guess the biggest decision
(39:02):
that we made for scaling on thehardware side is what's it
called Like an interoperability,transferability, compatibility
Sorry, I'm listening.
So, for example, when we make acontroller, it's very important
that we don't just thatcontroller, which we spent many
months and a lot of moneydeveloping to test, to get
certification for, is not justcompatible with one model which
then, when we update the nextyear is no longer up to date.
(39:23):
So that's why you know a lot ofour grills at Argo.
You know the origin.
They share the same components.
So that was a scale decision.
And I think the last thing youasked about was about kind of
the manufacturing process, right?
So just to quickly touch onthat so Argo is a great example.
Argo was an exclusive grillfrom Walmart.
So Argo is a great example.
Argo was this exclusive grillfrom Walmart.
So not only did we have theyhave to meet our standards, we
(39:44):
had to meet their standards too.
And believe me, long storyshort, they were very, very
strict on this.
They pulled yeah, they pulledout their thermometer gun and
shot every inch of the grill andsaid, if they saw any variation
, and they, you know, they werelike, yeah, yeah, yeah and and
then there's also.
Steven Ruffin (40:02):
Was there the sam's club exclusive as well?
What were those kind of?
Christopher Huang (40:06):
yes, that was the argo grill, sorry, yeah
that's okay.
Steven Ruffin (40:09):
Yeah, sam's club.
I just wanted to clear that up.
When you said argo, it's like,wait, maybe that I think that's
the same club.
But I didn't want to I didn'twant to be the one correcting
you, the you know guy.
I'm angry, but anyway.
But yeah, just her jumping overhurdles another important part
of this process and you werekind of going in this direction.
(40:29):
And, as we wrap up thisinterview, how do you see
brisket evolving over the nextthree to five?
Christopher Huang (40:35):
years in the very beginning and probably
hinted towards.
Our goal is to really have afully autonomous, fully automate
the entire home cookingexperience.
That means all the differentsteps of a cook, but also all
the different forms of a cook.
The vision is that the entirehome kitchen is powered by
(40:58):
Brisket AI.
That, and I think I'm veryexcited.
So it's really a struggle notto share more but because it is
basically ready for releaseearly next year, but we need to
reveal it.
We need to wait until CES toreveal it.
Yeah, gotta wait till January,but give you a little bit of a
preview.
Our vision is that when it comesto home cooking, the user does
(41:18):
not really have to think much.
They can really just focus oneating and just enjoying good
food, having you know that meetsthe nutrition requirements,
meet their taste, tastes great,meets their schedule.
In the same way that and thisis maybe not the best I need to
work on this analogy.
I'll work on it for CES 2026when I give it to you.
There you go, there you go.
In the same way that a, asocial media algorithm.
(41:39):
You don't have to tell a socialmedia algorithm hey, I want to
see dogs, right.
I want to see cute dogs, right.
It just knows it's constantlyfeeding.
You can scroll on it forever,right.
Steven Ruffin (41:49):
Very unhealthy, but Right, we've all been there.
Let's all be honest, we've allbeen there.
Christopher Huang (41:56):
My goal is that with a home cook, they'll
be able to just the fact thateverything's automated, the fact
that you know therecommendation engine knows what
they like, what they don't like.
They can constantly try newthings.
They don't have to worry aboutwhether it's going to come out
tasting poorly or come out burntor whatever.
Constantly try new things.
It meets nutrition requirements, it meets the dietary needs and
they never have to worry aboutit as a day-to-day diet.
(42:19):
Basically, the stress of homecooking is removed from the day
to day life.
That is the vision of brisket.
Steven Ruffin (42:25):
And I think that's a great cliffhanger,
something to get people excitedfor.
So, as we wrap this up,anything else that you want to
add that we might have missed,that you want to let people know
.
Christopher Huang (42:37):
No, I guess.
If anyone wants to check outbrisket, our grills currently
are available on our website, onAmazon as well as retailers
such as Lowe'scom and Sam's Club.
In terms of what we're going todo next beyond grills, can't
say much and just stay tuned forit.
If you stay tuned to see us2026, if you can.
Steven Ruffin (42:54):
Yes, everyone, stay tuned, Chris.
We're really looking forward tocontinue working with you.
We're going to follow along aswell, and really excited for the
future of Brisket.
Thank you, I appreciate it,stephen, absolutely Once again.
Thanks again to Chris andBrisket for joining us today,
(43:14):
and thank you all for listening.
That's all the time we have.
We'll see you next time.
Catch up on the latestinnovations shaping our world at
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Welcome to the Four Worlds podcast from
Tomorrow's World.
Today, we're diving into thelatest in tech, science and
sustainability, from nature'smysteries and the world of
inspiration to the hands-oncrafts of creation, the bold
breakthroughs of innovation andthe scaled-up wonders of
production.
This is your ticket to thestories shaping tomorrow.
(00:22):
Welcome back, everyone, toanother episode of the Four
Worlds podcast.
We're looking forward to thisone.
Christopher Huang joins us fromBrisket.
We have a good one coming foryou, talking about smart grills.
Just in time for that latesummer, maybe early fall, where
we're still able to get outthere, enjoy the weather and
(00:43):
cook up something great.
Christopher, thank you so muchfor joining us today.
We're really happy to have you.
Christopher Huang (00:48):
Thank you, Stephen, for having me Happy to
be on.
Steven Ruffin (00:50):
Yeah, we're looking forward to this one.
So I came across Brisket andCES.
So we're talking January.
So this is yeah, this is a longtime coming, so we're super
happy to have you.
I just want to jump in it.
Give us a general background,Explain to the people that may
not know who Brisket is, whatBrisket Grills do.
(01:11):
Just a general idea to kind ofkick this thing off.
Christopher Huang (01:15):
Yes, definitely so, brisket.
What Brisket really is allabout is we are an AI home
kitchen company.
We're really focused onleveraging ai and generative ai,
especially agentic ai, toautomate as much or I don't even
say as much the vision is intothe entire home kitchen and home
cooking process.
