Pampered Chef

Pampered Chef is a multinational multi-level marketing company that offers a line of kitchen tools, food products, and cookbooks for preparing food in the home. They also offer some products to help transport some of their products and gardening tools.[1]

Pampered Chef
TypeSubsidiary
IndustryKitchen and Food products
Founded1980 (1980) River Forest, IL
Headquarters
Addison Township, DuPage County, Illinois
,
United States
Area served
United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, France
Key people
Andrew Treanor (CEO)
Doris Christopher
(chairman & founder)
Products
OwnerBerkshire Hathaway
Websitewww.pamperedchef.com

It has a worldwide direct sales force of about 35,000 in addition to 400 corporate staff.[2] The company is headquartered in Addison, Illinois, and operates in five countries: the United States, Germany, Canada, Austria, and France.

History

Doris Christopher founded Pampered Chef in 1980 in the basement of her suburban Chicago home. Christopher came up with a party plan to offer professional-quality kitchen tools directly to consumers through in-home cooking demonstrations, a concept first popularized by Tupperware. The company expanded to Canada in 1996, the UK in 1999, Germany in 2000, Austria in 2019, and France in 2020.[3][4]

The company was acquired in 2002 by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway corporation.[5] On October 30, 2014, Berkshire Hathaway appointed long time advisor Tracy Britt Cool to the position of CEO.[6] According to Direct Selling News, "the company’s revenue has fallen from $320 million in 2015 to $280 million in 2018."[7] In March 2020, the company's COO, Andrew Treanor, took over on the role of CEO.[8]

The company closed its UK business, and wound down UK operations as of December 31, 2015.[9]

Products
"Bread tube" redirects here. For the online community, see BreadTube.

In 1990, Pampered Chef released a product known as the Valtrompia bread tube. The product is a metal tube in which refrigerated bread dough can be baked into a narrow, scalloped-edge loaf.[10] As of the late 1990s, the product is available in five shapes—flower, square, heart, scalloped, and star. The bread is baked with the tube placed upright in the oven, allowing the bread to rise vertically along the tube.[11]

References
  1. Gregory Karp, "The fine line between legitimate businesses and pyramid schemes" Archived February 11, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, Chicago Tribune, February 10, 2013
  2. "Pampered Chef Company Facts". Pampered Chef. Archived from the original on April 8, 2016. Retrieved March 26, 2016.
  3. "Pampered Chef Enters Austria Market". Pampered Chef. September 23, 2019.
  4. Chen, I-chun. "Pampered Chef brings its kitchenware to France". Chicago Business Journal.
  5. "Berkshire Hathaway to acquire The Pampered Chef". Berkshire Hathaway. Archived from the original on October 14, 2002. Retrieved September 23, 2002.
  6. Noah Buhayar, "Buffett’s Assistant Cool Named CEO of Pampered Chef Unit" Archived January 10, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, Bloomberg, October 30, 2014
  7. Kosman, Josh (September 19, 2019). "Buffett protégé Tracy Britt Cool leaving Berkshire Hathaway". New York Post. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
  8. "Tracy Britt Cool to Leave Berkshire Hathaway, Pampered Chef To Start New Venture". September 19, 2019.
  9. "Pampered Chef winding down UK operations". PamperedChef. Archived from the original on September 20, 2015. Retrieved September 11, 2015.
  10. McKinley, Kay (August 8, 1990). "Stocking up for fun: Party demonstrations give cooks a chance to buy equipment to ease meal preparation". Milwaukee Journal. Retrieved August 30, 2022 – via ProQuest.
  11. Evans, Dayna (April 8, 2021). "A Bread Tube Will Cure the Mundanity of Regular Bread-Baking". Eater. Retrieved August 30, 2022.


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