He changed outdoor cooking forever — then took over Weber

Summary

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Episode: "He changed outdoor cooking forever — then took over Weber"

Guest: Roger Dali, CEO of Weber Blackstone
Date: June 29, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This Fourth of July, the annual "grill episode" of Decoder welcomes Roger Dali, CEO of Weber Blackstone—a remarkable full-circle guest who began as founder and CEO of Blackstone and now leads both Blackstone and the storied Weber brand following a major merger.

Nilay and Roger dive into the unexpected journey from Blackstone’s viral griddles to acquiring legendary Weber; the challenges of merging a disruptive upstart with a legacy brand; how antitrust review affected the deal; the complexities of overseas manufacturing; changing consumer dynamics during economic turbulence; and the influence of social media and competitive knock-offs. They also discuss product innovation, brand identity, and Roger’s approach to culture and decision-making as he navigates a much larger company.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Blackstone–Weber Merger: Origins & Process

• Blackstone’s Meteoric Growth and Early Partnerships

  • Blackstone started in 2008; rapid growth necessitated strong overseas manufacturing partnerships, especially with a Taiwanese family running Chinese factories.
  • The partner’s exit (retirement) led Dali into SPACs and private equity deals to finance the next phase ([04:45–07:39]).

• Merger versus Acquisition

  • Initial talks saw Weber possibly acquiring Blackstone.
  • After financial turmoil, Dali found a new private equity partner, then reignited talks with Byron Trott (BDT), Weber’s owner, leading to a “merger of equals” ([07:39–08:03]).

Notable Quote:

"Byron found out that I was thinking of [testing the waters again], called me up and said, 'Let’s do a merger, let’s not do acquisition, but let’s merge these two companies together.'"
—Roger Dali (06:52)

2. Navigating Antitrust Review

• The FTC process was slowed by administrative personnel changes— not anticompetitive concerns ([08:03–08:58]).
• Grill/outdoor cooking market is fiercely competitive, with many brands and retailer private labels; Dali feels no one holds pricing power ([09:18–10:25]).

Notable Quote:

"I could own every outdoor cooking brand in the world and I still couldn’t affect the consumer retail price.”
—Roger Dali (09:13)

3. Weber’s Legacy & Blackstone’s Disruption

• Weber’s Challenges
  • A legacy company with fantastic brand equity, quality, and people, but hampered by excessive C-suite turnover, bloated expenses, and process-heavy structure ([12:34–14:43]).
• Blackstone’s Edge
  • Entrepreneurial, agile, fast to market, functionally organized, and non-MAP (minimum advertised price) policy ([15:27–19:38]).
  • Differentiated product for each retailer, allowing variety and unique features—more like Samsung than Apple in strategy.

Notable Quote:

"We’re an entrepreneurial-led business...I can’t take three years to get a new product in a box. I got to take three months.”
—Roger Dali (15:54)

4. Merging Two Cultures & Structures

• Integration has been gradual, involving cultural shifts on both sides; outside consultants helped facilitate ([21:00–24:32]).
• Dali’s priority: Create a unified company embracing “world-class” practices, not just a blend of previous bests ([24:32]).

Notable Quote:

"I want benchmarks of the best finance department, the best operational team in the world at whatever company. So I’ve really tried to approach it from that viewpoint."
—Roger Dali (24:32)

5. Structure, Synergy, and Product Development

• One company, two brands; shared Centers of Excellence (R&D, manufacturing) organized by expertise and product ([29:35–33:49]).
• R&D teams are consolidated but tackle grill types by brand and channel ([32:57–33:49]).
• Functions such as IT and legal are unified; finance centralized in Chicago ([34:23–39:30]).

6. Brand Positioning and Consumer Focus

• Brand Distinction

  • Weber: "Premium, crafting, serious cooking."
  • Blackstone: "Fast, fun, easy, variety." ([35:54–36:24])

• Both brands maintained for different consumer needs, with overlap only where value is clear ([39:36–39:58]).

7. Accessories: The "French Fries" to the Burger

• Accessories are a major recurring revenue driver, especially for griddles.
• Product innovation and accessories often stem from keen observation of consumer hacks on TikTok and YouTube: e.g., melting domes inspired by cake pans repurposed by users ([42:46–44:22]).

Notable Quote:

"McDonald's wouldn't make it if they couldn't sell french fries. You got to sell the fries with the hamburger.”
—Roger Dali (41:13)

8. Manufacturing, Tariffs, and US Production

• Tariffs and global supply chain shifts have made overseas production challenging, but Weber’s US and Poland factories remain competitive for kettles ([44:45–46:52]).
• Dali wants more US manufacturing for supply chain control and to sharpen kettle price points, but price sensitivity remains a challenge for American-made products ([46:52–56:10]).

9. Technology & Connected Devices

• Blackstone griddles: little need for tech—short cook times.
• Weber’s strategy: Bringing more connected thermometers, leveraging the June acquisition and deepening the app ecosystem, especially valuable for pellet smokers and long cooks ([46:52–48:15], [51:59–53:55]).

Notable Quote:

"I said many times, we will never sell a gas grill. And now I’m the leading seller of gas grills.”
—Roger Dali (52:31)

10. Adapting to Consumer Economics

• Customers are trading down due to economic pressures, including high fuel prices—leading to increased charcoal grill sales ([54:00–55:14]).
• Focus on innovating to provide affordable, quality options, especially with iconic products like the kettle grill ([55:14–56:27]).

11. Longevity, Warranty, and Quality

• Weber’s gas grills offer warranties up to 15 years; higher quality materials set them apart from cheap imports ([57:09–57:54]).

12. Dealing With Dupes, Competition, and Online Marketplaces

• Fierce competition and fast knock-offs, especially with accessories; Dali relies on brand strength and constant innovation to stay ahead ([67:41–69:58]).
• Amazon's marketplace and algorithm challenges, including noncompliant knock-offs and ad spend dilemmas ([70:01–71:30]).

13. Marketing: From TV to Social and Word-of-Mouth

• Shift from exclusively TV advertising to a roughly 50/50 split with social media ([59:23–60:55]).
• Relies on authentic “griddle crew” influencers—eschewing expensive, inauthentic influencer deals ([61:42–63:55]).
• Word-of-mouth still leads in driving new customer acquisition, despite changing marketing tactics ([64:38–65:51]).

Notable Quote:

"All this money we spend on marketing and advertising and influencing and everything else, when we do surveys annually...still the number one way people hear about our brand...is still by word of mouth.”
—Roger Dali (64:38)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Merging with Weber:

  “We have legacy brand and then Blackstone’s innovative and disruptive and it’s still growing. So, yeah, it’s a great combination. It’s been a lot of fun so far.”
  —Roger Dali (15:03)

• On Brand Strategy:

  "Weber, more of the crafting style of food. Blackstone is fast and fun and easy and variety."
  —Roger Dali (35:59)

• On Influencers:

  “When you buy and pay for influencers, the consumer picks it out in seconds. The consumer is so savvy and so smart...I just have to protect my brand and the integrity and the authenticity of my brand."
  —Roger Dali (61:46)

• On His Own Role and Perspective:

  "How many people get an opportunity to ride the wave of a disruptive technology like Blackstone was into an old category that had been around forever and then on top of it, you get to manage and take over the best, biggest brand in that industry. So the way I look at it, like, man, this is a once in a lifetime deal."
  —Roger Dali (72:15)

---

Highlighted Timestamps

• [04:45] The Blackstone–Weber deal’s origin story
• [07:39] Antitrust review and process delays
• [09:13] Market competitiveness and consumer-driven pricing
• [15:54] Blackstone vs. Weber on speed, agility, MAP
• [24:32] Integration philosophy: world-class over best-known
• [32:57] Consolidation of R&D, product development by grill type
• [41:13] The importance and strategy of accessories
• [44:45] Manufacturing, tariffs, and US production challenges
• [46:52] Connected grills and future technology trends
• [54:00] Consumer trade-down: economic pressures & charcoal grills
• [64:38] Word of mouth remains Blackstone’s strongest acquisition channel
• [67:41] Competing with fast-following knock-offs
• [72:15] Roger on his CEO evolution and opportunity

---

Tone and Language

• Engaging, candid discussion—Roger speaks directly, blending humility with entrepreneurial bravado.
• Nilay draws direct parallels between the grill business and tech, keeping the language vivid, relatable, and occasionally humorous.
• The conversation is rich with anecdotes and “from the trenches” business wisdom.

---

Conclusion

Roger Dali’s journey from scrappy, TikTok-fueled disruptor to CEO of two of America’s biggest outdoor cooking brands offers a revealing look at the modern complexities of manufacturing, innovation, culture, and marketing—even in age-old industries. The conversation brims with actionable insight for entrepreneurs, operators, and brand strategists alike, illuminating how consumer expectations, digital trends, and economic pressures are shaping the future—whether you’re building griddles, grills, or gadgets.

