Cuisinart ( ) is an American home appliance brand owned by

Conair Corporation Conair Corporation is an American company based in Stamford, Connecticut which sells small appliances, personal care products, and health and beauty products for both professionals and consumers. It was founded in 1959 and has since expanded t ...

. The company was started in 1971 by Carl Sontheimer to bring an electric food processor to the U.S. market. The "Food Processor" was the first model, introduced at a food show in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

in 1973. The name "Cuisinart" became synonymous with "food processor." It is also a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsConair Corporation Conair Corporation is an American company based in Stamford, Connecticut which sells small appliances, personal care products, and health and beauty products for both professionals and consumers. It was founded in 1959 and has since expanded t ...

in 1989.

History of Cuisinart

Cuisinart was founded in 1971 by Carl Sontheimer, a graduate of

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

who was inspired by his love of French food. This led to the creation of Cuisinart and its main product, the food processor. Cuisinart introduced its brand in January 1973 at a trade show in Chicago. The success of Cuisinart was limited at first, until a review in ''

Gourmet Gourmet (, ) is a cultural idea associated with the culinary arts of fine food and drink, or haute cuisine, which is characterized by refined, even elaborate preparations and presentations of aesthetically balanced meals of several contrasting, of ...

'' magazine helped to lift sales. Throughout the mid-1970s, Cuisinart sales rose due to Cuisinart's association with celebrity chefs such as

James Beard James Andrews Beard (May 5, 1903 – January 23, 1985) was an American chef, cookbook author, teacher and television personality. He pioneered television cooking shows, taught at The James Beard Cooking School in New York City and Seaside, ...

, a close friend of Carl Sontheimer. Cuisinart became an important product in universal design when it hired Marc Harrison to make Cuisinart's products accessible for everyone, including those with limited mobility or vision. By the mid-to-late 1980s, Cuisinart incurred financial troubles and suffered from falling sales. A group of investors bought Sontheimer's interest in the company in 1987 for $42 million. In August 1989, the company filed for bankruptcy. This led to Conair buying the company for $27 million.

Legal troubles with Robot-Coupe

In the late 1970s a legal conflict between Robot-Coupe and Cuisinart developed when Robot-Coupe stopped distributing Cuisinart products and released the products under their own name. Robot-Coupe hired Alvin Fineman, Cuisinart's former marketing director in 1979, who engaged in competitive advertisements that resulted in a lawsuit. Robot-Coupe was ordered to stop insinuating that Cuisinart sold products manufactured by Robot-Coupe.

Products and innovations

A partial list of Cuisinart products includes: *

Air fryer An air fryer is a small countertop convection oven designed to simulate deep frying without submerging the food in oil. A fan circulates hot air at high speed, producing a crisp layer via browning reactions such as the Maillard reaction. Some p ...

* Bakeware * Handheld blenders *

Bread machine A bread making machine or breadmaker is a home appliance for baking bread. It consists of a bread pan (or "tin"), at the bottom of which are one or more built-in paddles, mounted in the center of a small special-purpose oven. This small oven is ...

* Countertop blenders *

Brick oven A masonry oven, colloquially known as a brick oven or stone oven, is an oven consisting of a baking chamber made of fireproof brick, concrete, stone, clay (clay oven), or cob (cob oven). Though traditionally wood-fired, coal-fired ovens were c ...

s *

Can opener A can opener (in North American English and Australian English) or tin opener (used in British English) is a mechanical device used to open tin cans (metal cans). Although preservation of food using tin cans had been practiced since at leas ...

* Coffeemakers *

Coffee grinder A burr mill, or burr grinder, is a mill used to grind hard, small food products between two revolving abrasive surfaces separated by a distance usually set by the user. When the two surfaces are set far apart, the resulting ground material is co ...

s *

Convection oven A convection oven (also known as a fan-assisted oven or simply a fan oven) is an oven that has fans to circulate air around food to create an evenly heated environment. The increased air circulation causes a fan-assisted oven to cook food fast ...

