Whatever Happened to Pampered Chef? I Hosted a Party to Find Out - Bon Appetit
Speaking of my new friend, Caryn returns from the grocery store, laden with bags, and, within 20 minutes, my kitchen island has disappeared under a riot of Pampered Chef products, and she's encouraging me to open a bottle of wine. Which I do. We'd agreed on the menu ahead of time: It's called "Healthy in a Hurry" though somehow it involves pasta, pizza, pound cake, and the microwave, which Caryn emailed about multiple times to confirm that it existed and to ask about its size.
Having people over to sell them stuff is kind of gauche, at least among twenty- and thirtysomethings in Brooklyn. Then again, we love ironically nostalgic activities—Dirty Dancing karaoke, '90s fests, and restaurants devoted to meatballs—so I have no trouble rounding up about a dozen friends, plus, of course, my mom.
When they've amassed in my kitchen, Caryn begins the demo by telling us about herself: Brooklyn-born, communications major, TV producer, police officer husband, Staten Island, babies, more babies. (Here's another adorable fact about Caryn: On Facebook, her job title is "Super Mom" at a company called "The Pollock kids." Description: "24/7 job....cook, taxi driver, laundromat, butt wiper, song singer, book reader - no lunch breaks....paid in kisses & hugs.") With three kids, she had no time for another job and no time to cook—until she discovered Pampered Chef. Now she does parties a few times a month and is an "advanced director," which is very impressive but also less than halfway up the nine-step ladder of this multi-level marketing company, past "consultant," "future director" and "director," but still quite far from "national executive director." Being a director means having a team of consultants, people you've personally recruited. Every month, Caryn and her team have to meet certain sales goals, and Caryn can only move up the ladder by selling more products, recruiting more consultants, and helping them sell more products. A PC publicist tells me later that Caryn has 150 consultants and 9 directors on her "team"—which means she has brought a lot of people into the Pampered Chef universe.
But enough about Caryn; it's time to cook. We're making pasta, but not just any pasta. We're making part-pasta, part-zoodle, in something called a RockCrok, and we're cooking it in… wait for it… THE MICROWAVE. My food editor friends in the room grow pale. But, to everyone's surprise except Caryn's, it comes out 16 minutes later, nicely al dente, if a little… soupy from the chicken stock it was cooked in.
Here's the way it works: I'm the host, and Caryn is the consultant. She gets paid a percentage of what people spend at the party, and I get credit toward scoopers, strainers, spinners, slicers, and everything else in the Pampered Chef arsenal. One core belief of Pampered Chef I quickly learn is that sharp things are dangerous. There's a gadget for slicing garlic, another for making zoodles, another for chopping basil that goes on top of the pasta. There's a blade-free can opener and a tricked-out microplane that keeps your hands about a mile from the blades. With every new slicing and dicing device, Caryn has a story about a terrible injury, a cautionary tale about the normal version of that thing (i.e. a knife).
Comments
Post a Comment