The Four Worlds Podcast
The Four Worlds Podcast explores how a simple idea can grow into something that changes the world. Each episode takes you on a journey—from the spark of inspiration, through the creation process, innovation challenges, and to the path of real-world production.
From sketch to shelf and prototype to product, join us as we uncover the stories behind breakthrough inventions and innovations with the creators, engineers, designers, and visionaries who bring them to life.
The Four Worlds Podcast
Brisk It’s Smart Grills Are Making Barbecuing Faster, Easier, and Smarter
Ever ruined an expensive brisket? You're not alone. The fear of wasting time and money keeps most of us from attempting serious barbecue—until now.
Christopher Huang, founder of Brisk It, joins us to reveal how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing home cooking, starting with the intimidating world of smoking and grilling. What began as a mission to make barbecue more accessible has evolved into a vision for transforming our entire relationship with food preparation.
"I'm much more passionate about eating barbecue than making it," Huang confesses, explaining how this philosophy drove Brisk It's development. Unlike traditional "smart" appliances that simply follow pre-programmed instructions, Brisk It's Grills employ what Huang calls "agentic AI"—technology that adapts, learns, and makes decisions based on real-time data and your personal preferences.
The technology is impressive: adaptive temperature algorithms maintain perfect stability; the system detects and addresses common issues like temperature stalls automatically; and the more you use it, the better it understands your preferences. One early user assembled their grill and successfully smoked a perfect brisket on their very first attempt—a feat that would typically require multiple failed attempts and cost hundreds of dollars.
We explore Brisk It’s unique approach to product development, including their decision to hire industrial designers from Apple and automotive backgrounds rather than traditional grill designers. This fresh perspective, combined with Silicon Valley-style rapid iteration, has allowed them to create something truly revolutionary.
Looking toward the future, Huang shares his vision for automating the entire home cooking experience, meal selection and grocery shopping to preparation and sharing. The goal isn't to remove humans from cooking, but to eliminate the stress while ensuring consistently delicious, nutritious results that match individual preferences.
Check out Brisk It Grills on their website, Amazon, Lowes.com, or Sam's Club, and stay tuned for their next big announcement at CES 2026.
Welcome to the Four Worlds podcast from Tomorrow's World. Today, we're diving into the latest in tech, science and sustainability, from nature's mysteries and the world of inspiration to the hands-on crafts of creation, the bold breakthroughs of innovation and the scaled-up wonders of production. This is your ticket to the stories shaping tomorrow. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Four Worlds podcast. We're looking forward to this one. Christopher Huang joins us from Brisket. We have a good one coming for you, talking about smart grills. Just in time for that late summer, maybe early fall, where we're still able to get out there, enjoy the weather and cook up something great. Christopher, thank you so much for joining us today. We're really happy to have you.
Christopher Huang:Thank you, Stephen, for having me Happy to be on.
Steven Ruffin:Yeah, we're looking forward to this one. So I came across Brisket and CES. So we're talking January. So this is yeah, this is a long time coming, so we're super happy to have you. I just want to jump in it. Give us a general background, Explain to the people that may not know who Brisket is, what Brisket Grills do. Just a general idea to kind of kick this thing off.
Christopher Huang:Yes, definitely so, brisket. What Brisket really is all about is we are an AI home kitchen company. We're really focused on leveraging ai and generative ai, especially agentic ai, to automate as much or I don't even say as much the vision is into the entire home kitchen and home cooking process. So that means everything from deciding what to eat, even figuring out, even learning what to eat, of course, to cooking it, but also you perhaps, shopping, also post-cook, also sharing with friends the whole social aspect of it. All that is within our vision to really have a fully effortless and seamless home cooking experience.
Steven Ruffin:So when we were out at CES in Las Vegas, what on showcase was the brisket grill. So what you're saying is there's a lot more to that. So anything that makes that cooking process or grocery shopping, like you said, a little easier, you kind of cover it all right.
Christopher Huang:Yes, so we started off with grills. So just to give a quick background, you know, founded in the 1920s and really focused on initially on grills, and that continues to remain our primary product that's on the market. And the reason we started with grills is, first off, you know, I have a well two reasons right. So first of all, I have a personal love of a barbecue, eating barbecue particularly, and then, second actually you know, this is the engineer coming out to me, the product manager coming on me grilling and especially slow smoking, is kind of the scare, frankly speaking, the scary, one of the scariest form of cooking. So we felt, I felt that if we could tackle smoking or grilling, then we kind of start off with the hardest and we can really transfer, you know, use it, transfer a lot of that knowledge into other, into other forms of home cooking.
Steven Ruffin:I like the way you work. I'm kind of the same way. If I have tasks at hand, I'm covering the hard one first, so I can just kind of ease my way in and and kind of and. So when it does come to those brisket grills, you touched on it a little bit, but I'd love for you to dive into those problems or gaps that you saw in the traditional pellet grill market or the smoker process, the smoker market. What was that problem or those gaps that you saw yourself that made you want to get into making it smarter?
