Steam Oven Hierarchy: Gaggenau, Miele, Wolf — And Then Everyone Else

Steam Oven Hierarchy: Gaggenau, Miele, Wolf — And Then Everyone Else

Study the steam oven category deeply enough and a problem emerges: almost every brand leads with the same talking points. Steam cooking. Convection. Automatic programs. Reheating. Healthy cooking. And when salespeople can't find the real differences, they invent ones that aren't big enough. Customers feel it immediately — and retreat to the path of least resistance. Jon noticed this compression while building Steam Cod University content with Ben, and it led to a different kind of episode. Not a 1v1 — a full category hierarchy. At the top sits Gaggenau — and it isn't close. The 400 Series Combi Steam Oven offers selectable humidity levels (0, 30, 60, 80, 100%) combined with precision convection across a wide range. That's not a feature. That's a different cooking philosophy. A vegetable, bread, fish, and roast all need different environments. Gaggenau lets you shape that environment deliberately instead of treating steam as an on/off mode. Add the plumbed architecture and you have a product built around cooking control at a level the rest of the category doesn't match. Selling it from a feature checklist misses the point entirely. Miele earns the second position through depth of steam ownership intelligence. Wolf's redesign earned it the third spot — before the redesign, it would have landed in the compression group. Jon explains what changed and why it matters. After those three, the category largely compresses. That doesn't mean the other brands are bad products. But salespeople need to be careful not to overstate separations that aren't clearly there — because customers always feel when you're forcing a difference that isn't big enough. 🎙️ Hosted by Shannon O'Hara and Jon Beresford | The Steel Codcast 🔔 New episode every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.

Power Index: Which Luxury Grill Brands Are Losing Showroom Conversations Right Now

The Power Index measures showroom consideration activity — not sales data, but what customers are actively discussing on the floor right now. And in the luxury outdoor grill category, something is shifting. In this episode, Jon Beresford walks through which brands are gaining ground, which ones are cooling off, and what the psychology underneath it all means for independent retailers. The core theme: outdoor luxury doesn't carry the same emotional weight as indoor luxury. Customers will stretch their budget for a luxury range without blinking — the kitchen is tied to their identity, their dream home, who they are. But outdoors, that emotional gravity weakens. And when it does, customers start asking hard practical questions they'd never ask on the indoor floor. "What am I actually getting for the extra money?" That question is starting to reshape the entire category. Exo is rising — presenting well, landing where customers expect aesthetically, and easier to justify financially as outdoor project totals climb. Artisan is benefiting from an Al Fresco halo effect, picking up customers who want the experience without the price. Wolf outdoor is taking heat — not because the product is bad, but because the badge that does all the work indoors isn't translating the same way outdoors. A new lineup is reportedly coming and sounds strong, but the current story isn't closing the gap. And Lynx is showing the most concerning signal: broad lineup cooling across the whole category, which points to positioning pressure, not a product problem. Jon's takeaway: luxury outdoor brands survive difficult markets when customers clearly understand why they're different. Right now, the badge alone may no longer be enough. 👉 Al Fresco vs. Artisan episode: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-h58w7-1abb7a8 🎙️ Hosted by Anthony Force and Jon Beresford | The Steel Codcast 🔔 New episode every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.

How to Sell a French Top to Someone Who Has No Idea What It Is

French tops are one of the most skipped products on the appliance floor. Salespeople find them intimidating. Customers don't know what they're looking at. And the result is a product that almost never gets the conversation it deserves. In this episode, Shannon and Jon break down what a French top actually is, where it came from, and how to make the sale to a customer who walked in with zero frame of reference for it. Jon makes the case that most home cooks are already doing French top behavior without realizing it — moving pots around, adjusting heat zones mid-cook, trying to keep things warm without overcooking. The French top doesn't ask them to cook differently. It just does what they're already doing, better. He also covers where salespeople consistently lose the customer in this conversation, what the correct entry point looks like, and why the assumption that French tops are only for serious chefs is exactly the kind of thinking that keeps a great sale from happening. Which brand is easiest to sell a French top with? Drop a comment or email Anthony — Jon will get back to you. 🎙️ Hosted by Shannon O'Hara and Jon Beresford | The Steel Codcast 🔔 New episode every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.

How to Sell Refrigerator Food Preservation Without Sounding Like a Brochure

FreshFlow. HydroFresh. FreshSeal. ProduceSaver. If you've ever tried to explain produce preservation to a customer and ended up just reciting a branded name — this episode is for you. Jon Beresford breaks down the actual hierarchy of refrigerator food preservation: what matters, in what order, and how to tell the difference between a refrigerator that's genuinely engineered to protect produce and one with a shiny sticker on a leaky plastic drawer. The conversation starts where it should — the drawer itself. Does it seal? Does it have gasket material? Does it create a controlled environment or leak air like a storage bin? If you can't check that box, nothing else in the preservation story holds up. From there, Jon works through humidity balance (not just trapping moisture — managing the exchange), temperature stability (why inverter and variable speed compressors produce fundamentally different environments), produce separation from disruptive airflow (what dual evaporators actually do), and finally — only after all of that — the enhancement layers: ethylene absorption, air purification, and the branded filtration systems that brands love to lead with. Those enhancement layers are real when they're built on strong fundamentals. Sub-Zero didn't build their food preservation reputation on a cartridge. But when the fundamentals are weak, those features are just expensive distractions. Jon also calls out why this category has become a mess — manufacturers realized "keeps food fresher longer" sounds premium, created a thousand different names for it, and let salespeople use the chaos as cover for not actually understanding what they're selling. 👉 Our full air purification episode: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-hpiay-1aced2c 🎙️ Hosted by Shannon O'Hara and Jon Beresford | The Steel Codcast 🔔 New episode every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.

Julie Burns, Executive Director of Monogram, on What's Actually Driving the Brand's Rise

The Power Index has been tracking a shift — Monogram is showing up in showroom conversations in places it historically hasn't. In this episode, we sit down with Julie Burns, Executive Director of Monogram, to hear what's driving it straight from the source. Julie came into the appliance industry from a luxury background outside of appliances, which gave her a perspective that long-time industry insiders often don't have. She walks through what she's built over the past six-plus years at Monogram, what's resonating with the design and trade community that's increasingly specifying the brand, and what the path forward looks like as new lines come to market. For the salespeople listening: this episode gets directly into how to position Monogram in a showroom full of luxury brands, how to separate it from the GE/Café/Profile family in the customer's mind, and how to anchor it in a single, clear statement when a luxury buyer is standing in front of you. Jon also gets into the support structure — Monogram has its own dedicated sales team and service operation separate from other GE brands, which matters enormously on high-end projects where post-sale friction can cost you a relationship. Learn more at monogram.com 🎙️ Hosted by Anthony Fors and Jon Beresford | The Steel Codcast 🔔 New episode every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.