---

For a deep dive into the world of outdoor cooking innovation and what it takes to blend a heritage brand with an insurgent one, this episode is essential listening.

Transcript

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Support for the show comes from ServiceNow. AI is moving fast across the enterprise, but without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. ServiceNow turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place, what it's doing, what it's done and what it's about to do. So you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com, support for this show comes from Klaviyo. Imagine hiring two brilliant employees. The first takes your marketing from idea to full campaign, email, sms, push and the time it takes to describe it. The second handles every customer conversation 24. 7 answering questions, recommending products, handling orders both on brand and always on your next hires. Klaviyo's AI agents get started at K L A v I y o.com

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

when

[Nilay Patel]

I scraped my car in that parking garage, I was worried that it could be a long process to take care of it. Like a landscaper's first day trimming a hedge maze. I have definitely already been here. Now, was it left right or right left? Well, maybe I'll cut a path out and find my way back later. But it wasn't like that. I filed a claim in under two minutes on the Geico app and they handled it from there. It was taken care of almost as quickly as it happened. It feels good to get help quick.

[Roger Dali]

It feels good to Geico.

[Nilay Patel]

Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Eli Patel, editor in Chief of the Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. It's the 4th of July, and this is our annual grill episode. We invite the CEOs of outdoor cooking companies onto the show to explain just how their businesses kind of looked like every other business. And this is a very special edition of our grill episode. Today I'm talking to Roger Dali, the CEO of Weber Blackstone. A full circle moment for Decoder. Roger was our first ever Grill CEO on the show, back when he was the CEO of Just Blackstone. He started the company in 2008. But these griddles exploded in popularity during the pandemic when videos of Smashburgers went relentlessly viral on TikTok. The company grew so fast and so furiously that that Roger was able to buy Weber a couple years ago, a legacy company that had fallen on hard times. Fun fact. We wanted Roger on the show last year to talk about that deal, but it was stuck in antitrust review at the Federal Trade Commission. So Roger and I talked about all that what competition review entails for a merger of grill companies and what it takes to manufacture these products overseas and import them to the United States in an age of high tariffs and even higher energy prices, which are pushing consumers down market. Of course, we also talked about what it means to merge with Weber, a storied company with iconic products that have gotten really stuck in its ways and pretty siloed. Roger seems very eager to break those silos down and create a new company with a new culture. Like I said, there's a lot in this one, including whether or not the chip market is affecting Weber's connected thermometer business. It's pure decoder bait through and through. Roger was great in this one. Can't wait for you to listen to it. Here's Roger Dali, CEO of Weber Blackstone. Here we go. Roger Dali, you're the CEO of Weber Blackstone. Welcome back to Decoder.

[Roger Dali]

Thank you. Good to be back.

[Nilay Patel]

I am thrilled to have this conversation. Five years ago, 2021, we thought it would be so fun to Talk to Grill CEOs in the summer because one of our theses here on Decoder is all these companies have the same problems, and it's the summer, and we should go talk to grill companies. And at the time, we made a list of all the companies we want to talk to, and we put Weber at the top because they were the big brand name. And they said no. And I was like, we gotta talk to Roger at Blackstone, because I'm watching TikTok every day and Blackstones are going viral on TikTok. And so we start with you. You are first ever guest in this series, and now you're the CEO of Weber. And I feel like that is just about as perfectly full circle as it gets. So thank you so much for coming back.

[Roger Dali]

Yeah, I didn't see that coming. When we talked a couple of years

[Nilay Patel]

ago, a lot has happened. Weber was bought by private equity. You had a spac that came and went. You didn't go through with it and bought Weber. Let's just talk about how all of this came together. Blackstone's been around since 2008. We won't go through the whole history. People can go listen to that episode if they want to. 2008, you started it. You went super viral. In 2021, you did a lot. How did you end up in the position to combine with Weber, which really turned out to be more of an acquisition?

[Roger Dali]

So interesting. In 21, I have to go back to 2015. Blackstone was growing so fast. I needed to get a manufacturing partner that I could rely and trust on and knew a family from Taiwan that had facilities in mainland China. Father son combination, good friends, and they had never been in outdoor cooking before. So we started together and they in fact became an equity partner in the business in 2015. They were building for me a little bit before then. The business was so successful and grew so rapidly from 15 through 2020 that the father of the father son combo was at retirement age and he wanted to slow down. So they were looking to sell their equity in the company, which started this whole process of me going into the financial markets and talking to investment bankers and going through that whole process, which led to almost going public via the SPAC. During that time and through some of those roadshows, I met Byron Trott who owns BDT. He actually has owned Weber since 2010. If you can believe it, his company's held onto that position for over 16 years now. And he loved the story of Blackstone. And we actually went through a pretty serious process with them about a potential acquisition of Weber. Of Blackstone.

[Nilay Patel]

So Weber would acquire Blackstone back originally,

[Roger Dali]

yeah, but it just wasn't right. Timing wasn't right. There were just a few things that didn't line up at the time. So we ended up not doing that transaction. That's when we almost went public via the spac. And then, as you know, the financial markets fell to pieces and Weber and Traeger coincidentally had already gone public and their stocks had horrible experience. You know, they came out, ran high and then went really low. So the SPAC deal didn't work. And at that point I did find a financial partner, private equity Group, who took possession of my Chinese manufacturing partners shares. That was in 22. And then in 24. We had continued to grow at Blackstone and had phenomenal success. We were very fortunate. Again, we had accomplished really in two years what that financial partner thought would take five. So we decided to test the waters and see what the next transaction looked like. Byron found out that I was thinking of that again, called me up and said, let's do a merger, let's not do acquisition, but let's merge these two companies together. And so we came to an agreement in 24, end of 24. And then we had to go through antitrust process with the FTC and that took until May of 25. So we've been merged together now for just barely over a year.

[Nilay Patel]

It's funny, we asked you to come on the show last year for this episode because we'd heard all this and I thought, this is fascinating. We have to get Roger back. And you declined because you were in the middle of this antitrust review process. I'm curious about that. This is the Trump administration. They're historically very friendly to deals. This is not Lina Khan's ftc. Why did it take so long? Why was it so complicated? This isn't like a big tech deal. This isn't paramount.

[Roger Dali]

It was an easy deal. Unfortunately for us, we signed our agreement in December and that's when the clock started ticking with the ftc. Well, they're not going to get anything done December with all the holiday breaks. They have 30 day windows to look at your deal and say, yes, you can merge or no, we want to take a further look. So they extended that till the end of February. Then they extended it one more time because all the commissioners in the new administration hadn't been appointed yet. So we just really got stuck in no man's land because they have five commissioners in Washington D.C. as I understand, and I think two were in place or three, but they needed all five to be in place. As soon as they were fully staffed, they called us up and said, yeah, your deal's fine, go ahead. Wow. So it just took a minute. I think we were just in the middle of transition with administration.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

I look at the grill industry, the outdoor cooking industry, as you call it, and there seems to be a surplus of competition. There's infinite brands showing up constantly. Last year we had the CEO of Shark Ninja. They had just put out a grill because they saw opportunity in the space. Do you feel like you've reduced competition by acquiring Weber? Do you think the competition is getting more ferocious or.

[Roger Dali]

Competition's always there. And the other thing about our industry as an outdoor cooking, every major retailer has their own in house brand, private label. I could own every outdoor cooking brand in the world and I still couldn't affect the consumer retail price because my customer is, is really in charge. They walk into a store, online, wherever they might find our products for sale, and if they don't like the retail price, they don't buy it. So the FTC is really focused on competition and making sure the consumer is protected, which I love. I think I have no problem with that. I want the consumer taken care of and protected as well. But my business is very competitive. There's always somebody new coming along like Sharkninja, who'd never been in the business before, and then people who've been around for a long time. Competitive companies have been around for a long Time. And then on top of it I have my retail customers with their own private label brands. And so if retail prices get out of hand or if they think they're too high, or if they think a product has been more commoditized, they put their private label brand on it and offer it to their customers.

[Nilay Patel]

Do you supply any of that private label stuff? I don't think Home Depot is actually manufacturing its own grills. Do you supply any of that white label product?

[Roger Dali]

I don't, but I know most of the suppliers, the factories in Asia who do.

[Nilay Patel]

And are they competitive with you? Are they price sensitive to you? This is a market that I think it's so physical, the products are so big and then they do turn, people buy new ones kind of all the time. So it's just a different kind of competitive dynamic to have the white label supplier right there. And so top of mind for you.