So that means everything fromdeciding what to eat, even
(01:37):
figuring out, even learning whatto eat, of course, to cooking
it, but also you perhaps,shopping, also post-cook, also
sharing with friends the wholesocial aspect of it.
All that is within our visionto really have a fully
effortless and seamless homecooking experience.
Steven Ruffin (01:55):
So when we were out at CES in Las Vegas, what on
showcase was the brisket grill.
So what you're saying isthere's a lot more to that.
So anything that makes thatcooking process or grocery
shopping, like you said, alittle easier, you kind of cover
it all right.
Christopher Huang (02:12):
Yes, so we started off with grills.
So just to give a quickbackground, you know, founded in
the 1920s and really focused oninitially on grills, and that
continues to remain our primaryproduct that's on the market.
And the reason we started withgrills is, first off, you know,
I have a well two reasons right.
So first of all, I have apersonal love of a barbecue,
eating barbecue particularly,and then, second actually you
(02:32):
know, this is the engineercoming out to me, the product
manager coming on me grillingand especially slow smoking, is
kind of the scare, franklyspeaking, the scary, one of the
scariest form of cooking.
So we felt, I felt that if wecould tackle smoking or grilling
, then we kind of start off withthe hardest and we can really
transfer, you know, use it,transfer a lot of that knowledge
into other, into other forms ofhome cooking.
Steven Ruffin (02:54):
I like the way you work.
I'm kind of the same way.
If I have tasks at hand, I'mcovering the hard one first, so
I can just kind of ease my wayin and and kind of and.
So when it does come to thosebrisket grills, you touched on
it a little bit, but I'd lovefor you to dive into those
problems or gaps that you saw inthe traditional pellet grill
(03:14):
market or the smoker process,the smoker market.
What was that problem or thosegaps that you saw yourself that
made you want to get into makingit smarter?
Christopher Huang (03:24):
that you saw yourself that made you want to
get into making it smarter.
Okay, so I'll start where youknow what initially kind of
sparked the idea for brisket,and then kind of how it led into
a larger discussion on or notdiscussion, but a larger thought
process on home cooking ingeneral.
So, talking about barbecuingspecifically, so around 2016,
that's when the first Wi-Fipellet grill started to come in,
and pellet grills before thatwere already very revolutionary,
(03:45):
especially with the inventionof or I shouldn't say invention,
but the proliferation and theremarkable growth of Traeger
around 2010, 2014.
And that really, compared to,say, a traditional charcoal
grill or offset grill, reallybrought convenience and ease
that the grilling world hasnever seen before.
The great part of pellet grills, though, is that it actually
(04:07):
has a lot of input data throughtheir temperatures, through the
control electronics that theyhave, and also the fact that
they use electrical power topower an auger to power the
pellets, which then controls theflame and the temperatures.
The fact that they're able tocontrol all this via electrical
inputs means that you can alsoextract the inputs into a model
or whatever like that.
So I felt that when Wi-Fi camearound 2016, it was an advantage
(04:30):
, but by that time.
If you look at any otherindustry, especially the Nest
right, the Nest Lab with thethermostat, by that time it was
already at their heyday, so tospeak.
So I really felt, hey, therewas, there was, yes, it was an
improvement, but it's still fiveyears behind and it's really, I
think, not taking fulladvantage of the ability and the
(04:53):
fundamentals of a pellet grill.
So that kind of leaves me okay,well, if you can automate it,
you know, you should, really, Ishould, I should mention this.
There is one thing also Ididn't know this, despite the
convenience given my pelletgrills and it, this is also not
reflected by own data at Brisket, most people still only
barbecued.
They barbecue more frequently,but they only barbecued still on
special occasions.
(05:13):
And there was still anintimidation factor.
There was still a factor of hey, what if I mess up?
So I'm only going to cookthings I'm unfamiliar with and
I'm only going to do when I canclear out my weekend.
Steven Ruffin (05:29):
So I wanted to thought, to do, and I can clear
out my weekend, so I wanted that.
Christopher Huang (05:31):
What if you?
Steven Ruffin (05:31):
could but notice that, myself included, I would
you know.
My doctor says don't do it, butI would eat barbecue every day.
I think a lot of people mayagree with you.
Your blood pressure might not,but yeah, yeah, you know depends
who you know, depends whatindustry they come from.
Christopher Huang (05:39):
But right, you know the stomach says yes,
you know, the brain maybe saysno, but unfortunately the
schedule regardless says no,because we have other
commitments, whether you're adad or whether you're at work or
whether it's too intimidating.
So I thought really, why can'twe just target that pain point?
And I'll close out with thisAfter I found this company, a
(06:01):
lot of my friends they asked ohChris, you must really really
enjoy making barbecue.
And I say yes.
Lot of my friends they ask ohChris, you must really really
enjoy making barbecue.
And I say you know yes and no.
And of course it takes them alittle bit, back a bit, because
people say wait, you say no,you're not passionate about your
company, your company's product.
I said no, I didn't say that.
I'm much more passionate abouteating barbecue, and so that is
what I want to do more of.
So that is where brisket comesin.
Steven Ruffin (06:20):
And I could almost guarantee that there are
so many people just like you.
They love eating barbecue, butthey may not have that knack for
it or they're intimidated aboutthat process because it's long.
I mean sometimes, whateveryou're smoking, it could take 16
hours.
You're up the crack of dawn andyou're smoking all day.
So when you're in this earlydevelopment stage or trying to
(06:46):
think of this idea, how did youenvision this smart technology
combined with these grills, toappeal to those modern grillers?
Christopher Huang (06:57):
There is a lot of.
You could say.
There are tech-oriented,tech-savvy people that are
willing to invest into gadgetsto optimize their lifestyle.
Optimizing many things can meanjust making it more convenient,
but actually I think it's notjust convenience and time-saving
, but it's also optimizing theresults.
(07:18):
That's why a lot of peopleinvest into things like ana ring
or they invest into the smarthome system.
