George Foreman Grill
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| Invented by | Michael Boehm, Robert Johnson |
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| Launch year | 1994 |
| Company | Spectrum Brands |
| Availability | United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia |
| Website | George Foreman US, George Foreman UK |
The George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine, commonly known as the George Foreman Grill, is an indoor, electrically heated grill manufactured by Spectrum Brands. It is promoted by former boxing champion George Foreman. Since its introduction in 1994, over 100 million George Foreman grills have been sold worldwide.
The concept for the grill was created by Michael Boehm of Batavia, Illinois. The original intention was to create an indoor grill that would provide a unique benefit of cooking on both sides at once A second key benefit was to reduce the fat content of hamburgers and other meats by draining away the fat into a separate reservoir. Michael Boehm designed the product with a floating hinge and slanted grilling surface to accommodate foods of different thicknesses and drain fat away from the food. Engineering work was done by Bob Johnson. The grill had been promoted at industry trade shows in the early 1990s, but received little interest.
The slanted grill concept was pitched by Tsann Kuen to Salton Inc. Salton sent samples of the grill to George Foreman's colleagues who then sent the grill to George to test out. Michael had nothing to do with teaming up the grill and George.
The Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine, as it became known, was introduced in 1994 and promoted with distinctive infomercials which featured Foreman. A combination of his affable personality and the unique features of the product made it a huge success. The product gained a certain success that it had previously not been able to attain prior to Foreman's endorsement. Such was the popularity of these infomercials that Foreman's famous tagline, "It's so good I put my name on it!", is now part of popular culture. In Asia, the grill is endorsed and promoted by both George Foreman and Jackie Chan.
The product has a clamshell design which simultaneously heats the top and bottom surfaces of the food, eliminating the need to flip it. Each heating surface is grooved to reduce contact area, and covered in a non-stick coating. The lower heating surface is angled to allow melted fat and other fluids to drain through the grooves into a removable drip tray, which clearly shows the amount removed from the food. This arrangement has been marketed as a way to "knock out the fat", suggesting a healthier way to cook.
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