Kitchens - The Ultimate in Form over Function
It struck me last week during a wonderful benefit Holiday House Tour in New Canaan that kitchens are getting bigger and bolder with extreme design touches everywhere you look. It makes sense, given that the kitchen is at the epicenter of a family. Statistics bear that out. According to the National Kitchen and Bath Association, 80% of most people's time is spent in the kitchen. Why not make it as comfortable and functional as possible?
Each of the homes on the tour featured kitchens to envy, especially if you love to cook. However, many of these kitchens are just show pieces. The given paradigm within the kitchen category is that over half of the designer kitchens aren't used for the functional purpose of cooking.
That isn't stopping the power brands in the category from winning consumers' hearts and minds for achieving the ultimate in kitchen design. Much like the Vikings themselves, Viking is a dominating force. The Viking range is the ultimate kitchen symbol. A true passion brand that knows its customers - the foodies!!
Viking engages on so many levels. You can touch the brand through Viking Cooking Schools across the country and travel through trips sponsored by Viking. Viking.com offers all this up via Viking Life. Who doesn't want to live like a Viking and conquer new worlds!
Every kitchen on the tour featured Sub-Zero refrigerators in the footprint - sometimes standing at attention side by side like sentries. Elegant and sleek in stature and design, Sub Z's rule in today's designer kitchen. You know you've arrived when consumers give you a nickname - "Sub Z" is the Fed Ex of the kitchen world. Who would have ever thought 30 years ago that a refrigerator could have an emotional connection with a consumer? Sub-Zero even features their sister brand, Wolf, which is giving Viking a go of it in the kitchen range niche.
These kitchens featured warming drawers and heat lamps and butler's pantries with wine coolers and cappuccino/espresso machines. Any one of them could have qualified to be on a cooking show at the Food Network. I felt as if I were in Kitchen Stadium.
Need an espresso? Just order up a Miele appliance featuring the Nespresso® capsule system. After all, Miele's brand positioning is "Anything else is a compromise." Bosch is in the game as well with products that they claim are "Invented for life." Design is their calling card point of difference.
No where did you see a GE product in any of the kitchens. It is the fleeting nature of the brand game being played in kitchens across the country that GE must compete. GE Monogram is still a player, but not in the high-end game. They've tried to fight this perception through their GE Monogram Design Center at the NY Architects & Design
Building in New York City. They are now the hunter rather than the hunted. GE doesn't hold the same brand position they once did. The brand leadership position is often fleeting as GE has intimately learned.
The game will continue to change in kitchens and the brands that serve them. The trends for the kitchen category, according to the National Kitchen and Bath Association, include black and white design concepts, steel counters, tin ceilings, polished chrome and glass.
The other common link among the kitchens was the use of islands - some of them big enough to qualify as a Caribbean island. Trends are everywhere if you look hard enough for them. It is another lesson in ensuring that you're constantly looking for the next big thing in marketing. The category changes as quickly as the market climate. Can kitchens get any bigger or grander? Ten years ago, who would have predicted the explosion in outdoor kitchens? Perhaps tailgate kitchens are next. It is all about being distinct rather than extinct.
This seems to be a recession-proof niche. When times are good people want to flaunt their Sub Z's and when times aren't so great they want to retreat to having the comforts of home. Happy to say I survived a remodel without giving in to the pressure to buy an authentic outdoor pizza oven. I bet that's next.
It's a good thing I married a great cook and have surrounded myself with other culinary virtuosos. I, on the other hand, have messed up boiling water (as Mary will attest).
However, I've built a few kitchens, and have also watched these trends over the years. Back in the 70's and early 80's if you wanted commercial grade appliances and equipment, you had to go to commercial suppliers. The best deals were found in the kitchen supply district in the Bowery in NYC. Another great source was Kittredge in Springfield Mass. In addition to the big appliances, that's where you had to go to buy things like heavy wire shelving, bullet trash containers, factory lighting and copper pots. As Bill points out, all this stuff and more is now readily available from retail outlets.
As to stadium-sized kitchens, the great cooks I know will tell you the classic triangulated work space between sink, storage and prep surface where you only need to take a step or two between each, is still the most efficient. Commercial kitchens are tight, crowded and seemingly chaotic places, but that's where the great food is prepared.
Oddly enough my favorite kitchen consisted of a sterno-fueled Sea-Swing stove, a top-loading 3'x3' ice chest and a hand pump sink with a 12 gallon water tank. It was the so-called "galley" on my Sea Sprite 23. Great chili came out of that stove.
I've learned that the kitchen doesn't make the cook, but it definitely gives way to the aspiration of wanting to be head chef. I think back to the best meals I've ever had and they've come from the "galley" kitchens with stoves older than the cook. So maybe there's something to be said for going back to basics. I wonder if GE can carve out their niche there?