[Roger Dali]

Yeah, it's really kind of a go to market strategy that each retailer deploys and how they think about it, what retail prices they want to offer their customers and what features, benefits they want to offer at those price points. And so if they can better serve that price point and that feature set using their own label, they will. But if a brand, for example, Blackstone, for a long time none of my customers carried an in house griddle, for example, because they wouldn't sell. They put them out there and people would step over them, around them. I don't mean physically, I mean over the price point to buy a Blackstone. So we were very fortunate that way. But if you look at gas grills, Lowe's, Depot, most of the retailers, Walmart, carry a house brand because they can offer their customer the value they want at that retail price point. It's really a merchandising strategy that they use and I think it works. I think it's great for the customer. It's tough right now at retail, as I'm sure you're aware.

[Nilay Patel]

Oh yeah, no, I want to come to manufacturing the products. You've mentioned China several times already that obviously that is changing the dynamic in the heart of summer. I'm sure this is the high season for you. It's not getting easier. So I want to come to that. But I just want to stay on the deal for one second. Weber is the household name. Like I said, we made the list of Grill CEOs and obviously you put Weber at the top. You are now the CEO of Weber. My understanding is that Weber's business was not doing very well, that there was some inherent Flaw in that business. We've done a lot of episodes about private equity takeovers and how the PE firms tend to extract the profits and not invest in innovation, especially for big legacy companies. Was that your assessment of Weber? Was that the opportunity?

[Roger Dali]

No. BDT is a phenomenal financial partner. I mean I love working with them and Byron Trott is at the top of the list. I think behind the scenes in that industry. Weber in my opinion, in my assessment, when we took over and started being able to look because until we had FTC clearance, 100% clearance, we couldn't really see anything other than public information. But it's a typical legacy type company with a big brand and great presence, great product, phenomenal quality, really good people. I love the people that were working there and the culture that they had. But in my opinion there had been some C suite turnover that was way too high and different philosophies on how to serve the customer. And as a result expenses got way out of hand. And then as you know, a private company versus a public company, the cost structure is completely different and there's a lot of expense in being a publicly traded company that hadn't come out of the business yet. So the product sell through at retail and the perception with end user customers has never been better. It's extremely well. But the profitability of the company was challenged and needed a different. I think that's why Byron wanted to merge us is because we just do things completely opposite of the way they had done it traditionally at Weber and especially over the last, I'm going to say seven years because you know, for many years the Steven family who were the. George Stephen is the founder of the business. Then his son Jim took over as CEO for a long time until they sold to BDT. They're a great profitable business and up until 2020, 2019, they did extremely well. So really the last five, six, seven years.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, the timeline here just. I just want to clear it up for listeners because you're talking about BDT a lot and they've been in and out of Weber for a long time. It's true. So they bought a majority stake in Weber in 2010, then Weber IPO'd in 2021. It didn't go well.

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

They only raised 250 million. I think their target was 500 million in 22. BBT took Weber back private.

[Roger Dali]

Correct.

[Nilay Patel]

So then they were the full owners. And Then obviously in 24 you announced are going to combine. So they, the, you know, the PE firm took the company back private. Were they Sort of immediately looking for a buyer, or was it just you showed up and they happened to know you quite well?

[Roger Dali]

I don't think they were really looking for a buyer. The merger made a lot more sense, especially by combining the strengths of both companies and then just cleaning up. It's a phenomenal opportunity. You know, we have legacy brand and then Blackstone's innovative and disruptive and it's still growing. So, yeah, it's a great combination. It's been a lot of fun so far.

[Nilay Patel]

Tell me about the mechanics of this. You're saying the way you do things is differently than the way that Weber had done things traditionally. They are a legacy brand. They've been around since the 50s. There's a world in which they just have to keep selling Weber kettles. And that is the thing they have to do. It's literally the logo. I have a Summit Grill, one of the fancier grills. My father in law bought it for me ages ago. The thing has been rocking and rolling for a dec. What does Blackstone do differently that Weber wasn't doing? That created the opportunity?

[Roger Dali]

We're an entrepreneurial led business and that's the way I like to think and operate and spend money and not spend money. And I don't think Weber's alone in this. Whenever you get a company that's been around 70 plus years, you start getting too structured, you start getting too layered and you start getting too siloed. And that's completely opposite of the way we do things. Let me explain it this way. So part of the culture at Blackstone that I've always tried to instill is if you're walking through my parking lot and you work at this company and there's a piece of garbage on the ground, you bend over and pick it up, put it in the garbage can. Not because you have to, but because that's what you do. That's your culture. You want to make this a great place to work, great environment. When I got to Weber, I wondered if that was the culture. And what I found out was it was not. And not that they wouldn't bend over and pick up a piece of garbage. They'd be more than happy to do that. They're not too proud, they're not. It's not beneath them. But if they do that, they fear that they might be taking the janitor's job away. And so out of respect to their co workers, as strange as this sounds, they stay really siloed and they, they start here, they end here. And this is what I do. And if I try to expand beyond that, it throws off the whole system of the way we do things. It's very, very structured. Everything has to be tidied up, put in place perfectly before the next step can even begin to happen. And we start off at Blackstone. We've always done the speed to market with new product. New product development to me is critical and essential. I can't take three years to get a new product in a box. I got to take three months. And so that's the differences that I'm talking about. Philosophies, how speed to market their mapped price. And we're not. I've never been a mapped price. I don't know if you're familiar with that policy.

[Nilay Patel]

Can you explain that to the listeners?

[Roger Dali]

So MAP stands for maintained advertised price. And so weber sells a 499 gas grill. Everybody's the same retail and they can't control retail prices. But what they can do is say, this is what we want you to advertise it for. If you do that and maintain that advertised price, you will be eligible for the rebate you get from our advertising department. And so, you know, nobody can control retail prices. That's anti competitive. But you can have a MAP policy with your retail customers. So everybody's the same retail that sells Weber. Whether you buy it at Walmart, Lowe's, Ace Depot, wherever you buy it, if it's the same grill, it's going to be at the same retail price point. I've never been a mapped price policy with Blackstone and I don't want to cause confusing with my confusion with my customers. And so what we've done successfully is we've developed products of families that we sell to our retail customers. And that way everybody kind of has their own product. And it works great because we merchandise with the retail customers to their customers. And that's really what we try to focus on is the end user. The people who are walking in, laying down a credit card to buy a griddle or a grill, they're expensive. This is not hand of the moment fly decision that people make. This is an expensive product that they buy that needs to last for a long time so they take their time to make a decision. And so we like to give our retail customers features and benefits and the value proposition that they're really trying to get for their customer who walks into their retail store.

[Nilay Patel]

Can I make the comparison to tech companies? This is why I love doing the grill episode every year. You're describing a lot of things that obviously you thought about very deeply in your corner of the industry. Tech companies do this all the time. Samsung makes a different phone for every carrier, right. The Samsung Galaxy S26, it's actually slightly different for every carrier. So they can play these same games with map. Right. Minimum advertised prices. Apple won't do it. Right. The iPhone's the iPhone and maybe there's like radio differences, but the iPhone's the iPhone. And you see there's competition in the market in that way. Right? With, with Blackstone, the. I think it's what the culinary line is at Lowe's, but it's not at Depot. It's. You've got, you. You're literally making different products or at least different branding for all of your partners. You're also describing what I would call pure decoder bait that Weber had this extremely divisional organization that was very process driven. And you have. It sounds like. I want to ask you the question more directly, but it sounds like you have a more functional structure. You're really product led, product development led, all that comes together.

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

But you've got to change the culture at Weber. You got to go into this company that has a different business process, right? You've got to take your company which approaches the retailers like Apple, and go into a company that approaches the retailers like Samsung, and then you've got a functional structure and you got to go into a very rigid, process oriented, divisional structure. It's been about a year. Did, did you just smash glass and make all the changes? Like, how does this work?

[Roger Dali]

A little bit. There's. There was some hurt feelings on here and there and, and kind of on both sides. That's been really interesting to me. It's just kind of watching the way the team at Blackstone reacted to this and the team at Weber. One thing I absolutely knew, and it's proven to be true, is that I was going to find people at Weber who were just dedicated, phenomenal employees who may have a little bit of pent up ideas and ambition and wanting to do things differently. And that's certainly been the case. So I got to unleash those people and let them go do things the way they thought that they wanted to and the way that they thought would be better. This is a better way to serve our customers. Let's do it this way instead of that way. So that's been really fun. But I did hire a consulting firm to come in and help me with the integration and it was a good decision. I didn't really start hard on integration until November of last Year, I took the first four or five months to try to learn and see and understand and get to know people. And candidly, I had to really evaluate the C suite that merged in together and see how that all worked. And I had to make some changes there. So it took a minute from the top, you know, really integrating my C suite and then moving it out to the rest of the organization. And really we're still in that process. It's going to take me another year to fully get that done. But the results are phenomenal, and the momentum has been building, and it's really coming together.

