NEENAH – Chad Romzek was looking to roast a Papa Murphy pizza, but couldn’t put his new kamado-style grill at the right temperature.
“I called the corridor and found out that the ashes had to be cleaned for the grill to succeed in temperature,” Romzek said.
He waved the embers with the steel rod known as the “ash tool” to sift the ash into a holding domain below. He then used the tool to pull the ashes through the bottom vent into a bucket. Romzek, a training engineer, discovered that ash removal is ineffective.
It started with products to speed up the process.
“I think there’s going to have to be a bucket to sift this ash.”
There are none. But Romzek’s frustration drove him to action, leading to the first Ash Basket Kick.
He built prototypes with two fabrics that served him in the early stages of other engineering projects: cardboard and duct tape.
“If you can simulate it with cardboard and duct tape before spending hours on a computer design, go ahead,” Romzek advises, “then move on to the next level.”
He used the cardboard prototype as a style and a bit of amateur welding to make a basket with suspension wire.As you lift the basket and shake it vigorously, the ashes fall.
The basket facilitated the removal of the ashes that still ceded each year.
However, good practical luck and positive feedback from his friends throughout this year led Romzek to look for a manufacturer to produce more physically powerful versions of the basket.
He borrowed $5,000 from his relatives and, with an additional $5,000 of his cash and his wife’s, ordered the first hundred baskets (the minimum order) and created a Facebook page and a website.
After getting the baskets from early 2014, the nerves took over.
“I lose sleep because I’m worried if we’re going to sell these,” Romzek said.
Although he had a Kamado Grill Dome at the time, Romzek designed the baskets to be compatible with the most popular Big Green Egg grills with the specifications he discovered online.Wanting to calm down on the dimensions, he tried the basket at a friend’s Big Green Egg.It just didn’t have compatibility.
Big Green Egg had recently replaced the dimensions of the one contained in the embers.
Romzek redesigned the basket to fit the new dimensions and put it in a new order, he wondered, “What am I going to do with those first 100?”
The baskets were suitable for other kamado-style grills, so they were not lost.
Wanting to demonstrate the Kick Ash baskets and spread the word to prospective customers, Romzek went to the Grills Gone Wild Barbecue Festival in Kentucky.The rain interrupted the occasion and sold a basket.
Travelling to Indianapolis for their first Eggfest, a barbecue occasion and a particular contest for Big Green Egg fans, proved to be more rewarding.Surrounded by hot grilles installed in an asphalt car parking lot on a summer weekend at 90 degrees and 90% humidity, Romzek’s considerations evaporated.
“It was the first one where we had so many other people who said, “Why didn’t I think of that?” That’s when we found out we had something,” Romzek said.
Kick Ash Baskets sold on Amazon in 2016, but its good luck has led to a multitude of imitation versions sold on the online retail giant’s website.
Since then, more baskets have been designed to be compatible with a wide variety of kamado-style grills, Weber kettles and oblong PK grills. Depending on the style and size, the baskets sell between $65 and $130.
It has become the business of the circle of full-time relatives, and Romzek said they shipped thousands of products every month from the garage of the family circle.wife, Tracy, and includes the Romzek’s two children and friends.
A bench with a scale, labeler, and other shipping materials takes up part of the garage.A garland of Christmas lighting fixtures stays on all year round “to keep the festive atmosphere going,” Tracy said with a smile.A giant radiator helps keep the atmosphere warm when Wisconsin’s climate turns cold.
Kick Ash Basket products are also sold through more than 400 stores in the United States.Romzek said last year, about 70% of its sales came from retail outlets, but this year it is distributed about 50% between retailers and online.Sales.
The Ash Can Kick, added last year, has a popular item. The box adapts to the area under the embers and rises from the grill to remove the ash instead of scraping the ash through the vent.
Before the pandemic occurred, Romzek traveled across the country with an occasional vacation to Canada to do Kick Ash Baskets demonstrations at barbecue events, adding about one Eggfest according to the month. The last Eggfest he attended was held in February in Jacksonville, Florida.
Demo trips sometimes also act as a family holiday circle. No matter where you are, an inexhaustible source of grilled delights attracts romzek teens. There are also offers such as a switched brick production plant in Toronto and a former fairground overlooking a lake in the mountains of northern Georgia.
The good luck of Kick Ash Baskets exceeded Romzek’s expectations when he first recorded the first prototype.
“I call them pinching moments,” he says.
Contact Daniel Higgins [email protected] @HigginsEats on Twitter and Instagram and like it on Facebook.
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