Cuisinart

Cuisinart is an American home appliance brand owned by Conair Corporation. The company was started in 1971 by Carl Sontheimer to bring an electric food processor to the US market. The "Food Processor" was the first model, introduced at the National Housewares Exposition in Chicago in 1973 and released in Canada in 1975.

In 1986, Cuisinart introduced a chopper/grinder (the Mini-Mate) and has since expanded to include a wide variety of products. Cuisinart became the property of Conair Corporation in 1989.

A partial list of Cuisinart products includes:

Cuisinart products are available in upscale department and specialty stores nationwide.

The Cuisinart line was started by Carl Sontheimer and his wife Shirley Sontheimer. Carl Sontheimer trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He owned and operated Amzac Electronics, until he sold it in 1967. The idea of starting Cuisinart came from seeing a food preparation machine while traveling in France in 1971. His goal was to shorten the time spent doing repetitive tasks like cooking and baking. With this inspiration, he introduced the food processor to North America. With his engineering knowledge and passion for cooking, he decided to design similar technology for the American market. Sontheimer started by taking apart the prototype machine and making refinements to parts such as the feeding tube, cutting blade, and discs. In 1973 Sontheimer introduced "The Food Processor" at the "National Housewares Exposition in Chicago".

Starting out, Sontheimer's device sold poorly. He tried marketing his food processor to department stores and grocery stores, but to the public it looked like nothing more than a high priced super blender. By 1975, culinary authorities such as James Beard, Julia Child, Craig Claiborne, Jacques Pepin and Helen McCully were using Cuisinart products publicly, causing a sharp rise in the popularity of the food processor. Their endorsements were noted in Gourmet magazine and The New York Times. Two years later in 1977, Cuisinart experienced a sharp rise in sales from a few units per month to several hundred. Cuisinart was first in the market that it created for itself. Eva Pomice, a writer for Forbes said that "With marketing savvy and a credible product, [the Sontheimers] were able to dominate the upper end of the food processor business against such top competitors as Moulinex and Robot-Coupe. Sontheimer did it by making the Cuisinart name synonymous with top quality and price." Company analyst concluded that Cuisinart graduated from selling a few food processors a month to about 150,000-250,000 in 1976. By 1977, Cuisinart's sales reached $50 million. Shortly (there?)after Cuisinart suspended the French company, Robot-Coupe, as its manufacturer and commissioned a Japanese company due to poor workmanship.

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