[Nilay Patel]

Most people are never going to hire a consulting company to manage an integration. This is a pretty high order thing to do. Very, very few people have to make a decision of which consulting company to pick. How did they pitch you? How did you decide?

[Roger Dali]

When I had my previous financial partner, a week after we closed the deal with them, this is going clear back to 22. They parked their consultant in my office in Utah because they wanted to see how they could help improve. And he worked for that company. But he had spent his career with one of the really big consulting companies in the US you could probably guess which one. And so he was really, really sharp and learned a lot from him. When I went to hire a consulting company, I called him up and asked for recommendations because he still hires them to this day. When they invest in a company, they bring a consultant in to kind of help if they're integrating or just trying to improve process. So I called him, he gave me four names and gave me the contacts for those four names. I called each company, and then I just took them through an interview process, just like you would hiring somebody. And then I also included two of my board members who've had a lot of experience with integration. And they stepped in and together. It was a pretty easy decision for us, which way we went. And it's turned out to be a really good decision. They've been really, really helpful.

[Nilay Patel]

One of my tropes here on Decoder is that culture is really important, and structure really defines your culture. And I've had people just straight up disagree with me. There are CEOs who are like, no, no. Culture is its own thing. You can change the structure as much as you want. The culture just comes from leadership. You're integrating two very different cultures, two very different structures. It sounds like you know what you want, right? You're going to. You're going to change both companies. It sounds on both sides, ever so slightly to get to the outcome. You want Is it more of telling everyone to pick up the trash? Culture change or is it more structure change?

[Roger Dali]

Let me answer that this way. So a lot of people advise me and they're like, when you start doing this integration, you want to take the best practices from Blackstone and the best practices from Weber and merge those together. And I said, well, I don't know if that's what I want. What if the best and the best are just mediocre and not the best? I want world class. So I want benchmarks of the best finance department, the best operational team in the world at whatever company. So I've really tried to approach it from that viewpoint. And then the culture, I think culture comes from everybody unifying and having a common goal of what they want to do and what we want this company to become and having enthusiasm and excitement and pride. So when you come to work, whether it's Monday or Friday or any day in between, you're really excited to get in the office and get going because you're going to make a change and you're going to impact the business and it's going to be exciting and it's going to be rewarding for the employee. That's really kind of where I'm keying my focus.

[Nilay Patel]

We need to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Support for the show comes from Upwork. Running a business is complicated enough so when it comes to hiring, you can take something off your plate with upwork. Upwork makes it easy to hire specialized freelancers quickly so you can get the expertise you need now without weeks of recruiting or a full time hire. Upwork is a one stop platform to find, hire and pay expert freelancers. You can find specialized talent across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations and more. Browse profiles, review their past work and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence. You can also enjoy the benefits of Business plus, which gives you access to the top 1% of talent on their platform. With AI powered shortlistings, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's up w o r k.com upwork.com support for the show comes from Upwork. When you're hiring, you want things to be easy, not another thing that gives you a headache. That's why Upwork makes it easy to hire specialized freelancers quickly so you can get the expertise you need now without weeks of recruiting or a full time hire. Upwork is a one stop platform to find, hire and pay expert freelancers. You can find specialized talent across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations and more. You can also enjoy the benefits of Business plus, which gives you access to the top 1% of talent on their platform. With AI powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours and you don't need to worry yourself with the operational stuff. Upwork has contracts and payments covered. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upwork.com upwork.com support for the show comes from Framer. If your team wants a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship, Framer is built for that. You design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting and a CMS built in so the work is production ready. From day one, agents work alongside you to draft pages and polish sections. Then you review and publish what goes live. Framer is the pro site builder for creators, teams and businesses that want a professional site and care enough to get every detail right. Agents solve the gap between AI generated ideas and production ready website work. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free [e-mail] decoder for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com decoder for 30 percent off framer.com decoder rules and restrictions may apply.

[Nilay Patel]

So let me ask you the decoder questions now. It sounds like you have a ways to go on this integration. How are you structured now? Is it two different companies? Is it one company of two divisions? How is that working?

[Roger Dali]

One company with two awesome brands is how we're structured.

[Nilay Patel]

And then under that, are you sharing R and D? Are you sharing product development?

[Roger Dali]

Yeah, and kind of by centers of excellence if you will. And we have a beautiful office in Chicago out in the suburbs. We have a new office here in Utah for our headquarters that we just built. I was doing that anyway, just coincided with the merger. We have R and D facilities here in Logan and in Chicago and then we have teams around the world. Weber has a big organization in EMEA and we have a manufacturing facility in Poland, that's state of the art and about 4 years old. We have operations in China still, and we've moved to Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand for manufacturing. And so we have staff and people there as well. So we're keeping it based on centers of excellence and where expertise lie because nobody in Logan had ever built a gas grill before. So I'm not going to really take those engineers and try to expect them to get up to speed and vice versa with griddles in Chicago.

[Nilay Patel]

Well, Weber had built a griddle. They built the slate. They went after a bunch of your influencers. There's like a tiny little scandal. And in grill influencer world that Weber had done a bunch of integrations. Are you canceling the slate?

[Roger Dali]

No, because there's still consumers who love the Weber brand. But we'll merchandise it by feature benefit and value proposition based on retail price point and retail placement. So if you look at our industry, we're small as far as numbers of doors that sell our product. Well, I shouldn't say it that way because there's a lot of doors, but there's Home Depot, Lowe's, Ace, Walmart, Amazon, Costco, and then it goes way down from there as far as potential volumes with retail customers. So it's a relatively small customer base. And so we have to do business with everybody, number one. And I want to please my customer. Again, I really try to focus on the end user and. And we have extremely dedicated Weber customers and we want to offer them products. But there's no reason, for example, for Weber and Blackstone brand to both have a $150 griddle that's really kind of more of a Blackstone type price point. But if there's a retail customer who wants an upgraded griddle and they want the Weber brand and a longer warranty experience, then a $7.99 slate's probably the answer for them.

[Nilay Patel]

Let me ask you about that. Just the development of that product as you combine the companies and you combine these cultures. Blackstone every year I just like look at the product catalog. I'm like, everything is brand new. Right. It's almost like the company is starting from scratch over and over again. Weber is very classic. That kettle has really not changed. And the son of girl that my father in law bought me 10 years ago and the son of grill today, they're virtually identical. In fact, the big difference is I think the new one can accept griddle plates and mine. Yeah, that's like fundamentally the difference. That's a different approach to product development. Are you going to have one product development team that drives a roadmap for both brands, or does Weber get to have its own griddle development team because the price point is different?

[Roger Dali]

No, we have one. We have one R and D group. We have consolidated. That's one of the first departments I wanted consolidated, even though it wasn't the easiest because we have great talent in both offices now. So have a VP over R D and then it staffs out from there. And we assign development groups based on grill type, basically. So we'll have product management and industrial design and engineering for gas grills for Griddle. But if we have a group working on Griddle, they can work on either brand and vice versa with gas grills. If Blackstone decided to ever get into gas grills, that team would develop that for Blackstone.

[Nilay Patel]

So this reminds me, you know, Mary Barrett from GM on the show, and she has Buick and Chevy and Cadillac and there are shared platforms for those cars and then there are brand teams that build on top of those platforms. Is that the model that you're going after here?

[Roger Dali]

Pretty much. There's companies who. Black and Decker, maybe one. I'm not 100% sure, but they might have a DeWalt team and they don't share resources, say, with the Stanley team. But I don't know. I'm just using that as an example. I mean, you could go down that road and have that model. They even have salespeople dedicated by brand. Some companies do. Where I'm not going to retail that way. If I go into Costco, my sales team that calls on Costco, the commercial team, they're representing both brands to the buying teams there.

[Nilay Patel]

And then I'm assuming on the rest of your functions, IT and legal, that is all just long since combined, correct?

[Roger Dali]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

You said something really interesting. I just want to come back to it really quickly. You said there were hurt feelings on both sides. What were the hurt feelings on the Blackstone side? Weren't you just the winners? It feels like you're the conquering heroes here.

[Roger Dali]

No, I mean, the reality is everybody can improve and everybody can get better. And one of the things that I've really fought hard to maintain was making sure that at Blackstone we didn't get complacent because we've had a lot of success for a long time. We've had a great run. That can breed complacency. You better wake up every day and feel like you're starting at the 0 yard line and you got 100 yards to go. Nobody gets to start at the 10 yard line. So that was some of the. Oh, we're Blackstone. We've done extreme. We know what we're doing. And Weber's been old and slow and no, I won't put up with that kind of attitude. So that's a little bit about what I was referring to.

[Nilay Patel]

How many people is the combined company? How many employees do you have?