Christopher Huang:that you saw yourself that made you want to get into making it smarter. Okay, so I'll start where you know what initially kind of sparked the idea for brisket, and then kind of how it led into a larger discussion on or not discussion, but a larger thought process on home cooking in general. So, talking about barbecuing specifically, so around 2016, that's when the first Wi-Fi pellet grill started to come in, and pellet grills before that were already very revolutionary, especially with the invention of or I shouldn't say invention, but the proliferation and the remarkable growth of Traeger around 2010, 2014. And that really, compared to, say, a traditional charcoal grill or offset grill, really brought convenience and ease that the grilling world has never seen before. The great part of pellet grills, though, is that it actually has a lot of input data through their temperatures, through the control electronics that they have, and also the fact that they use electrical power to power an auger to power the pellets, which then controls the flame and the temperatures. The fact that they're able to control all this via electrical inputs means that you can also extract the inputs into a model or whatever like that. So I felt that when Wi-Fi came around 2016, it was an advantage, but by that time.
Christopher Huang:If you look at any other industry, especially the Nest right, the Nest Lab with the thermostat, by that time it was already at their heyday, so to speak. So I really felt, hey, there was, there was, yes, it was an improvement, but it's still five years behind and it's really, I think, not taking full advantage of the ability and the fundamentals of a pellet grill. So that kind of leaves me okay, well, if you can automate it, you know, you should, really, I should, I should mention this. There is one thing also I didn't know this, despite the convenience given my pellet grills and it, this is also not reflected by own data at Brisket, most people still only barbecued. They barbecue more frequently, but they only barbecued still on special occasions. And there was still an intimidation factor. There was still a factor of hey, what if I mess up? So I'm only going to cook things I'm unfamiliar with and I'm only going to do when I can clear out my weekend.
Steven Ruffin:So I wanted to thought, to do, and I can clear out my weekend, so I wanted that.
Christopher Huang:What if you?
Steven Ruffin:could but notice that, myself included, I would you know. My doctor says don't do it, but I would eat barbecue every day. I think a lot of people may agree with you. Your blood pressure might not, but yeah, yeah, you know depends who you know, depends what industry they come from.
Christopher Huang:But right, you know the stomach says yes, you know, the brain maybe says no, but unfortunately the schedule regardless says no, because we have other commitments, whether you're a dad or whether you're at work or whether it's too intimidating. So I thought really, why can't we just target that pain point? And I'll close out with this After I found this company, a lot of my friends they asked oh Chris, you must really really enjoy making barbecue. And I say yes. Lot of my friends they ask oh Chris, you must really really enjoy making barbecue. And I say you know yes and no. And of course it takes them a little bit, back a bit, because people say wait, you say no, you're not passionate about your company, your company's product. I said no, I didn't say that. I'm much more passionate about eating barbecue, and so that is what I want to do more of. So that is where brisket comes in.
Steven Ruffin:And I could almost guarantee that there are so many people just like you. They love eating barbecue, but they may not have that knack for it or they're intimidated about that process because it's long. I mean sometimes, whatever you're smoking, it could take 16 hours. You're up the crack of dawn and you're smoking all day. So when you're in this early development stage or trying to think of this idea, how did you envision this smart technology combined with these grills, to appeal to those modern grillers?
Christopher Huang:There is a lot of. You could say. There are tech-oriented, tech-savvy people that are willing to invest into gadgets to optimize their lifestyle. Optimizing many things can mean just making it more convenient, but actually I think it's not just convenience and time-saving, but it's also optimizing the results. That's why a lot of people invest into things like ana ring or they invest into the smart home system. It's not just to save time, but also to improve the results they would have gotten. They would not have got without these technologies. Peloton is another example.
Christopher Huang:So now, in terms of taking grilling to target these people with these kind of attitude and pain points, we really had to take a look, a look at. Okay, what do they really care about? Right, you know, as they care about. They care about results and they care about convenience. They care about having something that is very different, very high tech, but what really prevents them from having better results, better and more convenience, time, and that really comes down to an entire you know.
Christopher Huang:First we thought, okay, that's all made the cooking, right? No, that's, that's obvious, right? Okay, if you don't have to spend 16 hours sitting at a grill, you know, that is, that is the. You know, you save a lot of time, right and. But then that's just, that's just time consuming. So then we thought, okay, how do we make the results better? Okay, if you know, gets you to your location without crashing. You know it doesn't just save you the effort but also improves the results. You know it reduces the chance of crashing because it has the safety sensors and everything. We want to improve the chance that the grill, the food, comes out great. So we thought, okay, we have a lot of, for example, software that attacks. If you make a mistake, it'll correct for it. If you accidentally forget to come to the grill when the food's done cooking, it'll make sure that it doesn't overcook, right. So all these improve the results of the grill, in addition to the saving time.
