Chef Steps store

So, after watching a few videos (especially the chicken roulade) I have to say, I really wouldn't mind seeing the Chefsteps store beefed up a bit. Anyone else feel free to chime in on this with other things as well; I for one would love to see some pressure cookers and things like activa RM and other individual ingredients offered. Even if it costs a little more (for the Chefsteps profit margin) then say on Amazon I would be willing to spend that money here. Amazon isn't keeping me inspired, Chefsteps is, so I don't mind showing some loyalty. Maybe if there is enough support the store can look into offering specific items. I think some Michael Ruhlman offset spoons seemed popular on other threads, just stuff like that.

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Chris_Young_80640

@TJ we certainly understand your desire for us to be able to offer more. At one point we felt that this would be a very valuable service to offer our community. Unfortunately, for too many reasons to go into, it's not. In broad strokes, here is why:

(1) It creates a fundamental conflict between our loyalty to our community and our suppliers. We want to focus on creating stuff for our community that they want from us, and not selling our community stuff from others. There will be occasional exception, but they will be occasional—hence our knife and limited sous vide collection.

(2) Most hardware companies have lost total control of their pricing, and often we end up paying them more than you can buy the product from Amazon or another third party company. That's not a good deal for you, and puts us in a position of competing on price rather than focusing on a quality experience.

(3) It forces us to grow our company in directions we don't think are healthy or interesting in the long run. Dealing with order fulfillment, sales tax compliance issues, payment processing, and so on is not what we really want to be doing everyday. Cooking, creating great content, building ways for us to share culinary knowledge, developing tools that make cooking more rewarding are what we want to be doing. This means we need very different people working at ChefSteps than we would hire if we wanted to focus on ecommerce.

Hope this explanation, while it may not be what you want to hear, helps explain where we're coming from.

michaelnatkin

I'll only add that we do, in many cases, link to products on Amazon. Those are affiliate links, so you are helping out ChefSteps when you click one of those links and purchase that way... and we sure appreciate it!

Matthew_Snyder_68770

Frankly, as threads started popping up about the new gen of budget-friendly immersion circulators this is pretty much what was going through my mind as to why the CS store was not as fully fleshed out as it might be. I totally understand it, and for what it's worth, I think you guys have made the correct strategerififc decision. As an offset, you guys do offer valuable consumer advice when the community comes up with a question about specific tools or whatever.

That said, I'd still like to see a limited offering of CS branded product.

tjdubas

@Chris, That all certainly makes sense and as Michael said there are many affiliate links. However, as I live in a town that is VERY limited on supply variety I find myself at a total loss to be able to make certain things (ie: the ingredients for the rootbeer syrup) is so not going to happen. Which is why I asked. So now lets say a bigger store is off the table, is there a way to have say amazon pre bundle ingredients and such? (I don't really shop on there much because the Canadian amazon sucks but I'm lead to believe bundling is a thing)

Matthew_Snyder_68770

Modernist Pantry is where I get most of the wacky ingredients. They worked with ChefSteps to create the spherification bundles a few months back that were offered when the spherification course started up. Not sure if they deliver to Canada or not, but they're worth checking out.

lfmichaud

Modernist Pantry deliver to Canada And the last tine I used them the shipping rates were not outrageous. Order a small format of Activa at the same time as they are one of the few store that sell packs smaller than a kilogram!

Brandon_34695

Modernist Pantry is a big supporter of this community, besides just delivering good products. I am happy to see the ChefSteps team can remain focused on providing content, not retail.

Matthew_Snyder_68770

Actually, I just remembered the first time I ordered from MP they threw in a pack of Activa RM. So I'm ready to rock.... and roll the roulade recipe.

Har har har har har.

Samuel_68313

Man how much did you order to get something free? I must have spent over $1k at Modernist Pantry without getting anything!

@TJ Whereabouts in Canada do you live?

tjdubas

@Samuel I live in a horrible little place called Red Deer, Alberta. Albeit not as bad as lets say Wainwright or Suffield, Alberta. Still pretty horrible though. I've ordered the professional spherification kit, yet it still hasn't shipped yet. Maybe they'll throw in a bit of activia if it still hasn't by next week?

Brendan_Lee_56950

Ahh good ol' red deer. I always remember there being a lot of good lookin ladies in red deer but that's about it.

You should check out http://www.powdertothepeople.ca/ as a canadian source of ingredients.

Matthew_Snyder_68770

@SamuelG..... well don't I feel an idiot. Just went to MP.com to look at my order history and apparently I paid $13.99 for the transglutaminase, which is actually Moo Glue TI. So not only did I not get it for free, it isn't even Activa RM.

It would seem my imagination took the wheel for a bit yesterday. Derp.