[Roger Dali]

About 20, 100.

[Nilay Patel]

And how's that split between Weber and Blackstone?

[Roger Dali]

High majority at Weber. And keep in mind, there's two factories there, and so there's a lot of employees in the factories both in Poland and in the United States.

[Nilay Patel]

And will that division maintain that some are Weber people and some are Blackstone people? Are you going to have like a central company and then the two brands express differently?

[Roger Dali]

It's a central company is what I'm driving for. This is one company with two awesome brands.

[Nilay Patel]

And then just real quick, how would you define the Weber brand and how would you define the Blackstone brand?

[Roger Dali]

The Weber brand is it serves the customer more of on a premium level. And it is for, like, when you want to cook serious and you want to take your time and you want to craft. Crafting is kind of the word I use to describe Weber. Blackstone is fast and fun and easy and variety. Weber, more of the crafting style of food.

[Nilay Patel]

I feel like I could waste an hour on that, but we're gonna put that one good because I don't want to run out of time. I need to ask you another coder question. I think this has changed for you over time. How do you make decisions? What's your framework now?

[Roger Dali]

I make decisions by counseling with my executive leadership team. I love to bring everybody together when there's a tough decision because I want it. And let's say it's a marketing decision. I expect my finance guy to chip in and make a contribution. As to the comment, if it's a finance decision, I expect the sales guys to chip in or my commercial leaders to chip in and talk about it. So I try to get everybody together and really go more through a counseling process. I think we make better decisions when we get all of our brains working together, and then I'm the final vote decider. If I don't like what they all think together, then I'll decide what I think is best. But I have found over time and over a lot of experience and making good decisions and making bad decisions, better decisions are made when I get everybody working on it together.

[Nilay Patel]

You mentioned you had to make a lot of decision about people Right. They're hurt feelings on both sides. And you wanted to really evaluate their C suite and their people, and maybe they were doing things better than the Blackstone side was. Making decisions about people is really hard. It sounds like you just had to make a lot of decisions about who to keep and who to move on from. How did you make those choices and how did you communicate those choices?

[Roger Dali]

So we went through quite an elaborate process with the executive leadership team and they each took responsibility for their areas and they went through working with our consulting company line item by line item, job function by job function. And one of the variables that was taken out is where people lived. I don't care where they live. I don't care if they're in Poland or Chicago or Logan or New Zealand, Australia. We really went through and looked at job function and where it could be best performed. And then the harder decisions are where you're just looking at where we're duplicated in staff and how do we make those decisions. But that's the process that we went through.

[Nilay Patel]

Tell me one of those. Like, Certainly you had VPs of sales, for example. You had to make a choice. What was the framework for making that choice?

[Roger Dali]

It was so different depending on each function. There wasn't one set of this is the variables you'll use to make a decision for everybody. So again, the variables were so unique, depending on the job function, one hat didn't fit all. One of the easier ones, although it was very difficult from a personal standpoint. But Chicago was my center of excellence for the finance department and we had duplication in Logan. So, you know, accounts payables, accounts receivables, those kinds of teams needed to be consolidated. And the folks in Logan got more impacted from losing their jobs than the folks did in Chicago. So that's one example of where we, you know, that one was maybe a little bit easier to make a decision because the finance department's staying out there.

[Nilay Patel]

Do you want the Weber brand to rub off on the Blackstone brand or do you want them to grow independently?

[Roger Dali]

Yeah, that's a great question. And it's really part of our go to market strategy. We really believe both brands serve different purposes. And that's what I want the team to focus on, is what purpose does Blackstone serve and what purpose does Weber serve to the customer? And what does my end user customer expect from both of those brands to deliver? Because there's some nuances, there's some differences there.

[Nilay Patel]

I'll just say this. It's been five years since we've spoken. You're playing a different character now, right? You're the CEO of a much larger company. You're obviously thinking very hard about how to manage Weber and integrate it correctly. You just have a much bigger problem to solve. The last time we spoke, you were on an upswing of rapid growth, particularly in the pandemic, right? The Blackstone was a viral sensation on TikTok. In the pandemic, you were just trying to move as many units as you could, and you had a lot of ideas about how there'd be recurring revenue for Blackstone as people bought more and more accessories for the griddle. And you said, you can cook on this three meals a day. And we see people making pancakes and then they're making dinner and we're going to sell the pancake kicks, and then we're going to sell the dome to melt the cheese on the cheeseburgers. And that was such a huge part of your focus then, right? You weren't just going to sell one griddle, you were going to sell an entire lifestyle. Now you've got this other big company which has its own lifestyle, associated, its own kind of brand image, its own moments in Americana, and you've got this much bigger problem to solve. Is the thesis still the same that you're going to buy a Blackstone and then I'm going to buy one set of accessories and another set of accessories, and then Alexis Ohanian is going to make dinosaur pancakes with his kids on Instagram and that's going to sell even more. Like, how does that work? As your role has gotten so much

[Roger Dali]

bigger, Thesis is still a lot the same. Accessories are a very important part of our business, and especially on a griddle, because there's so many things you can do on a griddle that you need those accessories. They're a pretty important part of it. And then the other interesting thing is, is that with the retail marketplace the way it is right now, the way it is today, it's tariffs have been heavily impacted us last year, and we're still feeling the results of that from Liberation Day. And then on top of it, we had to move manufacturing facilities to Southeast Asia. That was not flawless, I should say. We had plenty of headaches there. And then just this summer, with gas prices going up the way that they have, that really affects our customers. And so they may not be able to afford a new griddle right now for Father's Day, but they certainly can go buy two or three accessories that Dad's always wanted. So the accessory business is a huge part of our business and translating that over and sharing that concept with the Weber teams and helping them understand, you know, McDonald's wouldn't make it if they couldn't sell french fries. You got to sell the fries with the hamburger. So accessories are a really critical part of our total overall business for both brands.

[Nilay Patel]

The interesting thing about the griddle market, when you said that to me, you know, I was a new griddle owner five years ago, and I was like, yeah, I want to buy 10 spatulas and four different hamburger smashers, and let's do it. And now I have all that stuff. Do you have to invent new things for me to try to do on my griddle? How does that work?

[Roger Dali]

That's interesting. We don't try to invent new things just so you'll buy something else from us. Everything we build in accessories especially. And we learned this the hard way, because at first we're like, oh, let's do this, let's do that. And we would put those products in the market. They wouldn't sell. So when we put a product in the market, that's a new accessory, it is coming from a lot of consumer feedback. We get great ideas from YouTube and TikTok, and we watch what our customers are doing and how they're modifying things and how they're making it easier and simpler. It's all consumer driven on the accessories.

[Nilay Patel]

What's an example of that?

[Roger Dali]

Well, the spatulas themselves, right? And so sometimes they're thick and not flexible. Those are great for hamburgers. But sometimes they're softer and more flexible. Those are great for pancake flipping. And especially if you're doing eggs, scrambled or fried eggs. You just mentioned a dome, a melting dome. People were using cake pans when we first saw that on YouTube, and we're like, they were drilling a hole in it and putting a handle that they got from someplace so they could lift it on and off the griddle. And then over time, as products develop, especially on our accessories line, we learned from one year to the next, working with our retail customers. You had 50 accessories. Here's the top 10 sellers. Here's the bottom 10 sellers. Let's go through item by item, talk about what worked and what didn't work, and what do we need to learn from our customers to modify, get rid of, improve on, and change for next for next season. So that's kind of the process we go through.

[Nilay Patel]

All those accessories are made overseas. You've mentioned overseas manufacturing and tariffs and liberation day now several times. It's interesting. You have competitors. Republic, like Traeger is a public company. They've had to just loudly say that tariff policy and trade policy has hurt their business. It sounds like that's the same for you. Is that something you're actively lobbying against? Is something you're just dealing with?

[Roger Dali]

Not lobbying, dealing with. And it affected the whole industry because everybody builds overseas. Except, interestingly enough, Weber, because we have a factory just west of Chicago in a suburb called Huntley, and we still build most of our kettles for the US Market in Huntley, Illinois. And we've maintained that. And it's really challenging. It's very difficult to maintain a retail price point that my customers want to pay for a kettle. And we, we've upgraded the quality of that thing. It has a 10 year warranty on it. That's amazing. A kettle gets hot with coals and everything in it that you put in there. It gets beat up and abused. But we build it at a quality level. We can maintain a 10 year warranty on it. We also build kettles for the European market in our factory in Poland. And we wanted to expand manufacturing and then with tariffs and everything else, and a tariff gets announced and the cost of steel goes up the next day, coincidentally. Right. Big surprise. But demand goes up for it. So steel markets are reacting to the demand. So it just continues to kind of chase itself on profitability and where you can and can't build a product. But we work every day still trying to build in the US and continue to figure that puzzle out. I'd love to build more in the US If I could, but this is not a particular product. But if something retails for $600 or $300, the customer votes with their credit card and they vote for 300 because quality is the same.

