Years ago Vermont Castings produced a line of premium gas grills that were sold by independent dealers servicing the luxury grill market. They’ve gone through dramatic changes that saw them shift from being a high quality American Manufacturer to a low cost, outsourced brand for big box outlets. In 2008 the private equity group, The Riverside Company acquired the assets of CFM Corporation, including Vermont Castings, and merged the assets with Monessen Hearth Systems. Riverside acquired Monessen in 2006. The company later took on Vermont Castings Group as its corporate name. Shortly thereafter the Vermont Castings management team purchased the company from Riverside.
In recent years there were glimmers of hope that VC intended to restore the grill line to premium status. Although Vermont Castings did not respond to our inquiries, we hear from dealers that manufacturing has shifted back to the USA and all grills were redesigned with numerous improvements. However, when Vermont Castings reduced price and quality to go after distribution in Home Depot, many independent stores lost interest. It will take time and effort to reestablish the VC grill line in the premium space.
High quality websites are expensive to run. If you help us, we’ll pay you back bigtime with an ad-free experience and a lot of freebies!
Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for high quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 2,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner to subsidize us.
Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club. But please don’t think of it as a donation. Members get MANY great benefits. We block all third-party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial, and help keep this site alive.
Post comments and questions below
1) Please try the search box at the top of every page before you ask for help.
2) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.
3) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer. Dial thermometers are often off by as much as 50°F so if you are not using a good digital thermometer we probably can’t help you with time and temp questions. Please read this article about thermometers.
4) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different.
5) Posts with links in them may not appear immediately.
Moderators