Instant Pot burnout: Parent company files for bankruptcy

Driving the news: Consumers struggling with inflation have soured on the product. Instant Brands said "global macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges" have affected the business.

• The company also makes well-known kitchen brands Pyrex, Corelle, Snapware, Corningware, Visions and Chicago Cutlery.
• Instant Brands was founded in 2009 and bought by private-equity firm Cornell Capital LLC in 2019, who combined it with Corelle Brands.

By the numbers: Electronic multicooker sales reached $758 million in 2020 but plunged 50% by last year to $344 million, AP reported citing NPD Group data.

Zoom in: The bankruptcy announcement comes days after S&P Global downgraded the company's rating because of lower consumer spending on discretionary categories.

• "Net sales decreased 21.9% in the first quarter of fiscal 2023, relative to the same period last year," S&P analysts wrote, noting it was the seventh consecutive quarter of “year-over-year sales contraction.”
• Bankruptcy documents show the company has $500 million in both assets and liabilities.

What they're saying: "Tightening of credit terms and higher interest rates impacted our liquidity levels and made our capital structure unsustainable," Instant Brands president and CEO Ben Gadbois said in a statement.

• "We believe that the Instant Pot product is going to be around for a long, long, long time, and we still sell a lot of volume," Gadbois told the Wall Street Journal in March. "But no product stays at a phenom level forever."

Flashback: Instant Pot has had a cult following for many years, and a 2017 New York Times article called it the "kitchen gadget that spawned a religion."

• It has repeatedly been a holiday bestseller on Amazon and other retailers.
• For Prime Day 2018, Amazon members purchased more than 300,000 Instant Pot 6-quart 7-in-1 multiuse cookers.

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