[Nilay Patel]

The theory of the tariffs is they'll bring up the prices of the overseas products to the same as the prices that you would have to charge if you made them in the United States. It doesn't sound like that's actually pushing you to manufacture more in the United States.

[Roger Dali]

I am trying to push more for manufacturing in the United States just to have more control of my supply chain. That would be my biggest motive there. But I have to be profitable. Tariffs have certainly started to even the playing field and make it more attractive to build in the US and we're actively reviewing opportunities, you know, like I say, to continue to build more product here in the US I don't think

[Nilay Patel]

you have too much of a chip dependency or a ram dependency. Weber owns Igrill, which is their connected platform. I don't think Blackstone has a huge connected platform, but Weber, that was part of their strategy was to get smarter, to make it easier to cook. Has that affected you? Or do you stare down the barrel of Nvidia buying all the chips in the world and say this is really hurting our Igrill portfolio.

[Roger Dali]

It has an impact at SIS because we haven't expanded into that category deep enough to where it would impact us. But we did buy another technology called June Ovens. Weber did. And it has some phenomenal technology for cooking. It's just really super expensive. And so we're still trying to figure that puzzle out. But as a result of that technology, we've greatly expanded our connected devices and our thermometers. And then you're going to start seeing some electronics on some of our high end summit grills that are full. Just unbelievable. And really, I think the biggest application for technology and outdoor cooking is with pellet grills because on a griddle it takes you two minutes to cook a hamburger, right? I don't need, I don't even have time to hook up and my meat's done. But if you're, if you're smoking something, you're going to take 4, 8, 14 hours to cook something. The connected device is really beneficial and helpful.

[Nilay Patel]

We have to pause here for another quick break. We'll be right back.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Support for this show comes from Klaviyo. There are only so many hours in a day and Klaviyo's two powerful AI agents can make sure your team spends them on big things. The first Klaviyo AI agent turns your marketing ideas into reality instantly. Describe what you want. A holiday campaign, a VIP re engagement series. And Klaviyo builds it instantly. Email, SMS and push. All coordinated on brand grounded in 14 years of Klaviyo marketing data. Nothing goes live without your say so. The other Klaviyo AI agent keeps your customers happy at any hour. Brand trained to answer questions, make product recommendations and handle orders and returns. No hold music marketing that launches instantly. Support that never sleeps. Join more than 193,000 brands, including Away Patrick TA and Dollar Shave Club. Already growing with Klaviyo. The autonomous B2C CRM. Get started at K L-A-V-I-Y-O.com

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

We've all been there. You pop into the shop for five minutes and all of a sudden you've forgotten where you parked.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Car.

[Nilay Patel]

Car.

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

Unfortunately, that lost feeling is what it's like trying to manage your policy with other Insurers here.

[Nilay Patel]

Car. Come out, come out, wherever you are, please.

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

With geico, you can use the app to easily manage all your policies in one place.

[Roger Dali]

Did this parking lot have a waterfall?

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

I think. I think you've wandered too far, mate.

[Nilay Patel]

It feels good to find what you're looking for. It feels good to geico.

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

Support for this show comes from Airbus. Every experiment we've ever done down here on Earth has involved gravity. So when the International Space station launched in 1998, it opened up new frontiers for research in human biology and medicine. An opportunity to see how DNA strands, stem cells and more might grow and evolve with the weight of the world on them. Now a game changing new space station, STAR Lab, is launching that will study agriculture, medicine, robotics and more. And Airbus, who lead the ongoing design and engineering of the station, have designed it to be the next evolution for early research and real commercial production. On STAR Lab, it's possible to scale the amount of research and manufacturing. The research humans are doing up in space can help us down here on Earth. And experiments in microgravity might fundamentally change our understanding of biology and medicine. Learn more about Star Lab and how Airbus is making it happen at fly.airbus.com the Flightpath.

[Nilay Patel]

So we did have the CEO of Traeger on the show. He had been a tech executive, he owned a headphone company. He went and bought Traeger. That's actually a great conversation, encourage people to listen to it. He also had to do a culture change that was a family business and he pushed really hard to change the culture. Traeger is obviously very successful, but he understood that modality. Right. This is going to take a long time and I can put a lot of technology around it to make that consistent and easy for people. Griddles are what you're describing. You can make a hamburger in two minutes. It's great, it's done, it's very fast. You can use it over and over again throughout the day. Gas grills are kind of in the middle, right? You can pretty easily screw up cooking on a gas grill. You can very easily screw up cooking on a charcoal grill. That's just like a thing people do all the time. Even just lighting the thing is challenging. Do you want to bring technology to bear on those experiences?

[Roger Dali]

Yeah, and we are. And I think one of the greatest technologies to help you with gas grill cooking is having a really good thermometer, instant read thermometer. And we have those now that connect to the app that we have on Weber. It's a phenomenal app. You can use it to cook on pellet grills, which we also make under that brand. But we're going to have connected devices that will connect into the app and help you with the meat temperature. It's funny you mention that, because I haven't cooked on a gas Grill for 25, 30 years. Right.

[Nilay Patel]

I was going to ask you about this. You were off it the last time we talked. You're like, I don't even need this thing anymore.

[Roger Dali]

That's funny. Those are some words I had to eat. I said many times, we will never sell a gas grill. And now I'm the leading seller of gas grills.

[Nilay Patel]

So.

[Roger Dali]

But it's funny. So in the Chicago area, there are four restaurants with the Weber banner on them. And inside those restaurants, they actually have a section where they have all the gas grills set up and you can take a cooking class there. And so we went there and ate it, ate dinner, and then we went back into the area and we got trained. And I was told how to cook a steak on a gas grill, and I loved it. It was amazing. It was really delicious. But I didn't know how to use it. So gaining a little bit of knowledge, we're going to be putting more content out on how to use a charcoal grill, how to start it, how to deal with the coals, how to move them around, how to create a hot zone and an indirect, indirect zone, all those different kind of things that people need to learn and may or may not know. So we're going to have all of that set up. And you know how Blackstone we. We've been huge on social media. It's still a big part of our philosophy. We're driving more of that same type philosophy on the Weber brand as well to help our customers. Because when you fire up a really good rib eye on a Genesis or a Spirit or a Summit gas grill, and you know how to cook it right, it's pretty darn good steak. I have to admit, there's a lot

[Nilay Patel]

of people on the Blackstone subreddit who are going to say that actually it's much better on a griddle.

[Roger Dali]

Well, I know, but I love it. And it's hard not to be biased, actually.

[Nilay Patel]

Do you find right now with the energy crisis and the price of fuels that more customers are buying charcoal grills?

[Roger Dali]

Well, they're buying charcoal grills because of the retail price point. They're not trading from a 36 inch griddle to a 28 inch griddle because of money. They're going all the way down to a Charcoal grill.

[Nilay Patel]

Wow.

[Roger Dali]

So, yeah, we're seeing some big trade down right now.

[Nilay Patel]

But you don't think that there's the. Just the ongoing cost of propane is driving that change?

[Roger Dali]

No. Well, it's part of it. Fuel's definitely part of it. I mean, I had some reports that I was studying the other day.

[Nilay Patel]

And the bottom, if you're listening to this, he's. Roger's literally looking at the reports on his desk right now.

[Roger Dali]

The bottom, almost. Let's see, 50% of our consumers are spending 15 to 20% on, on. On power. That includes electricity at home, gasoline, propane. And those customers are squeezed. You know, if they're spending 50% of their income on housing and 20, 25% on power, they have no money left. It's real. It's a really difficult economy for them right now. So, yeah, they're trading down to charcoal grills because of price point.

[Nilay Patel]

And do you think that that represents a growth opportunity? Is that just opportunity Provide outdoor cooking equipment to everyday Americans. How do you view that statistic?

[Roger Dali]

Before I learned this, I mean, we saw that, we saw that as a trend developing this year. You mentioned our kettle earlier and you mentioned that it's part of our logo. It is. It's actually a trademarked logo with the shape of our kettle in there. It's iconic to the Weber brand. I want to see what we can do to get sharper price points on the kettle because they've crept up over time. They can retail for $200 and you know, traditionally that was $100 retail item, and now it's all the way up to 150, $200. So what can we do innovatively to help the customer have a better experience at a better price point is really kind of what I'm focused on.

[Nilay Patel]

Can you do that with American manufacturing? It feels like you want to push the price points down. You're headed overseas and then the tariffs are going to keep you from hitting those price points.

[Roger Dali]

Yeah, I think we can. I think there's some innovation that we can put into some of these. As simple as they are, they're a sheet of steel that's molded to half dome on each side and put some legs and, you know, it's a pretty simple product. But there's innovation left in there that we can come up with and I think we can help the retail price points.