Christopher Huang:Then we came to kind of what you saw at CSL this year, which is or sorry, yeah, what you saw at CSL this year that we actually released last year, which is okay. Well, this is now the cooking aspect. We've improved results, we've saved time, and maybe I can ask you what really is the beginning of, like you say, the friction, the pain point and some would even say the dread of a home-cooked meal. It starts long before you actually fire up any stove or cooker, it's deciding what can you make so that actually you know people joke that. Hey, that's. You know couples, you know families don't fight over. You know when they're sitting at the stove or the grill they fight long before that. You know people, you know couples. You know families don't fight over. You know when they're sitting at the stove or the grill they fight long before that. You know. The worst question that everyone wants to hear is what do you want to eat tonight? Or what do you want to make tonight?
Steven Ruffin:Right, so how bringing up those points? It brings up a great point. Let's say who's doing the grocery shopping. What are we getting? What do we need? What do we having? How does Brisket help those people that have those questions or concern, even before firing up a grill?
Christopher Huang:Yeah, so this really comes to where I really emphasize on using agentic AI to really make this and solve this pain point. So and I'll talk about now and also talk a little bit about feature, of course we can't share too much. So the agentic part is before. And if you look at other cooking devices, you know not just grills, ovens, whatever, air fryers they'll often have recipe books, right, and those recipes, they have cooking programs, but those cooking programs are much more like basic cruise control. They have steps, they'll change the temperature, but there's no flexibility, there's no agency. Hence the term agentic AI. There's no agency in those programs.
Christopher Huang:So, instead of saying so, the agentic AI that we're using right now is the idea that, instead of having to look for a recipe, I'll make sure the recipe works and then send it to the grill. We use what we call our Vera AI, which is a generative AI too. You just say make me a brisket, right? So then the AI knows this person's goal is to make a brisket, and then maybe I'll ask questions of this person only has this ingredients, this person likes this flavors, this person only has this much amount of time, and then it'll. Then, of course, I can create the program based on just a simple goal of making a brisket. So that is what we currently do, that's available on the market right now. Where we do want to proceed to that is something that's kind of one level above, or you can say two, I don't know how many levels, but it's another level of autonomy of agency and just kind of tease that a little bit and then I'll you know I know I'm talking a lot. I get passionate about a product.
Steven Ruffin:We love that. We love that. We love when people come on here and are passionate about what they're doing.
Christopher Huang:That's good to know. Yeah, so just to kind of close that out yeah, so in terms of where we really want to go, what we'll be showing at CES is not just what if the user does not even have to say make me a brisket, we know based on. You know, and I can't say too much, but we know based. We know how they use the grill, we know what they like, we know you know what's their flavors, you know how often they use the grill, you know all that stuff. What if, in the same way that you know facebook and tiktok, know what you like on their condo plan, when netflix knows what movies you like? We know this person eats at this time, eats at this frequency, eats this kind of duration of food for this many people, for this kind of flavors. He doesn't have to say I want brisket. We know what he wants, we give it to him and automate the thing interesting yeah, it's.
Steven Ruffin:It's just kind of like I know there's there's some things that you you know cannot say just yet, but if you think about machine learning in general in very simple terms, the more data you have, the smarter it gets. So it kind of seems like that's what you're pointing to, the more more quote unquote it knows you knows what foods you like, kind of is. Am I kind of on the right track with, without saying?
Christopher Huang:it. Yes, you know, definitely, you know we, you know I can say it may not be released to public yet but for sure you know there's a lot of, you know, reinforcement learning with you know, human feedback and fine tuning going along.
Steven Ruffin:Yeah, sure, sure know human feedback and fine-tuning going along. Yeah, sure, sure. So that's kind of a little bit about how you started, how you know this idea in this product started. But as you get into that creation process, what did those original kind of prototypes look like? How did you prototype the unique control systems or the hard hardware? What was that creation process like?
Christopher Huang:yes. So at first you know I'll talk about the company history at first, we thought, okay, you know, my background is, frankly, software, it was not hardware. You know, I used to be a software engineer and move more and more to the product management side. So I thought, okay, why don't we just take the software, which is what I'm familiar with and put it onto an existing grill? We explored this in 2020.
Christopher Huang:And then what we realized is, in order to, like I said, we talked about this type of user modern griller, as you mentioned, you called it, there cannot be a traditional looking product and also, frankly speaking, the control electronics was not adequate enough to that we could find out there. It was not adequate enough to gather the data and drive the automation that we want with our products. So everything, to answer your question directly, everything that you see on our grills and all our future products, from the cloud infrastructure to the AI, to the electronics, of course, to the industrial design is all designed and built in-house. So, in terms of prototypes, of course, partly because of being new to the industry, but also because we really wanted to make sure it was right we created. I think it took about from 2020 to 2022, so two years to create our first grill that we went through, I think, 13 physical, you know, of course, in three designs we went through many proactive versions, but in terms of actually creating pro designs, we did 13 revisions, so many different designs. We still have some of them in our warehouse.
