The first half of 2024 has brought three significant chef-driven home-products collaborations focused on hard goods for cooking, dining, and entertaining:
- Earlier this month, British chef Jamie Oliver partnered with Lifetime Brands for a line of serveware and dinnerware called Big Love, taking its name from the chef’s sign-off phrase. The products skew toward family-style meals and shared meals with friends and include everything from roasters, mugs, and salad bowls to serving boards and platters. The simply designed pieces, which are made from materials such as mango wood and stoneware and meant to be practical and versatile, will be available worldwide, starting in January of next year.
- In March of this year, New York City-based chef Eric Adjepong, known for his cuisine inspired by his Ghanaian ancestry, paired with Crate & Barrel for a 60-plus-piece collection of serveware, cookware, glassware, reusable shopping totes, and décor. The pieces feature techniques and materials from West Africa, while also taking cues from the aesthetic of the chef’s New York City hometown.
- Guy Fieri and his Flavortown brand teamed with Mon Chateau in January for three new tech-forward cookware lines. They include Laser Titanium pieces made with a new anodizing technology billed as three times harder than stainless steel, a stainless steel line with innovative micro-pressure lids, and a collection of ceramics. The Laser Titanium range was the first release, introduced this spring at Macy’s and Amazon in 10- and 12-piece sets as well as individual skillets, sauce and sauté pans, griddles, stock pots, Dutch ovens, and woks.
These follow other chef-led collaborations in the kitchenware, serveware, and tableware space over the years, from Ayesha Curry’s extensive range of bakeware, ceramics, cookware, cutlery, and more, launched with Meyer Corporation in 2017 to Yotam Ottolenghi’s 100-piece tableware collection launched with Serax in 2021, among many others.
Lately, however, chefs have seemingly been more focused on the food sector, with a steady stream of deals coming to light. A few recent examples include Curtis Stone with Steeped Coffee, Gordon Ramsay with Golden West Food Group for frozen entrées, Nadiya Hussain with Schwartz for recipe kits, mixes, and seasonings in the U.K., and Tabitha Brown with Target earlier this year to transition her vegan food offerings into a permanent program after several limited collections of food and non-food items.
Despite this year’s high-profile home goods initiatives, including the three examples discussed above, chef-driven licensing agreements and collaborations in the kitchen and table space have been relatively few and far between in comparison to the list of new food-based programs.
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