The Instant Pot Was Beloved. Now Its Maker Has Filed for Bankruptcy. (2024)

FAQs

Is the Instant Pot company going out of business? ›

Dive Brief: In a move capitalizing on its signature product, Instant Pot Brands, as the business will now be known, has emerged from bankruptcy as a stand-alone company, under new ownership and with a new capital structure, according to a press release Monday.

Instant Brands, the company that makes the Instant Pot (as well as Pyrex, Corelle, and a few other product lines), announced that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2023. But that doesn't mean the company is going under, and for now it hasn't affected the availability of the Instant Pot.

Instant Pot has a new owner

They had some programming bells and whistles, but they are basically just pressure cookers that are easier to use than the traditional ones. It was an unsustainable model, which led to the bankruptcy filing. Now, after a competitive auction, the brand has a new owner.

In April 2019 Instant Pot merged with Corelle Brands, owned by a private equity firm Cornell Capital, which owns kitchen brands such as Pyrex, Corelle, Corningware and SnapWare, for an undisclosed amount of money.

The average lifespan of an Instant Pot ranges from 2-5 years, but it can last longer depending on how often it's used and how well-maintained it is. So it's safe to say Instant Pots aren't commonly being replaced, and may even be a one-time purchase.

The problem poses a risk of property damage, burn injuries, and a fire hazard. The recall was announced on March 1, 2018 for the “Instant Pot Gem 65 8-in-1 Multicookers” after at least 107 reports involving overheating, including 5 incidents that caused property damage.

A few years and one pandemic later, the company filed for bankruptcy on Monday, weighed down by more than $500 million in debt after years of supply-chain chaos and limited success expanding the Instant brand into other categories of household gadgetry.

They are most commonly used in industrial settings to quickly prepare meat or stocks. However, in most scenarios, Elite Chefs avoid using pressure cookers because they provide less control over the final dish. Chefs often prefer slow cooking techniques that accentuate and pull out the flavors of the food.

They're never as good as individual appliances — Instant Pots may be versatile, but they will never be as good as the appliance designed for that cooking purpose. Cooking rice in the Instant Pot was never as fluffy as my trusted rice cooker, while steaming broccoli often ended up an overcooked and soggy mess.

Home goods and furniture retailer Conn's Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday and announced plans to close several locations.

Why did Instapot fail? ›

"In reality, Instant Pot's owners borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars and spent a significant chunk of that money on R&D, developing new products and employing lots of people in the process." This was a high-risk strategy — one that failed, but it's not necessarily all bad for everyone in Instant Brand's orbit.

Yes, Instant Pots are manufactured in China, though it is a Canadian company. Researching this question leads to many rabbit holes, but the Instant Pot live chat team and the branding on the packaging answer the question definitively.

As NPR reported, sales of “electronic multicooker devices” (a large chunk of which are Instant Pots) hit $758 million in 2020. But those numbers weren't tenable. Sales in the category dropped by half by 2022, and in the first quarter of 2023, Instant Brands' sales dropped 22 percent compared to last year.

On June 12, 2023, Instant Brands filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after high interest rates and waning access to credit hit its cash position and made its debts unsustainable. The company sold its appliance business ("Instant" branded products) to the private equity firm Centre Lane Partners during bankruptcy.

An Instant Pot is basically an electric pressure cooker, though it has several other functions as well. An Instant Pot is an electric pressure cooker, sometimes called a multi-cooker. You can use any electric pressure cooker recipe in these machines—you don't need a recipe formulated specifically for an Instant Pot.

The lawsuit alleges that the Instant Pot DUO is defective because the “safety mechanisms” do not lock the lid until all of the pressure has been released and the product is safe to open. The lawsuit was filed against Midea America Corp. and Amazon.com Inc.

More recent data would suggest that the Instant Pot's popularity is on the decline. Search interest for the device in June 2021 was the lowest it's been since 2018, and its big spikes in interest — which happen like clockwork every winter — failed to hit the same highs in 2020 and 2021.