Christopher Huang:We really wanted something that's sleek, something that really evoked the brand. Actually, I'll end off with this to really emphasize how we really want to be differentiated In industrial design as well. We intentionally looked for industrial designers that did not have any grilling experience before. So actually, the designer that we end up using a lot of experience really end up coming from, uh, automotive actually, wow, yeah and yeah. And it's for this designer. You know she's very talented. If you ever looked at her resume, you would not think she designed grills you know, right now.
Christopher Huang:Yeah, she was apple. You, you know, add to device, apple device. Of course, that was one of the things she worked on, and also military hardware too. Very recent, I noticed.
Steven Ruffin:So when you're making that choice, how do you make that? I guess how do you make that decision? I'm fascinated by that. When you're making grills and making hardware for grills, how do you settle on someone with an automotive background? I find that fascinating.
Christopher Huang:Yes. So first, like I said, we're looking at within the industry. Let's find an existing grill, let's find some grill designers. If we can't find a grill designer, let's look at someone who's designed appliances before and then it's transferable. But then that I think there's a term out there and you've probably heard of it sustainable versus disruptive innovation or continuous innovation. Sometimes people say for sustainable and that feels safer, feels less risky, feels more confidence-inspiring.
Christopher Huang:But what we realized or I guess, actually what I realized back at that time is if we really want to do something different, that doesn't just ride the coattails of an existing big player and we have to take a risk and do something different. And yes, if we bought in Houston Grill, we probably would go on the market and there's plus and minuses. I'm not saying it's the right decision. I think it's the right decision. But you know, if we use an existing grill model, then we will have gone to market when the grill market was at its peak, probably in early 2021. When Traeger had a huge stock $35 or whatever price. The IPO very successfully. Don't look at the Traeger stock price right now. It's a little bit saddening. But yeah, that would be an advantage peak time of market, but we wanted to really do things right, so that's been a big in everything custom.
Steven Ruffin:Yeah, I think to your point. You want to do things right. So that's in a big and everything custom. Yeah, I think to your point. You want to do it right. You want something new and you want to make sure it's your way, it's your vision and you want to make sure it's exactly how you know you and your team want it to be. So when you're having those discussions, what were some of those quote unquote must haves in that creation process that probably drove a lot of these discussions in the prototype process, the 12 versions or revisions that you had? What were those must-haves?
Christopher Huang:Yeah. So four things very clearly and I'll go through them briefly, but they're all very critical. So first, of course, let's talk about technology. First is smart technology, wi-fi and later on, the agentic AI. If you look at our product lineup, we have no non-Wi-Fi grills and none of our grills are de-featured software-wise versus another. And software-wise, yes, but there's different differentiation features. But not software-wise, every grill is just as intelligent as the other, whether they're at the low price point or the high price point.
Christopher Huang:Price point is the second thing. So, price point our our current tagline, which will probably change next year. But, uh, our current tag slogan as a company is everyone's smart grill. And what does that mean? You know that doesn't mean you know. It means, uh, you know that. Uh, you know everyone's able to have time in the grill. Doesn't matter how talented you are, how much time you have. You can make great home-cooked barbecue. But as a part of being everyone's smart, which you know gives, really gives the story of accessibility. It means your AI.
Christopher Huang:You know, most advanced grill, high tech grill, cannot cost $3,000, right? And the only be available to the early adopters. Who's willing to blow the kind of money, right? So that's why, if you look at our grill prices, they're very, very competitive. So that you know, as a result, that kind of led into the third thing, which is we only put features in there that really improve the user experience. You know back then, you know now and continue to this day, which I'm a little bit surprised by the innovation was very much continuous innovations. How did? How did grills innovate? You know, they added a higher resolution screens, they added more stick, thicker steel, they added bottle openers, they added a toolbox system, all great things. But what ended up happening first is they don't really change the user experience of the grill. They don't change the food that comes off the grill, they don't make it any easier to get that great food. And second is they slowly creeped up in price. So we want to do the opposite for both of those things price.
Steven Ruffin:So we want to do the opposite for both of those things Interesting. So just speaking on all of those terms, including that price point in the technology that you put into it, what are some of those things that you would want to tell let's say, traditionalists when it comes to grilling, that are not used to all this technology being implemented into what they think would be a common grill?
Christopher Huang:Yes, that is a challenge, right? Sure, and every industry has this, you know, with enthusiasts Sometimes it's, you know, the enthusiasts and the mainstream and the early adopters all have different opinions and needs, right? So, in terms of grilling, it's called the grilling enthusiast or traditionalist. Their traits is usually they want to, you know, know, they're very talented at what they do and they feel that to really get the first, of course, they enjoy the it's like, enjoy the journey, it's, you know, it's like work plus, very rewarding for them, and I get that feeling as well. And then, secondly, is, of course, they want to, they care about, they create the best barbecue, you know, no questions about it, and they want what they care.