[Nilay Patel]

You've mentioned the longevity of the kettle several times. 10 year warranty. The CEO of Big Green Egg was on the show a couple years ago and he said specifically about the kettle, they cost 200, 300 bucks. I can buy at the grocery store within two or three years. You're buying another one because they fall apart. The last time you were on the show, you were like, it's outdoor cooking equipment. Two, three, five years. It's time to buy a new one. You're talking about very price sensitive customers. Now, even maybe at the high end, people are very sensitive to the amount that prices are going. People do want things to last longer. How do you think about that? I mean, the stuff is outside. It is going to wear at a different rate. Can you make these products to last for more than three years? Can you actually guarantee that the 10 years across the product line? Or is it the kettle?

[Roger Dali]

No, the Weber gas grills have, some of them have a 15 year warranty. The biggest difference there is rust. And Weber grills traditionally have been made, we call it the burn box. The part that holds the burners, that's cast aluminum, that doesn't rust and that lasts forever. And our hoods on Weber grills are also cast aluminum on the sides with enamel coated paint on the top, which doesn't chip as easy. It lasts a lot longer. So the Weber gas grill is more expensive than a lot of the cheap imports. But the quality difference, Go pick up one of my gas grills compared to one for $300 and you can immediately feel the difference.

[Nilay Patel]

As a consumer, do you think you're hedged against trends? Do you ever worry that smash burgers are just going to go out of fashion and maybe big, big gas grill burgers are going to come back around and you'll have Weber instead?

[Roger Dali]

I don't really worry about it because people are always going to eat and we cook great devices to cook your food on. And we will innovate to lifestyle changes, demographical changes, economic changes. That's what I have to do. I can't control those things. I just have to merchandise around those things and react to them. I don't like to react. We like to be a little bit more proactive than that. So we try to, we try to spot trends to where we have time to react to that and make sure that we're spot on with what the customer wants to pay and buy.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm asking that because again, five years ago when we talked, the Blackstone griddle was a TikTok sensation. Particularly smash burgers were a TikTok sensation. And maybe the entire country learned how to make a smash burger in that summer. And you learned a lot in that process. And I remember talking to you back then. And you had been spending almost all of your money in television advertising and you weren't even doing it to drive sales. If I remember correctly, you were just trying to get people to the website and then take them from there. There wasn't like an 800 number. You were literally just trying to create brand awareness on television. You're talking a lot now about informational content for Weber kettles and teaching out people how to use charcoal and how to use gas grills. Is your marketing effort focused more on social media now or are you still so heavy on tv?

[Roger Dali]

The spend that we have has definitely changed since we first met where we were. 100% spend on traditional television advertising. Off the top of my head, it's probably closer to 50, 50 spend now on social media advertising and promotion versus just traditional TV. But I'm still on TV and we're now taking the Weber brand and putting them back on traditional TV advertising, driving the brand awareness. I still don't have an 800 number on the Blackstone brand. Just go to blackstone.com and most people go to their favorite E tailer and purchase the brand there. Here's something that you'll find really interesting on Blackstone. We have a really high propensity of people who actually make the full purchase online. Not necessarily my website, because my corporate website is still a small percentage of my overall volume in business. But the people who now trust and know the brand buy it online. And most of them have it picked up at the retailer of their choice. And a lot of them are having it delivered now as well. They're not going into the store anymore. They know the product, they know the brand, they know what they want. They go online, they do their research and they make a purchase and it gets shipped to their house or they go to the store at 10 o' clock at night and pick it up. But it's really interesting if I truly analyzed brick and mortar versus D2C, if I count all of my retailers, D2C, it's definitely that that has shifted now to more people buying online than five years ago in a big way.

[Nilay Patel]

I think that's really interesting because, you know, the last time we spoke, it was really the beginning of brand marketing through creators. And these integrations you had on staff influencers back then who were doing tours at Walmarts. I don't think you were seeding product at scale, but you were beginning to dabble in it. You had a Roku app that you had made with cooking content in it. Those were early you were early to a lot of these trends. These are big trends now at massive scale. You see ad agencies spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the creator economy in this way. Mark brook, as the CEO of Shark Ninja, was like, we have 10,000 creators that we work with on brand deals, and we evaluate the sentiment analysis of their comments. Have you gotten all the way that far in creator marketing, or do you still have on staff influencers? How are you thinking about this?

[Roger Dali]

Yeah, I will never get that far because I don't believe in it.

[Nilay Patel]

Okay.

[Roger Dali]

I think when you buy and pay for influencers, the consumer picks it out in seconds. The consumer is so savvy and so smart. So our content creation, we still have influencers. We've expanded it. We have what we call the griddle crew, and these are creators and content creators that we've seen online. We followed them for a long time. They're authentic. If somebody calls me up and says, hey, I have 5 million followers, pay me $3 million a year and I'll pitch your brand, we respectfully decline and hang up as fast as we can, quite frankly, we don't do it that way, and I don't see a lot of people doing it that way. And I tell people all the time that's the best way to do it, but no one believes me. Nobody. They think they have to go buy their content creators. And typically what happens is what you mentioned earlier in the call, where coincidentally, some of the Blackstone influencers got, quote, unquote, swiped by Weber. That happens all the time to us because we have these people who start cooking on a Blackstone, they start getting a great following because people want to follow the brand. They think it's them, and my competitors think it's them, and then they go buy them and have them come and hawk their products. And to me, it's fake, it's not authentic, and I don't like it, so I'll never do that.

[Nilay Patel]

Have you talked to some of those influencers? Some of them, like, truly had hurt feelings that you hadn't competed for their attention or their brand integrations, because that's their money. The platforms don't pay the influencers any money, really. It's all brand deals, it's all sponsorships. So it has created a different dynamic on that side of the house.

[Roger Dali]

For sure. We have conversations with a lot of them, and some of them, you know, some of them came to us and were. They negotiated and they like, I won't pay that money, and they can be hurt all they want. Quite Frankly. But I do that for the brand and for the product itself, not to hurt anybody's feelings or be offensive or anything to influencers, because I wish them all the best and some of them do really well and do a great job. I think it's great. It's a great business model for an independent person. I just have to protect my brand and the integrity and the authenticity of my brand. That's what I focus on.

[Nilay Patel]

How do you think about finding that next new customer? And maybe it's different. You know, Blackstone has become a household name. Weber is certainly a household name. It's the first thing people think of, that the logo is iconic. But this is the challenge for everyone now, is finding that next new customer who, when we're all just sort of awash in feeds full of slop, everything is brand marketing through influencers. Maybe we're not even watching TV as we used to as much anymore. How do you find that next new person? Are you just paying? Do you see a world where you just have to pay meta for meta ads? Do you see a world where the content travels organically? This feels like the biggest problem for everyone. And then your sales cycle is long and the products are expensive and heavy, as you keep pointing out. Where does the next new customer come from?

[Roger Dali]

You know, it's crazy for us. The next new customer still comes at a very high percentage by word of mouth. And all this money we spend on marketing and advertising and influencing and everything else, when we do surveys annually, which I've done now for about seven years, still the number one way people hear about our brand. On the Blackstone side, I haven't got caught up yet on Weber, but on the Blackstone side, it's still by word of mouth. So somebody cooks on the weekend, they invite the neighborhood over, he's flipping pancakes in the morning, or they're doing smash burgers or whatever they're doing people now, the difference is they've heard of Blackstone, they've definitely seen one, but now they're experiencing it. And it's still a big influence on them making that purchase. So we'll continue to try to drive that in different ways and creative ways. And it changes weekly. Monthly. Daily, almost, that strategy. So the marketing team spends hours analyzing results and what worked and what didn't work and. And how can we improve and where should we spend money? Where should we shouldn't spend money? That is just an ongoing process on a daily basis.

[Nilay Patel]

But you're saying the biggest share is still word of mouth.

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

Yeah.

[Roger Dali]

Isn't that crazy?

[Nilay Patel]

It is crazy. I mean, I would say, you know, people have seen me use mine, I've watched my friends use theirs, and the number one thing they talk about is, boy, that seems hard to maintain on the griddle side anyway, right? You got to care for it, you got to scrape it. If you leave it over the winter, you got to clean the rust off of it. That feels like a technology problem that you have not yet overcome. Right. Like, the thing will just get rusty and maybe like, I love going on the Reddit and everyone's just like, cook another pack of bacon and it'll all be fine. Like, there's some aspect of like, this thing is harder to use than a regular gas griddle that you can just let deteriorate until you buy a new one. Do you think about that? Is that part of your marketing?

