Pampered Chef

Pampered Chef is a multinational multi-level marketing company that offers a line of kitchen tools, food products, and cookbooks for preparing food in the home. They also offer some products to help transport some of their products and gardening tools.[1]

Pampered Chef
TypeSubsidiary
IndustryKitchen and Food products
Founded1980 (1980) River Forest, IL
Headquarters
Addison Township, DuPage County, Illinois
,
United States
Area served
United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, France
Key people
Andrew Treanor (CEO)
Doris Christopher
(Chairman & Founder)
Products
ParentBerkshire Hathaway
Websitewww.pamperedchef.com

It has a worldwide direct sales force of about 35,000 in addition to 400 corporate staff.[2] The company is headquartered in Addison, Illinois, and operates in five countries: the United States, Germany, Canada, Austria, and France.

History

Doris Christopher founded Pampered Chef in 1980 in the basement of her suburban Chicago home. Christopher came up with a party plan to offer professional-quality kitchen tools directly to consumers through in-home cooking demonstrations, a concept first popularized by Tupperware. The company expanded to Canada in 1996, the UK in 1999, Germany in 2000, Austria in 2019, and France in 2020.[3][4]

The company was acquired in 2002 by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway corporation.[5] On October 30, 2014, Berkshire Hathaway appointed long time advisor Tracy Britt Cool to the position of CEO.[6] According to Direct Selling News, "the company’s revenue has fallen from $320 million in 2015 to $280 million in 2018."[7] In March 2020, the company’s COO, Andrew Treanor, took over on the role of CEO.[8]

The company closed its UK business, and wound down UK operations as of December 31, 2015.[9]

References
  1. Gregory Karp, "The fine line between legitimate businesses and pyramid schemes" Archived 2013-02-11 at the Wayback Machine, Chicago Tribune, 10 February 2013
  2. "Pampered Chef Company Facts". Pampered Chef. Archived from the original on 2016-04-08. Retrieved 2016-03-26.
  3. "Pampered Chef Enters Austria Market". Pampered Chef. 2019-09-23.
  4. Chen, I-chun. "Pampered Chef brings its kitchenware to France". Chicago Business Journal.
  5. "Berkshire Hathaway to acquire The Pampered Chef". Berkshire Hathaway. Archived from the original on 2002-10-14. Retrieved 2002-09-23.
  6. Noah Buhayar, "Buffett’s Assistant Cool Named CEO of Pampered Chef Unit" Archived 2015-01-10 at the Wayback Machine, Bloomberg, 30 October 2014
  7. Kosman, Josh (2019-09-19). "Buffett protégé Tracy Britt Cool leaving Berkshire Hathaway". New York Post. Retrieved 2020-04-03.
  8. "Tracy Britt Cool to Leave Berkshire Hathaway, Pampered Chef To Start New Venture". 2019-09-19.
  9. "Pampered Chef winding down UK operations". PamperedChef. Archived from the original on 2015-09-20. Retrieved 2015-09-11.


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