Small appliances | Goodbye, electric wires

Hand mixers, choppers, hand mixers and cordless individual mixers are gaining more and more importance in the kitchen. Charging as easily as mobile phones, they are attracting interest despite their higher price than models with an electric wire.

Danielle Bonneau
Press

“It’s a growing market,” says Thierry Lopez, director of marketing and corporate affairs in Quebec at Best Buy Canada. “This is understandable, because it’s much more practical not to have a son in the middle of flour, eggs and everything else you already have on the counter. There is also a gain in space, especially since we have more and more small appliances in the kitchen, which punctuate our new lifestyle, where we want to cook healthy … but efficiently and quickly! ”

According to him, the technology is improving. “The batteries now have a long enough runtime to cook with as good intensity and performance as with a plug-in appliance. Wireless devices have an autonomy of about twenty minutes. It takes two hours to fully charge them, but if you forget, in 10 or 15 minutes, you can have 10 minutes of battery life. This is sufficient for chopping onions or making whipped cream. ”

Requested, despite the price

For now, two companies are doing particularly well: KitchenAid and Cuisinart. These include devices such as hand mixers, immersion blenders (which may come with whisks and choppers) and compact blenders (for smoothies and other shakes), which are easy to transport.

“Cordless products that are short-lived and don’t sit on the counter, such as hand mixers and hand mixers, are very popular,” notes Rémi Badra, chief buyer at Arès Cuisine. In the case of a food processor that is placed on the counter, it does not bother that it is plugged in. But it’s different for small handheld devices.

“Despite the higher cost, which can range from 1.5 times to double the price for a similar item from the same company, I was surprised to see the sales increase this year. ”

“Cordless kettles, placed on a base, give an idea of ​​the flexibility that small cordless electrical appliances can offer,” says Gino Andreoli, director, products and planning, at Linen Chest. “That’s the vast majority of what is now sold at the kettle level,” he says. It is very easy to take and carry to fill our cup with boiling water. ”

Normal progression

Peugeot’s cordless electric corkscrews, which fit all bottlenecks and corks, are also very practical, he points out. “People think of kitchen accessories as tools,” he says. However, there have been cordless and rechargeable tools for a long time. It is natural that there is development on the kitchen side. ”

As is the case with all electronic and electrical products, which initially cost more, prices are increasingly affordable, underlines Thierry Lopez, of Best Buy Canada. “The devices are more and more efficient, and the prices will become more reasonable,” he predicts.