LoCo Cookers burst on the scene over the past five years by increasing the popularity of stand boilers and coming out with some innovative griddles. They seemed to dominate the boiler and fryer category and the temperature dial for griddles was a solid idea.

Their success also included impressively getting floor space at some large retailers. They partnered with retailers like Home Depot, Lowe’s and others.

It appears that just as fast as they’ve come on the scene, they may have left. I started seeing an increasing amount of unresolved customer complaints and now their website has been down for a while. If you look at their social media, where they used to post frequently, they haven’t had a post in two months.

All that leads me to believe that they are no longer in business. You can still buy their products from retailers, but it could be all existing inventory.

I would speculate that they had too many headwinds to deal with. Beyond the normal consumer headwinds impacting all grill brands, they appeared to lose that floor space from Home Depot over the past year, which would significantly decrease their revenue. Ramping up production is hard, but right-sizing a company to significantly lower revenue is even harder.

A main reason that they had their partnership with Home Depot is because Lowe’s initially partnered with Blackstone. The current trend is less exclusive agreements across retail, so that likely hurt LoCo.

Business Focus

While the indicators point to them going out of business, I haven’t found a bankruptcy filing for the company. There was a complaint where a customer alleges they were told they were on a waiting list for a refund check, so it’s also possible they’re in workout with a bank or a distressed situation.

At best though, if they have just dramatically scaled back operations and stopped any DTC presence, I would refocus the business around low country boilers. I believe that category has some runway and there isn’t anyone that owns it. There also is basically no innovation in the category with a bunch of commoditized products.

It would take continued evangelizing, like they were doing, to expand interest in that style of cooking. Also, it means that total revenue is more likely capped in the mid-double digit millions, rather that mid-triple digit millions. That’s still a solid business, and a great way to step back and rebuild.