Pampered Chef
Product Launch
Background
For more than 40 years, Pampered Chef has enhanced the power of mealtime with professional-quality kitchen tools, cooking events that inspire confidence, and flexible business opportunities. The company’s growth was founded on popular in-home parties, designed to bring friends and families together to learn culinary tips and techniques, try out innovative kitchen tools and encourage new consultants. Then, the pandemic threatened that cornerstone and demanded a fresh approach.
Pampered Chef helps create unforgettable food memories while providing a global community of thousands of consultants the opportunity to build a business. Shiv Dutt, VP Customer Experience & Innovation at Pampered Chef, shared, “Historically, the business leveraged in-person parties that enabled customers to try out distinctive, high-quality kitchen tools, learn to make tasty, timesaving recipes and explore the benefits of becoming a consultant.”
He continued, “COVID-19 fundamentally changed our business as well as life in general. Families were together in ways they hadn’t been before, more people were cooking at home, and many of them were novices or just not as confident in the kitchen as they would like to be. At the exact same time as in-person parties became impossible, there was an explosion of interest around cooking. People were hungry to learn.”
Solution
Dutt and his team began exploring options to translate in-house events to a virtual format, accelerating and standardizing a trend that was already taking shape. He revealed, “Prior to the pandemic, some of our more innovative consultants had experimented with leveraging social media platforms to host virtual events. The challenge was that social media was not designed for our use case as it’s difficult to recreate the warmth and familiarity of a friend’s kitchen in a digital format. It simply wasn’t possible to deliver the full potential of Pampered Chef events—to engage, learn and share through those platforms.”
Pampered Chef evaluated several options to manifest its vision, landing on a 360-degree, photorealistic model kitchen from Theia Interactive. Dutt acknowledged, “In terms of the solution, it was very high-quality and realistic. Some other virtual environments look too much like video games. Plus, Theia had created elegant digital kitchens previously, so we knew they had expertise in our space. In addition, the Theia team inspired confidence and their ‘measure, test, learn’ attitude matched ours.”
Experience the Pampered Chef’s Virtual Kitchen
Outcomes
The result is an immersive virtual party experience that offers Pampered Chef consultants a unique platform to share products in photorealistic environments, let guests explore interactive, 3D models of products and provide videos, recipes, and everything else a customer may need to make a purchase decision. Achieving this outcome demanded a deliberate, expert-led approach.
“The success of any implementation requires strong communication and project management skills. The Theia team came in with a robust plan with clear outcomes and expectations. The project manager was on-point in terms of communicating about the deliverables and deadlines and managed all of it effectively. When there was an issue, the team was responsive, available and worked until we found a suitable solution,” Dutt observed.
He elaborated, “Theia is all about innovation and continuous improvement. They are always open to feedback, to tuning, enhancing and advancing the solution.”
As an example, Dutt points to a modification the Theia team developed based on consultant feedback during the pilot. He highlighted, “Our consultants shared that they wanted training on how to navigate around the Virtual Kitchen. Theia Interactive built in a tour guide option. It was a relatively small detail uncovered in testing that Theia invested in which has improved the consultant experience significantly.”
Because Theia had expertise in producing virtual kitchens, that know-how was leveraged for the Pampered Chef Virtual Kitchen, speeding the effort. “Our consultants have been impressed with the Virtual Kitchen. They report that it’s highly realistic, much like their own kitchens or even their dream set-up. And we continue to enhance it.” One significant new iteration included a gamification option. Dutt cited, “Guests go on a quest to find a golden spoon. Once they find it, there are a series of secret questions for them to answer. The response has been electric!”
“The Theia team came in with a robust plan with clear outcomes and expectations. The project manager was on-point in terms of communicating about the deliverables and deadlines and managed all of it effectively.”
- Shiv Dutt, VP Customer Experience & Innovation“The Virtual Kitchen is exactly what we imagined. This is really important. Too often, there is a disappointing gap between what the sales team sells and what the solution actually does,” Dutt admitted.
In the five months since the solution has been online, the number of parties using the virtual kitchen continues to grow with a goal to have the majority of parties leverage the Virtual Kitchen within three years. Even more impressive, initial indicators revealed that parties featuring the Virtual Kitchen deliver higher revenue per party and better conversion rates. Dutt divulged, “We were expecting a 1%-2% increase in revenue with the Virtual Kitchen but have been seeing revenues of 5%-10% higher per party. That’s exciting.”
In a noisy marketplace, the Virtual Kitchen helps Pampered Chef stand out. “The Theia Virtual Kitchen helps us surprise and delight our consultants and our customers,” Dutt imparted. “We believe this is just the beginning of our foray into a Pampered Chef metaverse, and Theia is accelerating that journey.”
Even as COVID-related restrictions subside and in-person parties are once again possible, Dutt said the Virtual Kitchen is here to stay. “The pandemic changed our behaviors, and hybrid options are now expected. The days of physical-only events are behind us. Every party will have a virtual component going forward.”
Dutt pointed out that one of the biggest advantages of a digital option is scalability. “With the Virtual Kitchen, geography is no longer an obstacle, nor are logistics-limiting factors such as transportation or childcare. The Virtual Kitchen expands our scope of influence and enables us to drive superior results at scale.”
“Founder Doris Christopher’s original vision was to offer friends and family a way to connect over a shared passion for mealtime wins. The Theia Virtual Kitchen is a valuable asset that has enabled us to effectively replicate that experience in virtual reality. And the future possibilities are limitless.”
“The Theia Virtual Kitchen is a valuable asset that has enabled us to effectively replicate that experience in virtual reality. And the future possibilities are limitless.”