Christopher Huang:What they're worried about is if you give something that's automated, you know, that's kind of like, almost like cheating. Does that mean that the people that give to you are kind of deceiving them by giving them less quality barbecue and saying, oh, but it's easy, so you know, you deal with it right, you have poor results, but it's easier, so it's worth it. That's why, in early on, I said you know, I didn't just say time-save. And then our messaging we say convenience, but we don't just say, oh, you save time. That's it. It's also how you control your results. So what would a traditional grill and he may want to know. Okay, if I want a certain type of a nutritional factor, right, I want to, you know, I want. You know, one of my kids or one of my friends has a certain dietary restriction. I want to make sure that he's taken care of so you can use the ai in that aspect of a very common. I'm not sure I'm familiar with grilling, but are you familiar with something called a stall?
Steven Ruffin:I can't say that I am okay.
Christopher Huang:So this is something that is very common and can be very, I guess, feared by or not feared, that's strong term but something like that by all grillers. So when you in slow meat, when you there's something called a stall, which is when the meat temperature stops to rise, so it seems like it's stuck, and the reason behind that is because the liquids inside of it, the collagen, et cetera, are evaporating and cooling the meat down as it's cooking. That is probably the number one cause of the scenario where people are sitting around hungry at dinner and they're all waiting for the meat to come, come up, but it's just not done cooking and the temperature's not coming up at all. That is the number one cause of that. So that that impact doesn't matter how skilled you are, it's just a.
Steven Ruffin:You know, it's a simple thing that happens, basically right, it's be. It's beyond excuse me, it's beyond our cooking capabilities exactly so our grills.
Christopher Huang:They can monitor for stalls and then when it detects that you know, it can give recommendations. Hey, you know, first of all it notifies the user. So an enthusiast will know okay, my meat is stalling. Now I know what to do now and I'm happy because I didn't notice it like one hour later, which means I basically lost an hour or 30 minutes of cooking. So those are examples of that. So that's why I know I'm going long here, but I'll close out. When we say everyone's smart grill, that doesn't mean novices and people with no time. It also means the enthusiasts and that's why I always keep adding one more thing. I'll close out with this one. I know I give long answers, but that's why, when AI does automation, it never takes control away from the user, as much as autonomous or as non-autonomous as you want it to be.
Steven Ruffin:Yeah, absolutely, and, chris, I promise you never have to apologize for passion on this podcast, so you're OK. Anything that you want to add, please, please, feel free and. I guess, staying on that topic of novices versus enthusiasts what was some of that feedback that you got in those early testing that kind of shaped your final product and the final hardware?
Christopher Huang:Great? Yeah, that's a great question. So let's start with novices. So one of our first reviews that we ever got so in 2022, when we had a very small, just market test launch was this person said he assembled the grill. Well, I guess he got the grill delivered, he assembled the grill and then for his first cook, he decided to cook a brisket and then he ate it and it tasted great. His family loved it. That was it, very frankly, mundane review. To him it was mundane. He just thinks, okay, great grill, I had a great meal. To review. To him it was mondaniel. He just thinks, okay, great girl, I had a great meal. To us. When we saw that review, we were very, very ecstatic, because I'm not sure if you've smoked brisket before, but if you look at even enthusiast forums if you look at reddit, you know, if you look at traeger forums etc.
Christopher Huang:Smoking forums, you'll see that to the brisket is a very elusive, can be a very elude, deceptively el elusively difficult dish. It's very easy to overcook it, but if you undercook it, it's also very easy to undercook it where it's very chewy and tough. So, long story short, and I went through this rite of passage. Basically, it's a rite of passage for any smoker, backyard griller to burn or ruin your first three briskets or first two briskets. I know I did and these are like $100 pieces of meat, especially in 2021.
Steven Ruffin:It's not cheap, yeah, yeah.
Christopher Huang:It's not cheap. So this person wrote this review. Obviously, I could tell he's a novice from the review, but he just did that. One of the most challenging dishes did that as first cook. He used the cooking automation and then he went to bed. Right, that's all he did. He doesn't know what he did, but and I wish I could reach out to him, but it's probably probably right years.
Christopher Huang:But uh, yeah, that to us was, you know, very, very huge, yeah. So that's, of course, on the novice side. Then to quickly touch on the more expert side, I'll be honest in the beginning the automation aspect has and continues to have resistance, skepticism from this type of user. And it makes sense. I'm also a car enthusiast. I was quite skeptical of self-driving cars. Now I'm very into self-driving cars, so it takes time.
Christopher Huang:But what we did find is, first off, they appreciate the build quality. They appreciate the fact that the car control at the time, which is now, you start to see, more common by the time we were the amount of few, only full-color, higher resolution LCD controllers. And they appreciate our temperature stability. Right, temperature stability is we continue to test competitors. We're still we still have the most stable temperature control algorithm. So they appreciate that.
Christopher Huang:And of course then, as time went on, we started to notice, hey, they appreciate the fact that they're able to the grill will go into keep warm mode if they get too busy and they forget to take the food off when it's done cooking. They appreciate the fact that we let them know about stalls. We appreciate the fact that they appreciate the fact that they can remote ignite the grill and schedule ignitions and things like that. Yes, maybe they're not going full on, you know Tesla style full self cooking, but there's, like I said, it's everyone's smart growth. There's a lot of convenience features that make things just a little bit easier for them to achieve, to achieve the results that they consistently do achieve enthusiast.
