Blackstone created and built a market for griddles through releasing innovative products and some smart marketing. They have griddles of all shapes, sizes and configurations.

As an entrepreneur-led company, they also think of lots of different ideas. Their latest patents though could be their most out of the box yet.

Refrigerator and Removable Shelf Assembly

Blackstone moved into outdoor kitchens not too long ago. They released some cabinet options along with a couple islands, and a cool looking pavilion. They may have moved away from those items though because almost all show as “sold out” on their website.

If a recent patent is any indicator, they still have some other ideas for future products around outdoor kitchens. They filed for a patent for a refrigerator that is designed to make outdoor cooking easier.

It could be used as an indoor fridge or an outdoor fridge, but it’s meant to solve a common problem. It can be difficult to shuttle any food your prepped or condiments from the fridge to where you’ll be cooking.

Their idea solves this with removable shelf assemblies. On example is a shelf that has a handle on the top and looks almost like a traditional tool box. You can pop the shelf off with everything you want to bring outside in it, all in one trip. It’s a neat idea, because it does get to be time consuming and annoying to keep making trips in and out of the house.

With other patents on griddles or grills, I felt pretty confident that we’d see the product come to market. This one is more out of the box, so I’m not sure if we’ll see it or not.

They could do it in a few different ways though besides releasing a whole refrigerator. Blackstone could partner with an appliance company to release a model with the special shelves, or they could release just the shelf assemblies and have them fit common refrigerator types.

Indoor Stove with Grease Management

Another patent that Blackstone has out there is also in the appliance space and also is quite different than what you’d expect from them. It’s a stove that has a griddle with a grease management system.

For anyone not familiar, a grease management system is another way of saying a hole in the griddle top that leads to a removable grease container below. Grease management is one of the best features of Blackstone’s griddles because it make clean-up during and after cooking much easier.

Their idea brings that unique outdoor griddle feature indoors. It’s unique because current indoor stove tops don’t have that.

This patent seems pretty unexpected, much like the refrigerator patent. They could partner with an appliance brand to release it, license the idea to brands, or just use the patent to help strengthen their position outdoors. We’ve seen appliance brands start to try to take share of the pizza oven market, so this could help them from trying something similar with griddles.