It's not just to save time, butalso to improve the results
they would have gotten.
They would not have got withoutthese technologies.
Peloton is another example.
So now, in terms of takinggrilling to target these people
(07:41):
with these kind of attitude andpain points, we really had to
take a look, a look at.
Okay, what do they really careabout?
Right, you know, as they careabout.
They care about results andthey care about convenience.
They care about havingsomething that is very different
, very high tech, but whatreally prevents them from having
better results, better and moreconvenience, time, and that
(08:02):
really comes down to an entireyou know.
First we thought, okay, that'sall made the cooking, right?
No, that's, that's obvious,right?
Okay, if you don't have tospend 16 hours sitting at a
grill, you know, that is, thatis the.
You know, you save a lot oftime, right and.
But then that's just, that'sjust time consuming.
So then we thought, okay, howdo we make the results better?
Okay, if you know, gets you toyour location without crashing.
You know it doesn't just saveyou the effort but also improves
(08:29):
the results.
You know it reduces the chanceof crashing because it has the
safety sensors and everything.
We want to improve the chancethat the grill, the food, comes
out great.
So we thought, okay, we have alot of, for example, software
that attacks.
If you make a mistake, it'llcorrect for it.
If you accidentally forget tocome to the grill when the
food's done cooking, it'll makesure that it doesn't overcook,
right.
So all these improve theresults of the grill, in
addition to the saving time.
Then we came to kind of what yousaw at CSL this year, which is
(08:52):
or sorry, yeah, what you saw atCSL this year that we actually
released last year, which isokay.
Well, this is now the cookingaspect.
We've improved results, we'vesaved time, and maybe I can ask
you what really is the beginningof, like you say, the friction,
the pain point and some wouldeven say the dread of a
home-cooked meal.
It starts long before youactually fire up any stove or
(09:14):
cooker, it's deciding what canyou make so that actually you
know people joke that.
Hey, that's.
You know couples, you knowfamilies don't fight over.
You know when they're sittingat the stove or the grill they
fight long before that.
You know people, you knowcouples.
You know families don't fightover.
You know when they're sittingat the stove or the grill they
fight long before that.
You know.
The worst question thateveryone wants to hear is what
do you want to eat tonight?
Or what do you want to maketonight?
Steven Ruffin (09:31):
Right, so how bringing up those points?
It brings up a great point.
Let's say who's doing thegrocery shopping.
What are we getting?
What do we need?
What do we having?
How does Brisket help thosepeople that have those questions
or concern, even before firingup a grill?
Christopher Huang (09:48):
Yeah, so this really comes to where I really
emphasize on using agentic AI toreally make this and solve this
pain point.
So and I'll talk about now andalso talk a little bit about
feature, of course we can'tshare too much.
So the agentic part is before.
And if you look at othercooking devices, you know not
just grills, ovens, whatever,air fryers they'll often have
(10:08):
recipe books, right, and thoserecipes, they have cooking
programs, but those cookingprograms are much more like
basic cruise control.
They have steps, they'll changethe temperature, but there's no
flexibility, there's no agency.
Hence the term agentic AI.
There's no agency in thoseprograms.
So, instead of saying so, theagentic AI that we're using
right now is the idea that,instead of having to look for a
(10:30):
recipe, I'll make sure therecipe works and then send it to
the grill.
We use what we call our Vera AI, which is a generative AI too.
You just say make me a brisket,right?
So then the AI knows thisperson's goal is to make a
brisket, and then maybe I'll askquestions of this person only
has this ingredients, thisperson likes this flavors, this
person only has this much amountof time, and then it'll.
(10:51):
Then, of course, I can createthe program based on just a
simple goal of making a brisket.
So that is what we currently do, that's available on the market
right now.
Where we do want to proceed tothat is something that's kind of
one level above, or you can saytwo, I don't know how many
levels, but it's another levelof autonomy of agency and just
kind of tease that a little bitand then I'll you know I know
(11:11):
I'm talking a lot.
I get passionate about aproduct.
Steven Ruffin (11:14):
We love that.
We love that.
We love when people come onhere and are passionate about
what they're doing.
Christopher Huang (11:18):
That's good to know.
Yeah, so just to kind of closethat out yeah, so in terms of
where we really want to go, whatwe'll be showing at CES is not
just what if the user does noteven have to say make me a
brisket, we know based on.
You know, and I can't say toomuch, but we know based.
We know how they use the grill,we know what they like, we know
you know what's their flavors,you know how often they use the
(11:41):
grill, you know all that stuff.
What if, in the same way thatyou know facebook and tiktok,
know what you like on theircondo plan, when netflix knows
what movies you like?
We know this person eats atthis time, eats at this
frequency, eats this kind ofduration of food for this many
people, for this kind of flavors.
He doesn't have to say I wantbrisket.
We know what he wants, we giveit to him and automate the thing
(12:01):
interesting yeah, it's.
Steven Ruffin (12:02):
It's just kind of like I know there's there's
some things that you you knowcannot say just yet, but if you
think about machine learning ingeneral in very simple terms,
the more data you have, thesmarter it gets.
So it kind of seems like that'swhat you're pointing to, the
more more quote unquote it knowsyou knows what foods you like,
(12:22):
kind of is.
Am I kind of on the right trackwith, without saying?
Christopher Huang (12:27):
it.
Yes, you know, definitely, youknow we, you know I can say it
may not be released to publicyet but for sure you know
there's a lot of, you know,reinforcement learning with you
know, human feedback and finetuning going along.
Steven Ruffin (12:37):
Yeah, sure, sure know human feedback and
fine-tuning going along.
Yeah, sure, sure.
So that's kind of a little bitabout how you started, how you
know this idea in this productstarted.
But as you get into thatcreation process, what did those
original kind of prototypeslook like?
How did you prototype theunique control systems or the
(12:57):
hard hardware?
What was that creation processlike?
Christopher Huang (13:01):
yes.