[Roger Dali]

It's not just part of our marketing, it's part of our product development. Interestingly enough, when Weber got into the griddle business as a competitor, I was at least impressed by the fact they tried to improve on something that was a consumer complaint rust. And so they came out with a slate, which is just basically a pre season griddle at the factory. And they came out with a new process on how to do that. It drives the cost higher, it's more expensive to do. But at least they went after a concern from the consumer. They just didn't knock me off and say, here's ours, it's Weber. They came out with the feature on it. So that makes the industry better. That's great. And as a result, you know, we focus on that a lot because of our customer, while it may be, definitely is a concern and customers identify that. But on the total number of units we sell and the complaints we get about rusting, it's a really, really small percentage. And we have, we have so many cleaning kits and restoration kits and hundreds and hundred thousands of YouTube and TikTok videos on how to deal with it and how to fix it. And in 30 minutes you can clean up your Gretel. It's really not that hard.

[Nilay Patel]

Now, I'm just curious about that because that is the competitive dynamic, right, of having the Weber in the ecosystem at the higher price point. That might be the competitive dynamic that has been removed. Right, because you now operate Weber. Do you have other griddle competitors that you wake up and think about every day?

[Roger Dali]

There's always a griddle competitor. They pop up on Amazon overnight. But yeah, there's plenty of competition.

[Nilay Patel]

And that's the other piece of this that I Want to talk about? We've talked a lot about manufacturing and you've had to deal with tariffs. You've obviously moved your manufacturing around the world. That dynamic still exists, right? There's any hot product in the world, you've got Chinese manufacturing partners, you can't totally control them. That ecosystem knocks off products at completely high rates. Especially if there's any innovation that differentiates a product. That stuff is still flooding into our markets, tariffs or not. It's still showing up on the Internet one click away. Dupe culture is as high as it's ever been. Is that a worry for you? The way that it's a worry for, I don't know, the headphone manufacturers that I talked to or any of the fashion retailers we've talked to.

[Roger Dali]

It's definitely a worry. My big advantage is we have two unbelievably strong brands. So you can knock me off, but it's not a Blackstone and or it's not a Weber. So that's a big advantage that we have. In my opinion. The key to that, I can't just rest on my laurels and say, well, I have the coolest brand, who cares? What I have to continue to do is innovate my product and stay 1, 2, 3 steps ahead of my competition. Because they're knocking off, in my opinion, two to three year old technology. It's how long it takes them. They can't knock me off overnight. This is a long lead time production product and by the time you want to knock me off and you find a source to have it built and you pay for tooling, which is not cheap, it's a big capital expense. And then you start buying inventory in minimum quantities from they're not going to build you 10, you know, you got to buy hundreds or thousands of units to get going and then your cost isn't going to be as good as mine. You don't have the economies of scales that I do. So we have a big competitive advantage over knockoffs, if you will. And I'm talking non branded importers, but believe me, they're very innovative, they're very creative. Their speed to market sometimes astounds me. I have a bigger problem on my accessories with that than I do on the grills and griddles.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, for sure. You go on Amazon, the accessory kits are everywhere.

[Roger Dali]

They're everywhere.

[Nilay Patel]

Do you fight with Amazon about that? Do you ever complain?

[Roger Dali]

Off the record? Yeah, that's. It's definitely a concern.

[Nilay Patel]

And I mean that's the recurring revenue, right? This is the thing we've discussed now

[Roger Dali]

for, for a while and it's our brand. And they, and that those people, whoever they are, they don't care about intellectual property, they don't respect it. They're just trying to sell as many units, whatever that is, against me, my brands against other companies, they don't care. They just knock stuff off and sell it for as long and as fast as they can and to get shut down and then they move on to the next product.

[Nilay Patel]

Amazon's a unique case. Right. They're also a big advertising platform. A lot of the answers is we'll just pay for the ads and we'll put your results at the top. That's the new way Amazon makes money. Is that a game you want to play? You've been resistant to playing some of these online retailer games, the influencer games. That's the game on the Amazon platform.

[Roger Dali]

It is definitely difficult on the Amazon platform. The other challenging thing with Amazon is just their algorithm in particular, because if I get back ordered or if they sell more than they thought and then they don't have inventory, then the algorithm thinks no one wants to buy it because they're out of stock. So that, that's probably the biggest challenge with Amazon and it really is difficult to get that overridden by a human. That's the algorithm and that's what it says and that's what kind of what they stick to.

[Nilay Patel]

As you can tell, I could obviously talk to you about this for hours upon hours. You're going to have to come back in faster than five years. I want to end with kind of just a big picture question, and I kind of alluded it to it earlier. The last time we were on the show five years ago, you had been at it for a long time, right? You started the company 2008 and you were experiencing this rapid kind of big growth and you were the disruptor CEO and you were operating every piece of this business. And I could tell you were just in the weeds of everything Blackstone was doing because you were in that growth phase and every single thing mattered to you in a very specific kind of way. You're in a much different role now. You're operating two brands, you're managing this big cultural integration. How are you thinking about yourself and the character you're playing now? Because this is a change most people will never experience.

[Roger Dali]

It's a really interesting question. And, and a lot of times, from what I've seen, not very many entrepreneurs who start a business and are entrepreneurial minded like I am, like to operate in that type of a corporate environment, if you will. I don't know if I'm different, unique. I don't know. I'm not really trying to compare myself anywhere, but I just love what I'm doing. How many people get an opportunity to ride the wave of a disruptive technology like Blackstone was into an old category that had been around forever and then on top of it, you get to manage and take over the best, biggest brand in that industry. So the way I look at it, like, man, this is. This is a once in a lifetime deal. So I'm loving it. This is great fun and I'm sticking around for a while to keep doing this.

[Nilay Patel]

How much time do you spend with the R and D people inventing new griddles? Because that was the thing you drew the first one, I think on like a legal pad.

[Roger Dali]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

How much time do you spend in the product? Weeds?

[Roger Dali]

Well, I will spend more as soon as disintegration gets finished.

[Nilay Patel]

That's a good answer. I mean, this is the challenge. Challenge, right? You get away from the product as you manage the corporation more.

[Roger Dali]

Yep. So I force myself to stay in there and that's my personal love. You know, my finance guys are smart. I don't need to spend time with them. Operations, they'll clean up everything and get it tidy and get it rocking and rolling. I don't need to spend as much time there. I like the product. I love delighting my end user customers coming out with innovative, cool ideas and expanding beyond outdoor cooking. That's. I have way too many ideas in my brain that, yeah, that makes my board a little nervous at times. They want me to stay focused. But yeah, there's a lot, a lot to do.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. We haven't even talked about the pizza ovens and now you're saying you're going to get beyond that. You're going to have to come back soon, Robert.

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

All right.

[Roger Dali]

Yeah. I enjoy your show, so I'd be

[Nilay Patel]

happy to come back. It's been five years. Well, thank you so much for being on Decoder. Happy fourth of July. This is our fourth of July episode. I hope you get some time to go cook outside.

[Roger Dali]

That we will do for sure. Thank you so much.

[Nilay Patel]

I'd like to thank Roger Dali for taking the time to join Decoder and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like to let us know what you thought about this episode or really anything else at all, drop us a line. You can email us@decoder the verge.com we really do read all the emails or hit me up directly on Threads or Bluesky. We're also on YouTube. You can watch full episodes at Decoder Pod. We also have a TikTok and an Instagram. They're at Decoder Pod as well. They're a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share with your friends and subscribe. Where we get your podcasts Decoder's production the Verge and part of the Box Media Podcast network. The show is produced by Kate Cox, Nick Stat. This episode was edited by Eileen Felix. Our Editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder Music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time.

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

We all do it. You have a night for yourself, but don't like the sound of the silence so you turn on the TV just for the ambiance. It's a little tricky that helps you feel like you've got company and aren't alone. And other insurers, well, they may make you feel alone, but when you switch to geico, you've got claims reps available around the clock. So whenever you need, you'll have people around to help. And let's turn on the washing machine just for good measure. Isn't that soothing?

[Nilay Patel]

It feels good to have support.

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

It feels good to geico. Support for this show comes from Airbus. When the International Space Station Launched launched in 1998, it opened up new frontiers for research in human biology and medicine. Now a game changing new space station, STAR Lab is launching that will study agriculture, medicine, robotics and more. And Airbus, who lead the ongoing design and engineering of the station, have designed it to be the next evolution for early research and real commercial production. With its unique microgravity environment, they can make discoveries in space space that help humans down here on Earth. Learn more about STAR Lab and how Airbus is making it happen@fly airbus.com the Flightpath

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

this episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome?

[Ad Voice/Interjection]

That's new.

[Roger Dali]

It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block,

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

or finally break down that long article

[Roger Dali]

you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

There's no place like Chrome.

[Roger Dali]

Check Responses Setup required compatibility and availability various 18.