The George Foreman Grill

How an inexpensive product pitched by an ex-boxer turned into a market knockout.

- Robert Klara

 One day in 1994, a box arrived at the Texas home of ex-heavyweight boxing champ George Foreman. The package was from an inventor named Michael Boehm, who’d sent his latest handicraft: an electric appliance he called the Short Order Grill.

Boehm had shipped the grill on a hunch: He knew the boxer had been known for scarfing down a couple of burgers before his bouts. He also knew that, since retiring from the ring, Foreman had found a new career as a TV pitchman (most recently for Meineke Mufflers). The grill needed a celebrity endorsement; was Foreman interested?

Foreman was not. At least, he wasn’t until his wife Joan began using the thing herself. “I’ve tried the grill, George, and I like it a lot,” she told him. “It works great; the meat comes out nice and juicy. The grease drips right off, and the food tastes really good.” To make her case, Joan Foreman cooked her husband a burger. George Foreman signed the papers.