Steven Ruffin:It's nice getting that feedback, and no matter how in-depth it is, as we heard with the novice feedback but I'm sure it really did help help shape this final design and really help you help you and your team move along yes, absolutely yes, and we continue to, you know, both in terms of interviews and in reviews, but also in terms of and the great thing about ai is we get that continuous, uh, human feedback loop.
Christopher Huang:So even the fact that they thumbs up a recipe, or they launch a recipe and or they reject the recipe, thumbs it down. That constantly tunes in real time, not just for our product in general, but also for their profile, for their preferences and then, and so as longer they use the grill, the more they they use it, the more customized and hyper-profile to their experience it will become.
Steven Ruffin:Yeah, it's a smart grill, it is. So let's talk about some of that. What kind of, let's say, proprietary technologies or algorithms that are powering these AI systems that help manage temperatures, smoke and even fuel automatically? What are some of those pieces of technology that you guys are dealing with?
Christopher Huang:Okay, I'll talk a little bit more about the traditional side and then go, of course, into our centerpiece, which is our AI.
Christopher Huang:So the traditional side really is the temperature control algorithm, so that and I should clarify you know right, these days most Wi-Fi pellet grills that are above a certain price point are algorithm controlled. Now, there's different levels of, I guess you could say, intelligence in these different algorithms. Some is just a, and they call it PID algorithms, some are just they base it off of temperature and then a motor speed for the algorithm to feed pellets and it's a flat. It's the same logic for every scenario. In our case, we once again really try to be adaptive. We call it adaptive or dynamic. So in a sense that if you're just trying to maintain temperature, it'll have certain logic to make sure it maintains it. If you jump from a small temperature to a high temperature, it'll adjust to make sure that it speeds up it doesn't need the same logic and then adjust the logic and increase the temperature as fast as possible without you know. Igniting a fire, same thing with shutdown, same thing with ignition, et cetera. But you know something that's unique to us. I guess I shouldn't you know, I don't. I guess I shouldn't say I guess you could say it's unique, but I'm going to that, do it as well, sure, yeah, but that is kind of where we kind of showcase that, hey, we always want to be adaptive, intelligent, even in something as simple as a temperature control algorithm.
Christopher Huang:Yeah, now going of course into something that's you know, of course that's kind of our core technology, which is the AI algorithm component. So of course, we have our own model, you know we have, we have our own recommendation engine and we build our own user images or profiles, local column profiles, images, et cetera. And this technology, of course, is designed to not just accomplish the automation, the user profile generation, the feedback loop that we currently do, but it's really designed to be transferable. So the great thing about this is and I'll leave it there because I can't, this is fortunately as much as I can share is this technology where our AI engine that automates the grill, that generates the recipes, generates the cooking programs, understands the user profile, adapts fine-tunes, etc. It's very transferable to Beyond Grills. So I think it's pretty obvious to say that we don't intend, we want, to really expand this concept to the entire home kitchen. Grills is the first stop and the next stop you'll see at CES 2025.
Steven Ruffin:We love that, we love that. So let's shift from that technology and shift a little towards the user, because essentially, that's what it comes down to. The user is very important in situations like this. How do you enhance that user experience? You talked about those data-driven cooking profiles, but also the mobile app. How are these enhancing that user experience?
Christopher Huang:Great question. So, once again, we always use a feedback loop. You may use the term several times. A feedback loop, fine-tuning, reinforcement, learning we do that. That's an AI concept, but we also do it as people, as product managers as well. So what does that mean? That means we are not afraid, unlike traditional, like appliance companies, where they push an update. You know once every, you know a year or something like that, and when they push updates, it's like a bug fix. We are constantly pushing updates multiple times, I don't know I times, I don't know, I guess multiple times a month really. And, yes, most of those are small changes, but we also push many new features.
Christopher Huang:If you look at our app in 2020 versus or I guess 2022, versus our app now, the feature and capabilities are very, very different. So, just to give an example, probe calibration. This is very, very mundane task. So sometimes when you put in a probe, it's you know probes are temperature probes and sometimes you know they get out of calibration because you know, because, just from wear and tear or whatever, we automate Instead of having to just manually touch it. We automate that. That did not exist when we first launched. That existed later on. Of course, the AI, the recipe AI, generation, generative AI, which we launched in 2024, that did not exist when we launched in 2022. And then it exists in 2024 and then so, and then now it's much more powerful today than it is when it first came out. Those just examples.
Christopher Huang:But to really kind of underscore the philosophy, we're not afraid, because you know, I think our users know that we're kind of a startup. You know we're newer, we're trying something different. They have a little bit more patience with us, to say the least. So, in the same that, so I think this is more like a Silicon Valley attitude, where we don't mind trying new things with our users and they don't, because they, you know, they can't trust that. You know we're not going to make their grill blow up or something like that, right? So you know, for example, the tone of our AI.
