‘The next George Foreman Grill’

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This article was published 13/12/2014 (4162 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A couple of Winnipeg inventors have come up with an electric Asian cooktop called the Nutrigrill that the big shots in the infomercial world believe could become the next George Foreman Grill.

That’s the one that has sold more than 100 million units since the mid-1990s.

And it’s not just any old fast-talking huckster touting the Nutrigrill.

The biggest player in the infomercial business believes it’s a winner.

After three years of product development, Winnipeg inventors Phil Poetker and Barry Belog started selling the Nutrigrill on Facebook last year.

A few months later they could tell it was getting traction. They have sold 5,000 units (for between $120 and $250 dollars depending on the number of additional attachments) in the last year.

A few months into the surprising Facebook word-of-mouth momentum Poetker got a call from Kevin Harrington, the inventor of the infomercial whose company has sold more than $4 billion worth of products it’s launched, with 20 of them reaching sales of over $100 million.

“It was after a couple of weeks of talking with him and his people that I realized who he was,” said Poetker, 53.

In addition to moving millions of units of products such as the New Wave Oven and the Total Gym, Harrington has also been a shark on the U.S. TV series Shark Tank.

Harrington’s celebrity endorsement division is called the C-Shop. They have virtually become the Nutrigrill’s marketing team.

Toli Cefail, creative director of Tampa, Fla.-based the C-Shop, said, “It is certainly has the potential to be the next George Foreman Grill. It is groundbreaking. They are bringing this wonderful ancient time-tested Asian cooking style to the masses. People love it. It’s a great product.”

They have taken Phil Poetker and Barry Belog under their wings.

Early in the new year, infomercials featuring Iron Chef judge and celebrity New York restaurateur Donatella Arpaia, and Brett Hoebel, a fitness expert and trainer on The Biggest Loser, will start to show up in selected U.S. markets, extolling the virtues of the Nutrigrill.

With the simple tag line, “Healthy Never Tasted So Good,” the 13-inch ceramic-surface electric grill is styled after a healthy ancient cooking technique that has been tested over thousands of years.

The two-tier grill with the heat element concentrated on the top tier allows meat and vegetables to be cooked at the same time.

As well as the convenience and time-saving qualities, it promotes a healthier diet, weight loss and family participation in the cooking experience.

“It is a common form of eating in Asia that’s extremely popular, but has never been North Americanized,” said Poetker, 53. “We redesigned it, made it electrical and brought it over here and made it applicable to any cultural influence we could find.”

Not only is it a great product for television because it is so demonstrable, Poetker and Belog have a missionary zeal about its health and community attributes.

“Eating this way cleverly changes the proportion of what you eat,” said Poetker who proudly recalls an early demonstration cooking for a group of 11 women over several hours where none of them consumed more than 380 calories.

‘ It is ground-breaking. They are bringing this wonderful ancient time-tested Asian cooking style to the masses. People love it. It’s a great product.’

“Most often, a normal plate at dinner in Canada includes one meat one carb one veggie,” he said. “When you cook with the Nutrigrill it’s one-to one-to-18 because you can add that much veggies. It quietly changes the proportion of meat to veggies.”

It was Belog who had the original idea after living for several years in Asia and teamed up with Poetker about five years ago.

They were originally working on another product — a game concept with a twist on paintball with a Velcro ball — when they decided the Nutrigrill had better prospects.

With their contacts in Asia — Belog spent months living with their manufacturer in China — they secured all the standards product certifications for sale in countries around the world.

Poetker has had so much experience developing products to the point where they were being sold by the big retail chains, that he knew the pitfalls only too well.

“I have sold products to Canadian Tire and Walmart and the like and we could have gone to them a year ago and they would have taken the Nutrigrill,” he said. “But they have a habit of squishing down the price point and diminishing the margins and they do it over a shorter period of time.”

This time, the Nutrigrill has developed a market without any advertising.

With the help of some very supportive local angel investors, Poetker and Belog have been able to commit to more than 20,000 units of production. In addition to the 5,000 units already sold, another 2,000 have been purchased by Yagoozon, the fastest-growing retailer that partners with Amazon’s massive fulfilment network.

Cefail said the TV spot will begin early in the new year with very limited regional tests.

“We start off with a regional test then we will tweak from there and increase the buy as we determine what is working and what needs to be adjusted,” she said. “We don’t like to waste clients’ money with big giant media buys until we know what’s going to pull.”

After that look for appearances by Arpaia on Good Morning America, The View and other shows pitching the Nutrigrill to get the ball rolling.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca