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Kitchenware News April 2014

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UPDATE: BACK TO SCHOOL SEE PAGE 15 GIF TWARE: COOKBOOKS SEE PAGE 22 GADGET OF THE MONTH: SUNBEAM MINI SPATULA SEE PAGE 22 H o u s e w a r e s R e v i e w KITCHENWARE NEWS S E R V I N G K I T C H E N W A R E, H O M E D E C O R A N D G I F T W A R E M A R K E T S V O L U M E 1 9 , N U M B E R 1 0 PRODUCT REVIEW n Bisbell Magnetic Tape PAGE 8 THE KNIFE RACK n WÜSTHOF CLASSIC Traveler PAGE 10 BACK TO SCHOOL n Lunchboxes, Totes and More PAGE 11 HOME DÉCOR n Tips, Tools and Products for Outdoor Living PAGE 14 SMALL ELECTRICS n Ice Cream Makers PAGE 16 SERENDIPITY n PackIt Freezable Totes PAGE 19 GIFTWARE n Cookbooks for Vegetarian Meals PAGE 20 TRADESHOW CALENDAR n Summer and Fall Shows PAGE 22 News ..............................................4 Ad Index .......................................22 www.kitchenwarenews.com VOLUME 20, NUMBER 4 APRIL 2014 n $7.00 BY LORRIE BAUMANN American families are spending more time in their kitchens, and they're enjoying it so much that they're adapting their kitchens to make them more welcoming for their family and friends. BY SAM RUDDICK With two locations on the island of Oahu, Executive Chef bills itself as Hawaii's premier "Tool Store for Cooks." Executive Chef owner Jim Russo opened the first store in 1981 in Ward Centers shopping complex, a major retail and entertainment hub just minutes from Waikiki Beach. Russo opened the store with the intention of offering foodservice-quality cookware to the home cook. "I had all the good stuff (commercial cookware and utensils) at home in my Executive Chef: Business in Paradise Continued on PAGE 6 Continued on PAGE 18 Continued on PAGE 9 Continued on PAGE 12 kitchen," Russo says. "And when I saw what was available in the local department stores for the homeowner I knew there was an opportunity there." For example, Russo says, "Calphalon in those days was only available through restaurant equipment dealers. They didn't even have retail packaging at the time." Executive Chef made Calphalon and other commercial quality brands available to the consumer. "It was pretty much of a no-brainer," Russo says. In addition to attracting the discerning at- home chef, the store draws Hawaii's foodservice professionals. By design, the store's merchandising has a minimalist commercial edge so professionals feel comfortable shopping there. "Our look is a BY DONNA BOYLE SCHWARTZ Backyard bistros, decorated decks and patio cafés are all becoming popular open-air extensions of indoor living spaces, as the lure of the great outdoors is enticing Americas to adopt ever-more- elaborate al fresco entertaining ideas. More and more people are blurring the lines between indoor and outdoor recreational activities, and moving cooking, dining and entertaining to outside venues. Call Of The Wild Coming Through Loud & Clear In Housewares, Home Décor A Brief History of the Lunchbox Kitchens Regain Traditional Place as Hub of Home Indeed, according to U.S. Census Bureau housing statistics, 65 percent of all new single family homes constructed in 2012 were built with a porch; 50 percent were constructed with a patio, and 23 percent were built with a deck; some homes included multiple outdoor living spaces. Suppliers of home décor, accent furniture, housewares and tabletop items have taken notice of this trend, introducing a wide variety of items suitable for both outdoor and indoor use at this year's trade shows. " The growing popularity of outdoor kitchens and outdoor living spaces necessitates a need for retailers to offer a wide variety of products, both practical and luxurious," notes Abbie Voelker, O wner and Co-founder of Abigails, supplier of classic home Moving back into the kitchen is a trend that has been happening for some years now, and it's a trend that's still going strong, according to Certified Kitchen Designer Mark T. White. His family design business, Kitchen Encounters, is based in Annapolis, Md., and as the nation's economic recovery gains strength and more Americans are investing back into their homes, he's increasingly being asked to design kitchens that provide for more family and entertaining activities to take place in the kitchen. National statistics bear out his observations that this is a strong trend: the 2012 Welch's Kitchen Table Report, which documents the results of a survey conducted on behalf of the processing and marketing subsidiar y of the National Grape Cooperative, reported that 94 percent of surveyed families said they eat dinner as a family at their kitchen table. About three quarters of them said that they also use the kitchen table as a place to catch up as a family, to play games, do BY SAM RUDDICK Lunchboxes have changed. Just shop around for a new one and you'll see that we're light years away from the iconic metal box with a handle and clasp, a picture of Superman on the side. We still love the objects themselves, but we don't actually use them, and more often than not there's a certain irony to our affection for them, too. My 45-year-old brother gave me a Star Trek lunchbox for my 42nd birthday, and it was perfectly charming— a nostalgic gag between adults— but not, ultimately, the sort of thing you'd send your daughter to school with. Allen Woodall, curator of the lunchbox museum in Columbus, Georgia and self-proclaimed lunchbox guru, says the old metal lunchboxes are "fantastic time capsules," and likens them to pop art, "like Andy Warhol." The first "character" lunchbox— the Mickey Mouse lunchbox— was created by Geuder, Paeschke and Frey in 1935. It was actually called a "lunch kit," rather than a lunchbox, and while it didn't come with a Thermos, it did have a handle. If you have one of them sitting around, it's probably worth a couple thousand dollars, now, but it didn't start a craze at the time. Why not? Woodall offers a compelling explanation. "The television didn't exist in 1935," he says, not in the average American home, and it wasn't until television became the number one medium for home entertainment that character lunchboxes became the must-have items on the back-to- school market. When Aladdin Industries put Hopalong Cassidy on a lunchbox in 1950, it was immediately clear that they'd struck gold. "The size of the TV screen that was in the American home was probably not more than 5" or 6"," Woodall explains. In other words, about the size of a lunchbox. "And these guys said, ' We're gonna put

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