So at first you know I'll talkabout the company history at
first, we thought, okay, youknow, my background is, frankly,
software, it was not hardware.
You know, I used to be asoftware engineer and move more
and more to the productmanagement side.
So I thought, okay, why don'twe just take the software, which
is what I'm familiar with andput it onto an existing grill?
We explored this in 2020.
And then what we realized is, inorder to, like I said, we
(13:24):
talked about this type of usermodern griller, as you mentioned
, you called it, there cannot bea traditional looking product
and also, frankly speaking, thecontrol electronics was not
adequate enough to that we couldfind out there.
It was not adequate enough togather the data and drive the
automation that we want with ourproducts.
So everything, to answer yourquestion directly, everything
(13:45):
that you see on our grills andall our future products, from
the cloud infrastructure to theAI, to the electronics, of
course, to the industrial designis all designed and built
in-house.
So, in terms of prototypes, ofcourse, partly because of being
new to the industry, but alsobecause we really wanted to make
sure it was right we created.
(14:06):
I think it took about from 2020to 2022, so two years to create
our first grill that we wentthrough, I think, 13 physical,
you know, of course, in threedesigns we went through many
proactive versions, but in termsof actually creating pro
designs, we did 13 revisions, somany different designs.
We still have some of them inour warehouse.
(14:28):
We really wanted somethingthat's sleek, something that
really evoked the brand.
Actually, I'll end off withthis to really emphasize how we
really want to be differentiatedIn industrial design as well.
We intentionally looked forindustrial designers that did
not have any grilling experiencebefore.
So actually, the designer thatwe end up using a lot of
experience really end up comingfrom, uh, automotive actually,
(14:50):
wow, yeah and yeah.
And it's for this designer.
You know she's very talented.
If you ever looked at herresume, you would not think she
designed grills you know, rightnow.
Yeah, she was apple.
You, you know, add to device,apple device.
Of course, that was one of thethings she worked on, and also
military hardware too.
Very recent, I noticed.
Steven Ruffin (15:08):
So when you're making that choice, how do you
make that?
I guess how do you make thatdecision?
I'm fascinated by that.
When you're making grills andmaking hardware for grills, how
do you settle on someone with anautomotive background?
I find that fascinating.
Christopher Huang (15:22):
Yes.
So first, like I said, we'relooking at within the industry.
Let's find an existing grill,let's find some grill designers.
If we can't find a grilldesigner, let's look at someone
who's designed appliances beforeand then it's transferable.
But then that I think there's aterm out there and you've
probably heard of it sustainableversus disruptive innovation or
(15:43):
continuous innovation.
Sometimes people say forsustainable and that feels safer
, feels less risky, feels moreconfidence-inspiring.
But what we realized or I guess,actually what I realized back
at that time is if we reallywant to do something different,
that doesn't just ride thecoattails of an existing big
player and we have to take arisk and do something different.
(16:05):
And yes, if we bought inHouston Grill, we probably would
go on the market and there'splus and minuses.
I'm not saying it's the rightdecision.
I think it's the right decision.
But you know, if we use anexisting grill model, then we
will have gone to market whenthe grill market was at its peak
, probably in early 2021.
When Traeger had a huge stock$35 or whatever price.
The IPO very successfully.
(16:26):
Don't look at the Traeger stockprice right now.
It's a little bit saddening.
But yeah, that would be anadvantage peak time of market,
but we wanted to really dothings right, so that's been a
big in everything custom.
Steven Ruffin (16:39):
Yeah, I think to your point.
You want to do things right.
So that's in a big andeverything custom.
Yeah, I think to your point.
You want to do it right.
You want something new and youwant to make sure it's your way,
it's your vision and you wantto make sure it's exactly how
you know you and your team wantit to be.
So when you're having thosediscussions, what were some of
those quote unquote must havesin that creation process that
probably drove a lot of thesediscussions in the prototype
(17:02):
process, the 12 versions orrevisions that you had?
What were those must-haves?
Christopher Huang (17:07):
Yeah.
So four things very clearly andI'll go through them briefly,
but they're all very critical.
So first, of course, let's talkabout technology.
First is smart technology,wi-fi and later on, the agentic
AI.
If you look at our productlineup, we have no non-Wi-Fi
grills and none of our grillsare de-featured software-wise
versus another.
And software-wise, yes, butthere's different
(17:28):
differentiation features.
But not software-wise, everygrill is just as intelligent as
the other, whether they're atthe low price point or the high
price point.
Price point is the second thing.
So, price point our our currenttagline, which will probably
change next year.
But, uh, our current tag sloganas a company is everyone's
smart grill.
And what does that mean?
You know that doesn't mean youknow.
It means, uh, you know that.
(17:49):
Uh, you know everyone's able tohave time in the grill.
Doesn't matter how talented youare, how much time you have.
You can make great home-cookedbarbecue.
But as a part of beingeveryone's smart, which you know
gives, really gives the storyof accessibility.
It means your AI.
You know, most advanced grill,high tech grill, cannot cost
$3,000, right?
And the only be available tothe early adopters.
(18:09):
Who's willing to blow the kindof money, right?
So that's why, if you look atour grill prices, they're very,
very competitive.
So that you know, as a result,that kind of led into the third
thing, which is we only putfeatures in there that really
improve the user experience.
You know back then, you knownow and continue to this day,
which I'm a little bit surprisedby the innovation was very much
(18:32):
continuous innovations.
How did?
How did grills innovate?
You know, they added a higherresolution screens, they added
more stick, thicker steel, theyadded bottle openers, they added
a toolbox system, all greatthings.
But what ended up happeningfirst is they don't really
change the user experience ofthe grill.
They don't change the food thatcomes off the grill, they don't
make it any easier to get thatgreat food.
(18:53):
And second is they slowlycreeped up in price.
So we want to do the oppositefor both of those things price.
Steven Ruffin (19:00):
So we want to do the opposite for both of those
things Interesting.
