Table Talk

by Tamara Kaye Sellman

How many Pampered Chef® parties can one attend before exhausting their interest in the company’s products?

I attended a Pampered Chef® party most recently last summer. From that gathering, I purchased a bamboo cutting board, a smaller all-purpose cutting board, and a jar-opening gadget for my mother in law.

That was, by far, the smallest order I’ve ever placed with them.

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Pampered Chef® came into being in 1980 when home economist Doris Christopher of Addison, IL decided that home cooks deserved to work with professional-quality kitchen tools like their food service and hospitality counterparts.  She developed an inventory of over 70 kitchen essentials and took her demonstrations on the road via the direct sales strategy: the hosted party otherwise known as The Kitchen Show®.  Judging by sales figures alone, she hit the jackpot: In 1980, Christopher earned almost $7,000 in sales, but four years later, sales topped $500,000. By the end of its first decade, Pampered Chef® boasted $10 million in sales and a 50% expansion to the product line. If this sounds like a feminized Horatio Alger story, it is: Christopher was awarded the Horatio Alger Award from the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans in 2006.
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In the last eight years, I have purchased many Pampered Chef® products: ceramic and metal bakeware, oven-safe skillets, serving cutlery, griddles, knives, mixing bowls, storage containers, serving caddies, juicers, presses, spatulas, cake decorating tools, mandolins, lidded prep bowls, hand choppers, molds, and measuring devices of all kinds.

Naturally, as the rep totaled by sales for last summer’s event, she asked me if I would host a future party. My knee-jerk reply is always Yes, partly because who wants to say No to the lovely Pampered Chef® rep and, well, why not schedule a reason in advance to invite your friends over for food and fun?

Well, I’ve already hosted two parties, attended at least 3 others that I can remember, as well as held a catalog-only show to raise money for charity. And one of the parties I hosted was that particular rep’s last party, so she gave me a couple hundred bucks worth of free merchandise she wouldn’t have to process it afterward. At this point, I don’t think I could personally benefit from hosting another party… not given the size my current, burgeoning batterie de cuisine.

Besides that, the products I already own have lasted many years, with only a couple needing replacement (I lost a pie server sleeve once and broke a foaming soap dispenser). Certainly I evangelize the company’s quality catalog items for the simple reason that they really do last long, work well, and are guaranteed.

But occasionally I find myself wondering: Hmmm, I could use a bacon press, or A gravy separator would come in handy about now, or This salad spinner I own is too big for the small jobs… And then I wonder if it really is time to host another party.

I try so hard not to be a conspicuous consumer. I don’t need a bacon press, a gravy separator or a smaller salad spinner. I can achieve all of those cooking goals without buying new gadgets.  But Christmas is just around the corner, and there’s no better time to host a cookware party than right in the middle of the biggest consumer season of the year…Right?

Decisions, decisions.

I said No, ultimately, because my holiday schedule just won’t permit me the time a party would require. Still, I can’t help feeling disappointed by my own willpower and sense of practicality. I’m not much of a window shopper, and all those glorious, hard-working tools on display in someone’s home kitchen tend to take on a glow like no other. That is the siren song of direct sales cookware.

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I attended my first Pampered Chef party at a friend’s house before I hosted my own. This is the way it’s usually done. You get one friend to host a party and then they get their friends to host separate parties and so on. (Viral marketing is not limited only to the Internet, after all.)

Now, I’ve always been suspicious of private sales parties. I may come from a long line of Avon® reps, but I was also a child of the 70s, when all sorts of pyramid sales schemes promised to make people rich, but didn’t. I went to that first party because I was new to the neighborhood, not because I was in the market for cookware.

Keep in mind, I was also a child during the height of the Tupperware® party crazy. I’d only ever seen the fun things my own mother brought home. The colorful burping storage containers. The plastic pitchers, Popsicle forms and carry-alls that help you transport deviled eggs to someone’s house without ruining them. Tupperware® was a marvel of modern life that brought my mother and her friends a kind of domestic bliss that, say, doing the laundry or mopping the kitchen floor never did.

I don’t think it would be a stretch to suggest that Pampered Chef® parties from the 80s have been, for my generation, the Tupperware® parties of my mother’s generation. Would that be so bad? From an anti-conspicuous consumer perspective, probably. I don’t need anything else for my kitchen, after all.

But wait! I could always donate my sales back to the organization to end poverty (Feeding America®), fight cancer (American Cancer Society®), or build strong families (The Pampered Chef® Family Resiliency Program).

You know, the guys in the neighborhood play poker all the time for charity. Why not gather my gal pals for the food, friendship and fun of Pampered Chef® and do the same thing? (I make no guarantees that I won’t be buying a bacon press after all. I’m just sayin’…)

Bio: Tamara Kaye Sellman is a creative writing coach and developmental editor living in Bainbridge Island, WA. She writes the blog, BuzzFood: Feed The Obsession (http://buzzfood.blogspot.com).

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