This Is Not Your Father’s Barbecue Grill

Not too long ago, a barbecue was nothing more than a small, black $40 kettle that stood sentry on the lawn, filled with charcoal and fired up to cook burgers and hot dogs.

Today, some grills have become stainless steel symbols of machismo. Gas-fueled to eight times the power of the average stove, they can be as big as a car and built into tiled islands that, of course, match the nearby swimming pool.

With a price tag that can exceed $10,000, the top grills now give users (most of whom are men) bragging rights, the backyard equivalent of parking the Porsche in the driveway.

“Barbecues are the man’s domain--they’re big, chrome machines that have knobs and gizmos,” said Michael J. O’Connor, a 44-year-old Century City lawyer who is awaiting the installation of a built-in, 41-inch grill with side burners, a rotisserie and a smoker.

“They’re like cars because they’re a status symbol, and it’s a question of how fancy yours is going to be. The bigger the better, and the more knobs the better.”

Certainly, most Americans will be doing their holiday barbecuing without a showy, 16-gauge copper model with a “Roto Convection” air system.

But the niche luxury grill market, even at just 1% to 2% of the $1.5-billion grill industry, is booming.

“At those dollars, it doesn’t take too many of them to have a pretty good market,” said Donna Myers of the Barbecue Industry Assn.

Increasingly, backyard chefs of all types are consulting hundreds of specialized cookbooks, straining to remember tips offered on the Food Network and donning very masculine black cooking apparel.

Overall grill sales are breaking records, with more than 13 million sold last year.

This trend has everything to do with American consumers’--especially aging baby boomers’--retreat into their homes. With low interest rates and a growing economy spurring record-level new-house sales, people are pumping money into related decorating and home improvements, including such indulgences as high-end barbecues.

Grill sales also are spurred by men’s interest in remaking their backyard domain--at least according to some of the men who buy them. (A survey by one grill company found that men operate the barbecue in 61% of American households.)

“The decor inside the house, the furniture, is attributed to the wife,” explained Larry Koppes, a 49-year-old owner of an Irvine advertising agency who spent about $40,000 on his open-air kitchen. “The barbecue is the only place over which the man has sole possession. He can take all the credit.”

Koppes said he designed and built his dream backyard system at his Huntington Beach home as a place to unwind, which he does by grilling for his wife and three daughters every weekend, rain or shine, with his custom-built island and its contents: a 36-inch built-in grill, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, a heater and a wet bar with built-in blender.

“It’s just a great place for a family to bond,” Koppes said. “It draws people together--like the kitchen where everybody used to gather. Even if it’s cold, people now come to my barbecue.”

The fastest-growing category in the grill market is the $400-to-$800 range, according to the barbecue industry group.

But more and more Americans from the ranks of the less-than-rich are opting for the $2,500-and-up variety in the name of adding to their homes.

Frontgate, a catalog company, says sales of what it calls professional grills have gone up 10% a year at least since 1996, when it began giving the machines their own special catalog.

Ego plays a part in at least some of the highest-end purchases.

“Retailers tell us they can often tell that after one person in an upscale neighborhood buys a $5,000 grill, within weeks four more will be sold within the same few blocks,” said the industry association’s Myers.

In 1995, the fancier gas grills overtook their more humble charcoal brethren as the cooking medium of choice for all barbecuers (though some of the newest, grandest grills use charcoal or wood cooking systems for well-heeled purists). Now 57% of grill owners use the propane tank machines, and 8% have natural gas hookups.

Industry figures peg last year’s overall grill sales at 13.2 million, up from 11.6 million in 1997 and surpassing the previous high of 12.3 million in 1994.

Accouterments have also gained. In 1998, sales of barbecue wood chips and chunks reached more than 26.7 million pounds, up 13% from a year earlier. This is on top of sales growth in sauces, marinades, utensils, scores of books and myriad grill-related items now stocked by grill, housewares and grocery stores.

Some do acknowledge that the attraction has little to do with cooking--especially since it’s generally agreed that the key to good barbecuing lies more in the chef than in the equipment.

O’Connor, who expects his grill to be installed by the end of the summer, is the first to laugh at his whole endeavor, saying he is unlikely to ever need to cook the flock of chickens that he could fit on his shiny new toy.

In fact, he says, his machine is all the more fun for its socially acceptable, utilitarian veneer, the idea that the barbecue, unlike a Ferrari, is for his family.

“It’s like a hobby or a fun thing for me,” he said, describing the island that will house the grill and an attached round table, all covered in the same tile as his pool.

“If guys aren’t acknowledging that, they’re fooling themselves. It’s pretty obvious how often you’ll use all this stuff--hardly ever.”