Retailers Share Top-Selling Gadgets

The Gadget of the Month for June comes directly from retailers across the country who shared with Kitchenware News their top-selling picks. The gadgets they selected range from classic best sellers to products that are very much here and now and a reflection of the healthy eating trend.

Gefu SPIRELLI Spiral Slicer

“Our best-selling gadget is the Gefu Spiral Slicer. It’s been selling well for over a year now. We demo it daily on the counter, so that probably has something to do with it. Customers are excited about the two julienne slices it does, and making their salads and presentations for dinner a lot spiffier.”

– Don Leonard, Owner, Ketchum Kitchens, Ketchum, Idaho

“The Gefu spiral slice – Oh that’s a good item! Actually, the spiral slicers and the whole kind of raw food thing has been really interesting. Both the larger one with the crank and the smaller, kind of bowtie shaped one, those both preform very well.”

– Stephen Havlek, Co-Owner, Sign of The Bear, Sonoma, California

Microplane Spiral Cutter

“The Spiral Cutter by Microplane has definitely been one of our top sellers. Health is still holding out. We have a lot of stuff in health, and the World Cuisine Spiralizer – we sell about 20 or 30 of those a month. The Microplane little peeler thing came in and it’s really doing well.”

– Tony Curtis-Wellings, Co-Owner, Faraday’s Kitchen Store, Austin, Texas

Chef’n Zipstrip™ Herb Stripper

“What we seem to be going through a lot of right now is the kale stripper from Chef’n. We were selling a lot of the herb stripper, too, and I don’t know which one is running ahead, but they’re both running hard. The Kale Stripper just came out, so we’re having a little trouble staying ahead of the curve. That’s a pleasant problem to have.”

– Stephen Havlek, Co-Owner, Sign of The Bear, Sonoma, California

“People want tools that are functional, and they want them to work as they’re touted to work,” says Freeman. “I think a good example last year, Chef’n has a little thing that they brought to market … it strips the herbs off of the stem, and that thing has sold like crazy. I’ve had customers come back in and say it really works, and to me that’s the mark of a good gadget. It’s such a hit or miss thing with little gadgets, whether or not they really and truly are going to be effective.”

– Barbara Freeman, Owner, Kitchenware Outfitters, Savannah, Georgia

NexTrend Garlic Twist

“The NexTrend Garlic Twist – oh my gosh! We go through a hundred of those every month, probably three of them sold every day. I had a customer come back the other day and said that she was making small servings of pesto in it. It’s large enough that she could put the ingredients in – some garlic, a little olive oil – and she was twisting it up. Somebody the other day said that they use it for chopping up their jalapenos. The Garlic Twist by NexTrend probably is in our top five or 10 gadgets sold every year, and it’s made in America, which is nice.”

– Tony Curtis-Wellings, Co-Owner, Faraday’s Kitchen Store, Austin, Texas

“The Garlic Twist we’ve been selling now for years, and to me that’s a great little gadget because it really does a wonderful job with the garlic. Garlic is something that can be extremely messy to deal with. You can chop it with a knife, but it’s not easy because it’s so sticky. So there’s a case where a gadget that has a single purpose is really, really effective.”

– Barbara Freeman, Owner, Kitchenware Outfitters, Savannah, Georgia

The Cheese Knife

“The Cheese Knife is always huge, it’s from Fairchild. It’s a resin cheese knife that is beveled, so when you slice any type of cheese, whether it’s Velveeta or Swiss, the cheese doesn’t stick to the blade. It’s really nice and handy to use, plus it’s heat resistant so you can use it in, say, a non-stick pan, and not scratch the pan. That’s a very big seller.”

– Denise Lindbo, Owner, Gourmet Chef, Minot, North Dakota

“The Cheese Knife is made in America and it’s a little plastic knife – they actually just added two other SKUs to it – but it’s got little fins on it and what it does is, it doesn’t matter if it’s soft cheese or it’s hard cheese, nothing sticks to the blade. And it’s not real sexy, it’s a white blade, it’s plastic with a yellow handle – now they’ve just come out with one with a black handle and a red handle – but we sell as many of those as we sell NexTrend Garlic Twists. People will use it and come back – all of these products that we just talked about, pretty much somebody will take it home and then they’ll come back and buy three of four of them and give it to their friends. That’s when you know, when they come back and they used it.”

– Tony Curtis-Wellings, Co-Owner, Faraday’s Kitchen Store, Austin, Texas

This story was originally published in the June 2015 issue of Kitchenware News, a publication of Oser Communications Group.