So just speaking on all ofthose terms, including that
price point in the technologythat you put into it, what are
some of those things that youwould want to tell let's say,
traditionalists when it comes togrilling, that are not used to
all this technology beingimplemented into what they think
(19:21):
would be a common grill?
Christopher Huang (19:23):
Yes, that is a challenge, right?
Sure, and every industry hasthis, you know, with enthusiasts
Sometimes it's, you know, theenthusiasts and the mainstream
and the early adopters all havedifferent opinions and needs,
right?
So, in terms of grilling, it'scalled the grilling enthusiast
or traditionalist.
Their traits is usually theywant to, you know, know, they're
very talented at what they doand they feel that to really get
(19:47):
the first, of course, theyenjoy the it's like, enjoy the
journey, it's, you know, it'slike work plus, very rewarding
for them, and I get that feelingas well.
And then, secondly, is, ofcourse, they want to, they care
about, they create the bestbarbecue, you know, no questions
about it, and they want whatthey care.
What they're worried about is ifyou give something that's
(20:08):
automated, you know, that's kindof like, almost like cheating.
Does that mean that the peoplethat give to you are kind of
deceiving them by giving themless quality barbecue and saying
, oh, but it's easy, so you know, you deal with it right, you
have poor results, but it'seasier, so it's worth it.
That's why, in early on, I saidyou know, I didn't just say
time-save.
And then our messaging we sayconvenience, but we don't just
say, oh, you save time.
(20:28):
That's it.
It's also how you control yourresults.
So what would a traditionalgrill and he may want to know.
Okay, if I want a certain typeof a nutritional factor, right,
(20:52):
I want to, you know, I want.
You know, one of my kids or oneof my friends has a certain
dietary restriction.
I want to make sure that he'staken care of so you can use the
ai in that aspect of a verycommon.
I'm not sure I'm familiar withgrilling, but are you familiar
with something called a stall?
Steven Ruffin (21:05):
I can't say that I am okay.
Christopher Huang (21:07):
So this is something that is very common
and can be very, I guess, fearedby or not feared, that's strong
term but something like that byall grillers.
So when you in slow meat, whenyou there's something called a
stall, which is when the meattemperature stops to rise, so it
seems like it's stuck, and thereason behind that is because
the liquids inside of it, thecollagen, et cetera, are
(21:29):
evaporating and cooling the meatdown as it's cooking.
That is probably the number onecause of the scenario where
people are sitting around hungryat dinner and they're all
waiting for the meat to come,come up, but it's just not done
cooking and the temperature'snot coming up at all.
That is the number one cause ofthat.
So that that impact doesn'tmatter how skilled you are, it's
just a.
Steven Ruffin (21:48):
You know, it's a simple thing that happens,
basically right, it's be.
It's beyond excuse me, it'sbeyond our cooking capabilities
exactly so our grills.
Christopher Huang (21:57):
They can monitor for stalls and then when
it detects that you know, itcan give recommendations.
Hey, you know, first of all itnotifies the user.
So an enthusiast will know okay, my meat is stalling.
Now I know what to do now andI'm happy because I didn't
notice it like one hour later,which means I basically lost an
hour or 30 minutes of cooking.
So those are examples of that.
(22:17):
So that's why I know I'm goinglong here, but I'll close out.
When we say everyone's smartgrill, that doesn't mean novices
and people with no time.
It also means the enthusiastsand that's why I always keep
adding one more thing.
I'll close out with this one.
I know I give long answers, butthat's why, when AI does
automation, it never takescontrol away from the user, as
(22:41):
much as autonomous or asnon-autonomous as you want it to
be.
Steven Ruffin (22:45):
Yeah, absolutely, and, chris, I promise you never
have to apologize for passionon this podcast, so you're OK.
Anything that you want to add,please, please, feel free and.
I guess, staying on that topicof novices versus enthusiasts
what was some of that feedbackthat you got in those early
testing that kind of shaped yourfinal product and the final
(23:08):
hardware?
Christopher Huang (23:09):
Great?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So let's start with novices.
So one of our first reviewsthat we ever got so in 2022,
when we had a very small, justmarket test launch was this
person said he assembled thegrill.
Well, I guess he got the grilldelivered, he assembled the
grill and then for his firstcook, he decided to cook a
brisket and then he ate it andit tasted great.
(23:31):
His family loved it.
That was it, very frankly,mundane review.
To him it was mundane.
He just thinks, okay, greatgrill, I had a great meal.
To review.
To him it was mondaniel.
He just thinks, okay, greatgirl, I had a great meal.
To us.
When we saw that review, wewere very, very ecstatic,
because I'm not sure if you'vesmoked brisket before, but if
you look at even enthusiastforums if you look at reddit,
you know, if you look at traegerforums etc.
(23:53):
Smoking forums, you'll see thatto the brisket is a very elusive
, can be a very elude,deceptively el elusively
difficult dish.
It's very easy to overcook it,but if you undercook it, it's
also very easy to undercook itwhere it's very chewy and tough.
So, long story short, and Iwent through this rite of
passage.
Basically, it's a rite ofpassage for any smoker, backyard
(24:13):
griller to burn or ruin yourfirst three briskets or first
two briskets.
I know I did and these are like$100 pieces of meat, especially
in 2021.
Steven Ruffin (24:22):
It's not cheap, yeah, yeah.
Christopher Huang (24:23):
It's not cheap.
So this person wrote thisreview.
Obviously, I could tell he's anovice from the review, but he
just did that.
One of the most challengingdishes did that as first cook.
He used the cooking automationand then he went to bed.
Right, that's all he did.
He doesn't know what he did,but and I wish I could reach out
to him, but it's probablyprobably right years.
(24:44):
But uh, yeah, that to us was,you know, very, very huge, yeah.
So that's, of course, on thenovice side.
Then to quickly touch on themore expert side, I'll be honest
in the beginning the automationaspect has and continues to
have resistance, skepticism fromthis type of user.
And it makes sense.
I'm also a car enthusiast.
(25:05):
I was quite skeptical ofself-driving cars.
