Are Other Companies Copying The Pampered Chef's Recipes and Products?

[DessertDivaFL]

Seems like everyone else is trying to copy The Pampered Chef products and recipes. Here is one that is similar to our Loaded Baked Potato Chowder.

Loaded "Baked Potato" Soup recipe at Kraftfoods.com

I saw the recent Tupperware catalog and they have a new product that looks like our Rice Cooker Plus. Of course, it is much more expensive.

 

[ChefPaulaB]

Yep, I saw that recipe yesterday and thought about ours...

 

[AmyDare]

At the cluster meeting I attend, someone said that Party Lite (candles) is going to start offering food products. The gal shared that she got an e-mail from her PL consultant, and at the bottom it said, "Look Out Pampered Chef"!
Amy

 

[ChefPaulaB]

Why in world would a candle company start offering food? That doesn't make any sense at all! Like they can compete with us!

 

[PampChefJoy]

Actually haven't we worked in conjunction with Pillsbury/Kraft in some of our previous Celebrations show recipes? I'm not at all surprised that there are similarities. Our test kitchen probably has a dedicated contact at theirs!

As far as Partylite doing food, that doesn't even make sense...

 

[JennLizFran]

I agree about PartyLite doing food items....I just can't imagine oh I want to buy this cotton scented candle and ooo... a Santoku knife and jerk seasoning...haha!

But I've noticed many many Pampered Chef recipes are very similar to Kraftfoods recipes...actually I send a lot of people to the kraftfoods website for recipes...they're all so simple and use such common ingredients. I just can't belive they started charging for that tiny little quarterly magazine, I love getting it but will not be paying for it!

 

[chefann]

Partylite merged with or bought out Two Sisters Gourmet (I'm not sure of the exact terms). The Two Sisters consultants were told they had to buy a candle kit and must market the candles, but the Partylite consultants can choose not to push the food. I agree that it's a bizarre combination.As far as similarities between recipes and products, HO develops both based on current market trends. It stands to reason that there would be some duplication in the market. Most of it is probably inadvertent.

 

[chefsteph07]

I have a friend who does PL and she said right now that only upper levels are allowed to sell the food products, to see how well it will go over. She then said "oh it makes sense, because you are going to have food at your PL show, so why not have a brand of it for us?"
WHATEVER!:yuck:

 

[raebates]

Trends are trends because lots of people are doing the same thing. It never surprises me when another company starts doing something very similar to PC. Of course, I'll just about guarantee that PC does it better. We've had a Loaded Baked Potato Soup recipe for quite a while. It's in the It's Good for You cookbook.As for the food with Partylite, we had a candle for a while. We also had hand soap and lotion. We didn't have lots of these things, but we did have them.

 

[Porchechef]

Well look at it this way- Party Lite has to WORK HARD to prove their products are better. PC has been around for A LONG TIME while Party Lite is just now starting. I wouldn't worry too much. Same as for the food chopper- I noticed in Target, Bed, Bath and Beyond, etc had similar food choppers. I was like HA ours are better!

 

[AmyDare]

I have a host who just got her products...and she's pitching her "look alike" food chopper. She was very excited to have it out and ready to throw away!

 

[Jules711]

I find it funny when people buy the cheaper version of something (like the Food Chopper) only to have to buy ours. Was it really cheaper then? NO. I just had one or two people (can't remember if was both) that are ordering the Food Chopper b/c they have one from Wal-Mart.

 

[raebates]

I recently had a customer who called to order a Food Chopper. Her DIL's FC had broken, so my customer went out and bought her DIL a cheap knock-off. She said, "Rae, that one didn't even move!" A man recently ordered a new Saute' Pan to replace his old one. He told me that he'd had his Gen II pan for about 10 years. He pointed out that if you assumed he spent $45 on it (the cost of the replacement), that means it cost him $4.50 a year. If he had gone out to a discount store and purchased a $20 pan and had to replace it three times in a one-year period, that pan would cost $80 a year. There's a huge difference between price (what you hand over at the time of the purchase) and cost (the amortized value over the lifetime of the item).

 

[Chefgirl2]

PC works with a lot of National Brands to develope recipes. Pilsbury is huge. Some of the marketing people have come from those companies. I had a person from Schick approach me trying to tie their razor with pampering...I gave them HO's # and said good luck. If you watch the magazines closely you'll see a lot of "favorites"...

 

[Intrepid_Chef]

My friends are HUGE Partylite people and even they think the two sisters thing is bizarre. They are actually more like Tastefully Simple than us. We don't sell many of the duplicate products ... except for Beer Bread, I didn't see a single thing in their catalog that is similar to ours.