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Ronco

Ronco defined an industry with its line of clever and practical kitchen products marketed directly to customers. We’ve worked together with Ronco to bring some of their classic products into a new age of design while continuing to innovate with new product lines. Our team has supported Ronco with industrial design, mechanical engineering, and concept development expertise.

Ronco EZ-Store Rotisserie Oven 2012

EZ-Store Rotisserie Oven – 2012

We helped re-introduce the rotisserie oven in 2011 with an updated design, the Showtime Rotisserie 5500. Following its success, we worked with Ronco to focus on bringing new innovation to the product line with the EZ-Store Oven. We innovated on the classic design with a new cylindrical grill architecture, allowing Ronco’s new rotisserie to store in half the space of the previous Showtime Ovens while maintaining the same cooking capacity and quality. The glass lid rotates 180 degrees to nest in the body of the grill for storage in kitchen cabinets and pantries. This compact configuration also reduces shipping cost and uses less shelf space during fulfillment.

Ronco Turbo Dehydrator

Turbo Dehydrator – 2011

Ronco’s classic food dehydrator is a go-to for creating grabbable snacks out of fruits, vegetables, and jerky. Ronco partnered with us to bring a premium product to the line with the Turbo model. Noteworthy advancements include a square shape that maximizes usable volume within the product’s footprint, as opposed to the classic model’s cylindrical design, and a nesting tray system that reduces the product’s height by 1/3 for easier storage.

Ronco Ready Grill
Ready Grill – 2011

Ronco set out to develop a product that could deliver the unique qualities of direct infrared cooking without the depth and bulk of a traditional toaster oven. The Ready Grill uses a vertical orientation with heating elements in front and behind the food. Concave reflectors focus the energy of the elements onto the food for an efficient system that cooks quickly and evenly. Because the food is suspended vertically in a wire mesh basket, grease and oils drip down into a tray, never landing on the elements, and more importantly, never landing on your plate.

We worked closely with Ronco to house the heating elements, associated circuitry, reflective panels, and wire basket into an attractive and compact product. Usability concerns were central to the design of the food basket’s form and function, timer operation, and drip tray. Material selection and airflow management allowed us to manage heat transfer between the high temperature cooking elements and the product’s outer housing and user touch points.

Ronco Ready Grill
Ronco Ready Grill

Ronco Showtime Rotisserie 5500

Showtime 5500 Rotisserie – 2011

The original Showtime Rotisserie Oven put Ronco on the map, defining a new genre of consumer kitchen appliances that brought innovation to home cooking. In 2011 Ronco partnered with us to modernize this flagship product. We reimagined the boxy shape of the original design and updated it with contemporary curves and materials. We designed a gentle curve into the front glass door, which improved aesthetics and reduced bulk without reducing the usable volume inside.

Ronco Showtime Rotisserie 5500

Veg-O-Matic – 2012

Ronco utilized our design services to refresh a culinary classic, the Veg-O-Matic. This much loved appliance has been redesigned a few times over the years but never really functionally improved. We gave the design a more contemporary look as we carefully sculpted its surfaces with ergonomics and aesthetics in mind. A self-measuring container for catching chopped veggies is a major improvement for this generation, along with a weighted handle that assists the user and makes short work of even the hardiest produce.

Pizza & More | Compact Rotating Oven – 2016

Ronco approached us to explore a new paradigm in fast convenient cooking. They wanted a compact, rotating oven to replace a toaster oven for the end consumer. The design needed to be elegant, as this could be a product that sets on top of a counter in a high end kitchen. The oven was primarily intended for cooking pizzas, but has enough versatility to handle many dishes. Special care was taken by Propulsion to work with the manufacturer on several rounds of prototypes to get the details just right.

Although the oven was designed with pizza as the primary dish, we also created the device with other foods in mind. The Pizza Party can cook a variety of party snacks, such as buffalo wings, calzones, sandwiches and limitless others. The tray on the top can keep food hot that has been cooked in the oven, or warm dips and other sauces. Special care was taken to match the form and aesthetic of the oven.

We have developed a relationship with Ronco building products around two core objectives; elegant aesthetics, and solving packaging/storage challenges. The Pizza Party Oven packs a great deal of functionality and moving parts into a very small volume. A broad depth of engineering knowledge and manufacturing experience was utilized in taking the Pizza & More oven from concept to reality.

Here, you can see the pizza trivet in blue, sliding into channels we’ve created in the stamped walls. The channels guide the trivet down, and out of the way of the pizza tray (purple) which rests on the spider gear (green). When the pizza is pulled out, the trivet acts as a hot plate, keeping the tray elevated off of the counter. All of this happens while leaving room for the pizza, clearance for the open door and while keeping appropriate distance from the heating coils.