Now I'm very into self-drivingcars, so it takes time.
But what we did find is, firstoff, they appreciate the build
quality.
They appreciate the fact thatthe car control at the time,
which is now, you start to see,more common by the time we were
the amount of few, onlyfull-color, higher resolution
LCD controllers.
And they appreciate ourtemperature stability.
(25:26):
Right, temperature stability iswe continue to test competitors
.
We're still we still have themost stable temperature control
algorithm.
So they appreciate that.
And of course then, as time wenton, we started to notice, hey,
they appreciate the fact thatthey're able to the grill will
go into keep warm mode if theyget too busy and they forget to
take the food off when it's donecooking.
(25:47):
They appreciate the fact thatwe let them know about stalls.
We appreciate the fact thatthey appreciate the fact that
they can remote ignite the grilland schedule ignitions and
things like that.
Yes, maybe they're not goingfull on, you know Tesla style
full self cooking, but there's,like I said, it's everyone's
smart growth.
There's a lot of conveniencefeatures that make things just a
little bit easier for them toachieve, to achieve the results
(26:09):
that they consistently doachieve enthusiast.
Steven Ruffin (26:24):
It's nice getting that feedback, and no matter
how in-depth it is, as we heardwith the novice feedback but I'm
sure it really did help helpshape this final design and
really help you help you andyour team move along yes,
absolutely yes, and we continueto, you know, both in terms of
interviews and in reviews, butalso in terms of and the great
thing about ai is we get thatcontinuous, uh, human feedback
(26:45):
loop.
Christopher Huang (26:45):
So even the fact that they thumbs up a
recipe, or they launch a recipeand or they reject the recipe,
thumbs it down.
That constantly tunes in realtime, not just for our product
in general, but also for theirprofile, for their preferences
and then, and so as longer theyuse the grill, the more they
they use it, the more customizedand hyper-profile to their
experience it will become.
Steven Ruffin (27:05):
Yeah, it's a smart grill, it is.
So let's talk about some ofthat.
What kind of, let's say,proprietary technologies or
algorithms that are poweringthese AI systems that help
manage temperatures, smoke andeven fuel automatically?
What are some of those piecesof technology that you guys are
dealing with?
Christopher Huang (27:25):
Okay, I'll talk a little bit more about the
traditional side and then go,of course, into our centerpiece,
which is our AI.
So the traditional side reallyis the temperature control
algorithm, so that and I shouldclarify you know right, these
days most Wi-Fi pellet grillsthat are above a certain price
point are algorithm controlled.
Now, there's different levelsof, I guess you could say,
intelligence in these differentalgorithms.
(27:46):
Some is just a, and they callit PID algorithms, some are just
they base it off of temperatureand then a motor speed for the
algorithm to feed pellets andit's a flat.
It's the same logic for everyscenario.
In our case, we once againreally try to be adaptive.
We call it adaptive or dynamic.
So in a sense that if you'rejust trying to maintain
(28:08):
temperature, it'll have certainlogic to make sure it maintains
it.
If you jump from a smalltemperature to a high
temperature, it'll adjust tomake sure that it speeds up it
doesn't need the same logic andthen adjust the logic and
increase the temperature as fastas possible without you know.
Igniting a fire, same thingwith shutdown, same thing with
ignition, et cetera.
(28:28):
But you know something that'sunique to us.
I guess I shouldn't you know, Idon't.
I guess I shouldn't say I guessyou could say it's unique, but
I'm going to that, do it as well, sure, yeah, but that is kind
of where we kind of showcasethat, hey, we always want to be
adaptive, intelligent, even insomething as simple as a
temperature control algorithm.
Yeah, now going of course intosomething that's you know, of
(28:50):
course that's kind of our coretechnology, which is the AI
algorithm component.
So of course, we have our ownmodel, you know we have, we have
our own recommendation engineand we build our own user images
or profiles, local columnprofiles, images, et cetera.
And this technology, of course,is designed to not just
accomplish the automation, theuser profile generation, the
(29:12):
feedback loop that we currentlydo, but it's really designed to
be transferable.
So the great thing about thisis and I'll leave it there
because I can't, this isfortunately as much as I can
share is this technology whereour AI engine that automates the
grill, that generates therecipes, generates the cooking
programs, understands the userprofile, adapts fine-tunes, etc.
(29:33):
It's very transferable toBeyond Grills.
So I think it's pretty obviousto say that we don't intend, we
want, to really expand thisconcept to the entire home
kitchen.
Grills is the first stop andthe next stop you'll see at CES
2025.
Steven Ruffin (29:49):
We love that, we love that.
So let's shift from thattechnology and shift a little
towards the user, becauseessentially, that's what it
comes down to.
The user is very important insituations like this.
How do you enhance that userexperience?
You talked about thosedata-driven cooking profiles,
but also the mobile app.
How are these enhancing thatuser experience?
Christopher Huang (30:11):
Great question.
So, once again, we always use afeedback loop.
You may use the term severaltimes.
A feedback loop, fine-tuning,reinforcement, learning we do
that.
That's an AI concept, but wealso do it as people, as product
managers as well.
So what does that mean?
That means we are not afraid,unlike traditional, like
appliance companies, where theypush an update.
You know once every, you know ayear or something like that,
(30:33):
and when they push updates, it'slike a bug fix.
We are constantly pushingupdates multiple times, I don't
know I times, I don't know, Iguess multiple times a month
really.
And, yes, most of those aresmall changes, but we also push
many new features.
If you look at our app in 2020versus or I guess 2022, versus
our app now, the feature andcapabilities are very, very
different.
So, just to give an example,probe calibration.
(30:55):
This is very, very mundane task.
So sometimes when you put in aprobe, it's you know probes are
temperature probes and sometimesyou know they get out of
calibration because you know,because, just from wear and tear
or whatever, we automateInstead of having to just
manually touch it.
We automate that.
That did not exist when wefirst launched.
That existed later on.