Christopher Huang:Sometimes it's going to be very straightforward. Sometimes it's going to be very complimentary. Maybe something will be sarcastic, right, we try things out, we fine-tune it. Maybe we tune it towards meat recipes more, you know. Make something. More you know safer, or more you know more risky, right? And then some people say. Some people say no, what are you? What are you doing? This? I liked my recipe. Safe is to stop giving you know, stop trying to put, uh, you know, these crazy ingredients that I never tried on on the you know, on these dishes, right? So then if we just go too far, we tune it back so that constant iteration is what allows us to really really move quickly, especially on the software side I love that.
Steven Ruffin:it seems like just based on our conversation, very user forward. You really take feedback into consideration and I think a lot of people would appreciate that, and I'm sure they have already.
Christopher Huang:And the great thing about software and hardware of course you have to just get it right and do it right, because you can't change it once it's out the door.
Steven Ruffin:You can't keep making that. You can't be updating the hardware Software.
Christopher Huang:you know, the great thing is, you know, if you yes, of course we want to do the interviews, we do. You know, we have tons of documentation to define requirements et cetera, but nothing beats user feedback. And so why not just see what certain users think? If they like it, grow out more users. If they don't, you know, maybe pull it back a bit. And that's how you know, that's how, frankly, a lot of great software products are made.
Steven Ruffin:Right, and so one of the most important parts of these processes scaling scalability. You're making this product. Give me some insight on your manufacturing or supply chain setup. What does that look like, whether you're assembling in-house or partnering with third-party producers? How does that look for Brisket?
Christopher Huang:Yeah, so we do use contract manufacturers, but we also have our own supply chain team. Actually, supply quality and manufacturing make up about a quarter of our headcount actually. So in terms to answer the first-party question, which is on the manufacturing side, so the most obvious designs are ours, industrial designs, and we go through prototyping to make sure it passes testing and we test them rigorously. You know, from fall damage to, you know, to a high temperature, you know all the things. You would expect a grill that has basically a fire inside of it and it's going to get covered in grease, and we go through you know even electromagnetic testing. You know testing to make sure when you touch a controller the electric current from your fingers doesn't cause a problem. We test all those too. Of course, when appropriate we also go through third-party certification Intertac etc. Bluetooth, all that stuff. That's, I think, all the expected things.
Christopher Huang:I guess I'll stay straightforward. Of course we do manufacture in China and China does have a mixed reputation right Of manufacturing, of quality, of QA, of processes, of speed, and we need to make essentially the reason why a quarter of our head count is manufactured in qa, because we need to make sure we get the, get the best parts of manufacturing asia and and avoid you know the you know the not so great parts of it. So what does that mean? Just to put it bluntly, we test our team whenever we run production, our team. That team basically lives at the factory and I visit there. You know, our CTO visits there to make sure and they inspect every single grill that comes off the line to make sure that they pass the factory doesn't cheat us. Basically, Right.
Steven Ruffin:So, when it comes to addressing product quality, the safety standards and all of the regulatory compliance, would you say that you and your team it seems to be the case is being hands-on, something that's important to you and your team?
Christopher Huang:Absolutely yes, and that's why all our engineers, you know we don't use third-party agencies. Unfortunately, we know we're not, we're starved, we cannot own, we cannot fund and capitalize on fact, obviously we would. But you know things that we can know engineers, software engineers, industrial engineers, qa team, the designers, all in-house. You know we tried some external, but you know it's one thing that really stuck to me. This is now coming more to startup culture, which is, we believe, and I believe personally, that in order for startups to succeed, you're either on the bus or you're off the bus. So you cannot be, you cannot be half half right. So that's why we really want to try to keep things internal as much as possible.
Steven Ruffin:Yeah, again, users listening out there or potentially future users. I think that's something that they would like to hear and something that they really, really would appreciate. So let's go into some of those prototypes and shipping models, like the Origin and the Argo. What were some of those production hurdles that you had to solve to get those on the shipping? You know, scaling them, getting them ready to ship definitely so.
Christopher Huang:The biggest challenge, and this is you know I'm maybe you probably heard of a book called uh, good to good to great. Right, you know the chicken and the egg, where the chicken you know, overnight, you know when the hatchet, when the egg becomes a chicken, it's a to everyone who watches it. It's a complete change. But to the chicken, right, he spent like I don't know how much a chicken just dates for, but, uh, but you know it spends, you know, a month or whatever, working hard, growing, and no one ever saw it. Right, so chicken's breakfast is very different, right, so it's the same thing here.
