Cookers Are the New Giant TVs This Black Friday

(Bloomberg) -- Consumers this Black Friday want cooker pots -- and trying to keep up has retailers under pressure.

As legions of shoppers descend upon America’s big-box shops and department stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, they’re gnawing and elbowing their way to the kitchen appliance section. They want a deal on pressure cooker-style pots that have become guaranteed blockbusters.

Numerous retailers singled out the pots as bestsellers during the holiday shopping rush. J.C. Penney said its Cooks fast pot and air fryer are sold out in most stores. At Walmart, it’s the Pioneer Woman cookers, at $15, that are a hot item. Kohl’s CEO told CNBC that 60 Instant Pots per minute are flying off its shelves. Target’s website is out of some stock, so shoppers must trek to a store to snag one.

The Instant Pot, and various other versions of the appliance under different brand names, has accumulated a following of die-hard fans over the past two years. Beloved by home chefs, the pots are multipurpose pressure and slow cookers. They’re designed to consolidate cooking into one device -- just dump in the ingredients.

“People have been waiting for these instapot deals,” said Poonam Goyal, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.

She said “people were grabbing them, they were stocked high and wide” at the Kohl’s store she visited in Morganville, New Jersey, on Thursday. The store sold out of the 3-quart Instant Pot but did have plenty of the 6-quart ones, said Goyal, who was shopping for one as a gift.

--With assistance from Matthew Boyle and Hema Parmar.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Bhasin in New York at kbhasin4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anne Riley Moffat at ariley17@bloomberg.net, Jonathan Roeder, Timothy Annett

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