Of course, the AI, the recipeAI, generation, generative AI,
(31:17):
which we launched in 2024, thatdid not exist when we launched
in 2022.
And then it exists in 2024 andthen so, and then now it's much
more powerful today than it iswhen it first came out.
Those just examples.
But to really kind of underscorethe philosophy, we're not
afraid, because you know, Ithink our users know that we're
kind of a startup.
You know we're newer, we'retrying something different.
They have a little bit morepatience with us, to say the
(31:38):
least.
So, in the same that, so Ithink this is more like a
Silicon Valley attitude, wherewe don't mind trying new things
with our users and they don't,because they, you know, they
can't trust that.
You know we're not going tomake their grill blow up or
something like that, right?
So you know, for example, thetone of our AI.
Sometimes it's going to be verystraightforward.
(32:00):
Sometimes it's going to be verycomplimentary.
Maybe something will besarcastic, right, we try things
out, we fine-tune it.
Maybe we tune it towards meatrecipes more, you know.
Make something.
More you know safer, or moreyou know more risky, right?
And then some people say.
Some people say no, what areyou?
What are you doing?
This?
I liked my recipe.
Safe is to stop giving you know, stop trying to put, uh, you
know, these crazy ingredientsthat I never tried on on the you
(32:23):
know, on these dishes, right?
So then if we just go too far,we tune it back so that constant
iteration is what allows us toreally really move quickly,
especially on the software sideI love that.
Steven Ruffin (32:36):
it seems like just based on our conversation,
very user forward.
You really take feedback intoconsideration and I think a lot
of people would appreciate that,and I'm sure they have already.
Christopher Huang (32:50):
And the great thing about software and
hardware of course you have tojust get it right and do it
right, because you can't changeit once it's out the door.
Steven Ruffin (32:56):
You can't keep making that.
You can't be updating thehardware Software.
Christopher Huang (33:00):
you know, the great thing is, you know, if
you yes, of course we want to dothe interviews, we do.
You know, we have tons ofdocumentation to define
requirements et cetera, butnothing beats user feedback.
And so why not just see whatcertain users think?
If they like it, grow out moreusers.
If they don't, you know, maybepull it back a bit.
And that's how you know, that'show, frankly, a lot of great
(33:23):
software products are made.
Steven Ruffin (33:24):
Right, and so one of the most important parts of
these processes scalingscalability.
You're making this product.
Give me some insight on yourmanufacturing or supply chain
setup.
What does that look like,whether you're assembling
in-house or partnering withthird-party producers?
How does that look for Brisket?
Christopher Huang (33:45):
Yeah, so we do use contract manufacturers,
but we also have our own supplychain team.
Actually, supply quality andmanufacturing make up about a
quarter of our headcountactually.
So in terms to answer thefirst-party question, which is
on the manufacturing side, sothe most obvious designs are
ours, industrial designs, and wego through prototyping to make
(34:06):
sure it passes testing and wetest them rigorously.
You know, from fall damage to,you know, to a high temperature,
you know all the things.
You would expect a grill thathas basically a fire inside of
it and it's going to get coveredin grease, and we go through
you know even electromagnetictesting.
You know testing to make surewhen you touch a controller the
electric current from yourfingers doesn't cause a problem.
(34:28):
We test all those too.
Of course, when appropriate wealso go through third-party
certification Intertac etc.
Bluetooth, all that stuff.
That's, I think, all theexpected things.
I guess I'll staystraightforward.
Of course we do manufacture inChina and China does have a
(34:49):
mixed reputation right Ofmanufacturing, of quality, of QA
, of processes, of speed, and weneed to make essentially the
reason why a quarter of our headcount is manufactured in qa,
because we need to make sure weget the, get the best parts of
manufacturing asia and and avoidyou know the you know the not
(35:13):
so great parts of it.
So what does that mean?
Just to put it bluntly, we testour team whenever we run
production, our team.
That team basically lives atthe factory and I visit there.
You know, our CTO visits thereto make sure and they inspect
every single grill that comesoff the line to make sure that
they pass the factory doesn'tcheat us.
Basically, Right.
Steven Ruffin (35:34):
So, when it comes to addressing product quality,
the safety standards and all ofthe regulatory compliance, would
you say that you and your teamit seems to be the case is being
hands-on, something that'simportant to you and your team?
Christopher Huang (35:48):
Absolutely yes, and that's why all our
engineers, you know we don't usethird-party agencies.
Unfortunately, we know we'renot, we're starved, we cannot
own, we cannot fund andcapitalize on fact, obviously we
would.
But you know things that we canknow engineers, software
engineers, industrial engineers,qa team, the designers, all
in-house.
You know we tried some external, but you know it's one thing
(36:08):
that really stuck to me.
This is now coming more tostartup culture, which is, we
believe, and I believepersonally, that in order for
startups to succeed, you'reeither on the bus or you're off
the bus.
So you cannot be, you cannot behalf half right.
So that's why we really want totry to keep things internal as
much as possible.
Steven Ruffin (36:25):
Yeah, again, users listening out there or
potentially future users.
I think that's something thatthey would like to hear and
something that they really,really would appreciate.
So let's go into some of thoseprototypes and shipping models,
like the Origin and the Argo.
What were some of thoseproduction hurdles that you had
to solve to get those on theshipping?
You know, scaling them, gettingthem ready to ship definitely
(36:49):
so.
Christopher Huang (36:50):
The biggest challenge, and this is you know
I'm maybe you probably heard ofa book called uh, good to good
to great.
Right, you know the chicken andthe egg, where the chicken you
know, overnight, you know whenthe hatchet, when the egg
becomes a chicken, it's a toeveryone who watches it.
It's a complete change.
But to the chicken, right, hespent like I don't know how much
a chicken just dates for, but,uh, but you know it spends, you
(37:11):
know, a month or whatever,working hard, growing, and no
one ever saw it.
Right, so chicken's breakfastis very different, right, so
it's the same thing here.
So, in the beginning, especiallyin 2021, right, the grill
market was on fire in a good way, so we were just small fish.