Christopher Huang:So, in the beginning, especially in 2021, right, the grill market was on fire in a good way, so we were just small fish. We didn't have the capital to produce, to order a million units from the factory, so it was very difficult for us to stand out. You know everyone was saying, oh, why, when? Why you're just a small player. You know I'm. These guys are ordering hundreds of thousand units every year. You just want to order. You can only afford to order a thousand, so why should you even pay attention to you, right? So that was very much a challenge, but so we had to really convince them based on fact, hey, demonstrate. This is not just another OEM, odm type of grill. This is something that's very different and, yes, we're small now, but if you look at our traction, we're in an industry that's frankly struggling. We are growing very rapidly and actually this happened maybe a few weeks ago we're actually the best selling smoker on amazon at the moment love that, so congratulations so.
Christopher Huang:But talking about scaling scaling there's two ways to scale right, there's or two things we have to scale first. First is the manufacturing side and then second is the software side. Software, you know, maybe it's not talked about as much, especially in the grilling world, because we don't want a situation where every user increases the cost of our you know, our AWS bill, linearly right Then, of course, then it becomes really not sustainable. Yeah, really not sustainable. Yeah. So in that sense, the great things that as we get more users, the ability to first we get more data, we really learn hey, this is how you really use the grill, that's what that makes our changes, allows us to make change both the hardware and software. But also on the production side, I guess the way to kind of summarize it is when we design, I, I guess the biggest decision that we made for scaling on the hardware side is what's it called Like an interoperability, transferability, compatibility Sorry, I'm listening. So, for example, when we make a controller, it's very important that we don't just that controller, which we spent many months and a lot of money developing to test, to get certification for, is not just compatible with one model which then, when we update the next year is no longer up to date. So that's why you know a lot of our grills at Argo. You know the origin. They share the same components. So that was a scale decision.
Christopher Huang:And I think the last thing you asked about was about kind of the manufacturing process, right? So just to quickly touch on that so Argo is a great example. Argo was an exclusive grill from Walmart. So Argo is a great example. Argo was this exclusive grill from Walmart. So not only did we have they have to meet our standards, we had to meet their standards too. And believe me, long story short, they were very, very strict on this. They pulled yeah, they pulled out their thermometer gun and shot every inch of the grill and said, if they saw any variation, and they, you know, they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah and and then there's also.
Steven Ruffin:Was there the sam's club exclusive as well? What were those kind of?
Christopher Huang:yes, that was the argo grill, sorry, yeah that's okay.
Steven Ruffin:Yeah, sam's club. I just wanted to clear that up. When you said argo, it's like, wait, maybe that I think that's the same club. But I didn't want to I didn't want to be the one correcting you, the you know guy. I'm angry, but anyway. But yeah, just her jumping over hurdles another important part of this process and you were kind of going in this direction. And, as we wrap up this interview, how do you see brisket evolving over the next three to five?
Christopher Huang:years in the very beginning and probably hinted towards. Our goal is to really have a fully autonomous, fully automate the entire home cooking experience. That means all the different steps of a cook, but also all the different forms of a cook. The vision is that the entire home kitchen is powered by Brisket AI. That, and I think I'm very excited. So it's really a struggle not to share more but because it is basically ready for release early next year, but we need to reveal it. We need to wait until CES to reveal it. Yeah, gotta wait till January, but give you a little bit of a preview.
Christopher Huang:Our vision is that when it comes to home cooking, the user does not really have to think much. They can really just focus on eating and just enjoying good food, having you know that meets the nutrition requirements, meet their taste, tastes great, meets their schedule. In the same way that and this is maybe not the best I need to work on this analogy. I'll work on it for CES 2026 when I give it to you. There you go, there you go. In the same way that a, a social media algorithm. You don't have to tell a social media algorithm hey, I want to see dogs, right. I want to see cute dogs, right. It just knows it's constantly feeding. You can scroll on it forever, right.
Steven Ruffin:Very unhealthy, but Right, we've all been there. Let's all be honest, we've all been there.
Christopher Huang:My goal is that with a home cook, they'll be able to just the fact that everything's automated, the fact that you know the recommendation engine knows what they like, what they don't like. They can constantly try new things. They don't have to worry about whether it's going to come out tasting poorly or come out burnt or whatever. Constantly try new things. It meets nutrition requirements, it meets the dietary needs and they never have to worry about it as a day-to-day diet. Basically, the stress of home cooking is removed from the day to day life. That is the vision of brisket.
Steven Ruffin:And I think that's a great cliffhanger, something to get people excited for. So, as we wrap this up, anything else that you want to add that we might have missed, that you want to let people know.
Christopher Huang:No, I guess. If anyone wants to check out brisket, our grills currently are available on our website, on Amazon as well as retailers such as Lowe'scom and Sam's Club. In terms of what we're going to do next beyond grills, can't say much and just stay tuned for it. If you stay tuned to see us 2026, if you can.
Steven Ruffin:Yes, everyone, stay tuned, Chris. We're really looking forward to continue working with you. We're going to follow along as well, and really excited for the future of Brisket. Thank you, I appreciate it, stephen, absolutely Once again. Thanks again to Chris and Brisket for joining us today, and thank you all for listening. That's all the time we have. We'll see you next time. Catch up on the latest innovations shaping our world at tomorrowsworldtodaycom. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
