A need, a lack, the desire to succeed in a range of techniques on a single BBQ. The desire to create, to innovate, the desire to surpass myself and to launch myself into a whole new passion, that's how the All-in-1 was born.
It all started one Saturday night at dusk after having a fantastic dinner for my wife and friends. I had to cook 4 gourmet pizzas in my Kettle Master-touch. If you are not aware; making a pizza in a 22.5'' Kettle is not ideal because every time I cooked one, I had to lift the lid to check the cooking status and I lost the most important heat. So each of my pizzas took 20 to 25 minutes to cook!
Let me tell you, unfortunately not everyone ate at the same time! That's when I asked my wife if she wanted us to buy the kettle accessory to make a pizza oven! She said, yes, why not? We'll look into that at your party...
A week later, I'm getting ready to smoke a brisket.
I usually work with a reverse flow smoker but at this point I was out of logs… So I decided to use my Kettle. Being a proud fan of natural charcoal, I lit a chimney and got started on the project.
Control the temperature
It was very difficult to control the temperature, because it was always hotter on one side of the brisket than the other. I then had to turn the brisket every hour, in addition to adding charcoal every hour at half-chimney intervals, so as not to have too many temperature variations. It was after 12 hours of cooking that the idea of the All-in-1 began to take shape, thanks to the grouping of my needs...
But that's not all. During that same week, my wife and I decided to make a little chicken on a beer can. I then prepared the whole recipe and proudly went to the BBQ, previously lit, with a basket of charcoal on each side. I placed the chicken (a nice big grain-fed chicken) and closed the lid... at least, I tried! The lid wouldn't close!!!! So I had no choice but to go and get the original rotisserie. After checking, I noticed that it cost as much as the BBQ.
The chicken ends up as a toad directly on the fire...
Sleepless nights
A little disappointed and bitter about my last cooking, it is at this precise moment that I probably make one of the best decisions of my life. I take a Canada notebook and a pencil, I pour myself a good scotch on ice and I start to draw about fifteen prototypes, for one of my first sleepless nights in a long time. I was super excited, because I knew that I had a product that could change the lives of the 60 million kettle users!
The next day, 8:59 am, I had my cell phone in my hand with the number already dialed, ready to call my first factory for the development of my first prototype. A little later, another magical moment arrives in my life, the arrival of my daughter. It's like all the planets are aligned for me. So I take my 5 weeks of parental leave to develop my first prototype by working more than 60 hours a week while helping my wife with my daughter (a big thank you to my wife for enduring my 20 trips a week to the factory, which is 1 hour and a half from home)
After several days of work, I finally have the first All-in-1 welded in one end, with a removable door held in place using clips.
Clearly not the 2018 version you see now. In total, we had and tested about 5 to 6 versions in order to evolve the product and arrive at the final version, which you were able to see in March 2018!
Finally, after a year of improving my second child, the All-in-1 is now ready to conquer the world, supported by proud ambassadors and satisfied users!