We didn't have the capital toproduce, to order a million
units from the factory, so itwas very difficult for us to
(37:32):
stand out.
You know everyone was saying,oh, why, when?
Why you're just a small player.
You know I'm.
These guys are orderinghundreds of thousand units every
year.
You just want to order.
You can only afford to order athousand, so why should you even
pay attention to you, right?
So that was very much achallenge, but so we had to
really convince them based onfact, hey, demonstrate.
This is not just another OEM,odm type of grill.
(37:54):
This is something that's verydifferent and, yes, we're small
now, but if you look at ourtraction, we're in an industry
that's frankly struggling.
We are growing very rapidly andactually this happened maybe a
few weeks ago we're actually thebest selling smoker on amazon
at the moment love that, socongratulations so.
(38:18):
But talking about scalingscaling there's two ways to
scale right, there's or twothings we have to scale first.
First is the manufacturing sideand then second is the software
side.
Software, you know, maybe it'snot talked about as much,
especially in the grilling world, because we don't want a
situation where every userincreases the cost of our you
know, our AWS bill, linearlyright Then, of course, then it
becomes really not sustainable.
(38:39):
Yeah, really not sustainable.
Yeah.
So in that sense, the greatthings that as we get more users
, the ability to first we getmore data, we really learn hey,
this is how you really use thegrill, that's what that makes
our changes, allows us to makechange both the hardware and
software.
But also on the production side, I guess the way to kind of
summarize it is when we design,I, I guess the biggest decision
(39:02):
that we made for scaling on thehardware side is what's it
called Like an interoperability,transferability, compatibility
Sorry, I'm listening.
So, for example, when we make acontroller, it's very important
that we don't just thatcontroller, which we spent many
months and a lot of moneydeveloping to test, to get
certification for, is not justcompatible with one model which
then, when we update the nextyear is no longer up to date.
(39:23):
So that's why you know a lot ofour grills at Argo.
You know the origin.
They share the same components.
So that was a scale decision.
And I think the last thing youasked about was about kind of
the manufacturing process, right?
So just to quickly touch onthat so Argo is a great example.
Argo was an exclusive grillfrom Walmart.
So Argo is a great example.
Argo was this exclusive grillfrom Walmart.
So not only did we have theyhave to meet our standards, we
(39:44):
had to meet their standards too.
And believe me, long storyshort, they were very, very
strict on this.
They pulled yeah, they pulledout their thermometer gun and
shot every inch of the grill andsaid, if they saw any variation
, and they, you know, they werelike, yeah, yeah, yeah and and
then there's also.
Steven Ruffin (40:02):
Was there the sam's club exclusive as well?
What were those kind of?
Christopher Huang (40:06):
yes, that was the argo grill, sorry, yeah
that's okay.
Steven Ruffin (40:09):
Yeah, sam's club.
I just wanted to clear that up.
When you said argo, it's like,wait, maybe that I think that's
the same club.
But I didn't want to I didn'twant to be the one correcting
you, the you know guy.
I'm angry, but anyway.
But yeah, just her jumping overhurdles another important part
of this process and you werekind of going in this direction.
(40:29):
And, as we wrap up thisinterview, how do you see
brisket evolving over the nextthree to five?
Christopher Huang (40:35):
years in the very beginning and probably
hinted towards.
Our goal is to really have afully autonomous, fully automate
the entire home cookingexperience.
That means all the differentsteps of a cook, but also all
the different forms of a cook.
The vision is that the entirehome kitchen is powered by
(40:58):
Brisket AI.
That, and I think I'm veryexcited.
So it's really a struggle notto share more but because it is
basically ready for releaseearly next year, but we need to
reveal it.
We need to wait until CES toreveal it.
Yeah, gotta wait till January,but give you a little bit of a
preview.
Our vision is that when it comesto home cooking, the user does
(41:18):
not really have to think much.
They can really just focus oneating and just enjoying good
food, having you know that meetsthe nutrition requirements,
meet their taste, tastes great,meets their schedule.
In the same way that and thisis maybe not the best I need to
work on this analogy.
I'll work on it for CES 2026when I give it to you.
There you go, there you go.
In the same way that a, asocial media algorithm.
(41:39):
You don't have to tell a socialmedia algorithm hey, I want to
see dogs, right.
I want to see cute dogs, right.
It just knows it's constantlyfeeding.
You can scroll on it forever,right.
Steven Ruffin (41:49):
Very unhealthy, but Right, we've all been there.
Let's all be honest, we've allbeen there.
Christopher Huang (41:56):
My goal is that with a home cook, they'll
be able to just the fact thateverything's automated, the fact
that you know therecommendation engine knows what
they like, what they don't like.
They can constantly try newthings.
They don't have to worry aboutwhether it's going to come out
tasting poorly or come out burntor whatever.
Constantly try new things.
It meets nutrition requirements, it meets the dietary needs and
they never have to worry aboutit as a day-to-day diet.
(42:19):
Basically, the stress of homecooking is removed from the day
to day life.
That is the vision of brisket.
Steven Ruffin (42:25):
And I think that's a great cliffhanger,
something to get people excitedfor.
So, as we wrap this up,anything else that you want to
add that we might have missed,that you want to let people know
.
Christopher Huang (42:37):
No, I guess.
If anyone wants to check outbrisket, our grills currently
are available on our website, onAmazon as well as retailers
such as Lowe'scom and Sam's Club.
In terms of what we're going todo next beyond grills, can't
say much and just stay tuned forit.
If you stay tuned to see us2026, if you can.
Steven Ruffin (42:54):
Yes, everyone, stay tuned, Chris.
We're really looking forward tocontinue working with you.
We're going to follow along aswell, and really excited for the
future of Brisket.
Thank you, I appreciate it,stephen, absolutely Once again.
Thanks again to Chris andBrisket for joining us today,
(43:14):
and thank you all for listening.
That's all the time we have.
We'll see you next time.
Catch up on the latestinnovations shaping our world at
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