Cookware Cookware and bakeware is food preparation equipment, such as cooking pots, pans, baking sheets etc. used in kitchens. Cookware is used on a stove or range cooktop, while bakeware is used in an oven. Some utensils are considered both cookware ...

Cutlery Cutlery (also referred to as silverware, flatware, or tableware), includes any hand implement used in preparing, serving, and especially eating food in Western culture. A person who makes or sells cutlery is called a cutler. The city of Sheffie ...

Cutting boards A cutting board (or chopping board) is a durable board on which to place material for cutting. The kitchen cutting board is commonly used in preparing food; other types exist for cutting raw materials such as leather or plastic. Kitchen cutting bo ...

Deep fryer A deep fryer (also referred to as a deep fat fryer), is a kitchen appliance used for deep frying. Deep frying is a method of cooking by submerging food into oil at high heat, typically between temperatures of . While commonly used in commercia ...

Dutch oven A Dutch oven (not to be confused with masonry oven) is a thick-walled cooking pot with a tight-fitting lid. Dutch ovens are usually made of seasoned cast iron; however, some Dutch ovens are instead made of cast aluminium, or ceramic. Some meta ...

Espresso Espresso (, ) is a coffee-brewing method of Italian origin, in which a small amount of nearly boiling water (about ) is forced under of pressure through finely-ground coffee beans. Espresso can be made with a wide variety of coffee beans a ...

maker * Food processors * Grills, griddles * Hand mixers * Ice cream and

sorbet Sorbet (), also called "water ice", is a frozen dessert made using ice combined with fruit juice, fruit purée, wine, liqueur, honey, etc. Generally sorbets do not contain dairy ingredients, while sherbets do. Etymology The word "sorbet" en ...

makers * Juice extractor * Kitchen tools and gadgets *

Kettle A kettle, sometimes called a tea kettle or teakettle, is a type of pot specialized for boiling water, commonly with a ''lid'', ''spout'', and ''handle'', or a small electric kitchen appliance of similar shape that functions in a self-contained ...

* Microwave ovens *

Popcorn maker A popcorn maker (also called a popcorn popper) is a machine used to pop popcorn. Since ancient times, popcorn has been a popular snack food, produced through the explosive expansion of kernels of heated corn ( maize). Commercial large-scale po ...

Raclette Raclette (, ) is a Swiss dish, also popular in the other Alpine countries, based on heating cheese and scraping off the melted part, then typically served with boiled potatoes. Raclette cheese is historically a dish originating from the canton of ...

s *

Rice cooker A rice cooker or rice steamer is an automated kitchen appliance designed to boil or steam rice. It consists of a heat source, a cooking bowl, and a thermostat. The thermostat measures the temperature of the cooking bowl and controls the hea ...

s *

Scales Scale or scales may refer to: Mathematics * Scale (descriptive set theory), an object defined on a set of points * Scale (ratio), the ratio of a linear dimension of a model to the corresponding dimension of the original * Scale factor, a number w ...

Slow cooker A slow cooker, also known as a crock-pot (after a trademark owned by Sunbeam Products but sometimes used generically in the English-speaking world), is a countertop electrical cooking appliance used to simmer at a lower temperature than o ...

s * Speciality appliances * Stand mixers * Toasters * Toaster oven broilers * Waffle makers The Cuisinart company's best-known product is the food processor. It also produced many other products. After Cuisinart hired industrial designer Marc Harrison in the 1970s to design many new products and improve other designs, many of the company's products became associated with

universal design Universal design is the design of buildings, products or environments to make them accessible to people, regardless of age, disability or other factors. It addresses common barriers to participation by creating things that can be used by the ma ...

. Harrison made its products more functional for users with disabilities, designing larger fonts so that people with vision problems could see them.

References

{{Home appliance brands Home appliance brands Cooking appliance brands American companies established in 1971 Electronics companies established in 1971 Manufacturing companies established in 1971 American brands Home appliance manufacturers of the United States Companies based in Stamford, Connecticut Manufacturing companies based in Connecticut Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1989 1989 mergers and acquisitions Knife manufacturing companies