The fallout continues.
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I know some people are connected to Sur La Table. I remember, pre-Internet, when places such as Sur La Table and Williams-Sonoma were the only places to go for anything you couldnât find in a department store. Catalogs put a dent in their business and the Internet really hurt. In my own opinion, in recent years, Sur La Table become the home of mediocre cooking âdemosâ and overpriced products. âThis isnât selling well. We should raise the price.â
CV-19 is certainly shaking things out. The weak will not make it out the other side. Sur La Table joins Sears (who thought diluting and then selling Craftsman was a good idea), J.C. Penney and others. I suspect, without really visionary reinvention, theyâll end up with Montgomery Ward and Kitchen Bazaar.
Iâll miss them, but only because they used to send me $10 coupons every so often for no reason. So I have a lot of $10 items from Sur La Table.
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Once again @Auspicious, I have to respectfully, but strongly disagree. Love the place, they have great sales, excellent merchandise, and a wide variety of things not found elsewhere. I was gifted a PokPok cooking class there, which I greatly enjoyed with my daughter. Did I need the class due to lacking in skill? Most definitely not, but got an excuse to do a little shopping after the very enjoyable class.
They havenât diluted their merchandise, and IMO, aside from their brick and mortar stores, have adapted, and stayed relevant to the times. To compare them to Sears or MW isnât apt, and in fact nears sacrilege in my book. I hope they find a buyer, as our world will become bleaker without wonderland kitchen stores and purveyors such as SLT.
Oh, I used to shop Williams Sonoma in their earliest catalog days. You could find great stuff for not a lot of $$$. Donât go near the place now, find it way overpriced. As always YMMV, as well as others.
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Iâm very sad about this. Like Lambchop, I found them to have really good merchandise (love their roasting pan) and nice sales, and werenât as expensive or snooty or W-S. We got our big Le Creuset cocotte there at a 40% discount because it had a small chip and wasnât in a popular color. I hope they donât end up going out of business entirely.
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No issue. Once the Internet exploded and online shopping grew my only exposure to SLT was during occasional visits in mall somewhere. My observations was they followed the path of Williams-Sonoma to higher prices. Anything available there was available at lower prices elsewhere, especially on the Internet.
Iâm sure the instruction varied by locale based on the available instructors. I only went to two. Both were âtaughtâ by store salespeople and were not helpful.
My comparison to Sears and MW was in terms of business management in the face of online shopping, not market positioning.
I agree that brick & mortar has appeal. The market doesnât agree with us.
Good points, my experiences there have been quite different to yours; perhaps because itâs Seattle based, IDK. A chef of local reknown taught the class. So fun to go with daughter, and everything was top rate. We were all treated to cappuccinos, class, then shopping. Their catalog comes out seasonally, isnât printed on the expensive glitzy paper of some other catalogs, and usually has a coupon or discount code. I pore over it usually, for fun and ideas. I laugh at the WS catalog, and love the yearly spoof that comes out near Christmas every year.
Can only hope we donât lose them entirely, nor all of their stores. If so, I guess weâve all done it to ourselves by shopping online for ease and convenience.
What I wouldnât give to have real bookstores in my town and at airports.
The times, they are a changin, and not for the better IMO. I want to go back to the 70âs, but would take the 90âs even. Sad to think of all weâre losing and have lost, many due to Covid currently, but others long before that. As to Sears and JC Penneyâs, they were lumbering dinosaurs, waiting for extinction.
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Just read of SLTâs list of closures. Feeling quite sick, as many are in places wildly unexpected to me. Was afraid to scroll down to Washington, fearing we may lose some of ours, but they remain safe for now. Will buy some merchandise for gifting this Xmas, once I find out what kids may want/need. Have to be careful due to small city apartments. Sorry for the fans of SLT losing stores near to them.
Letâs keep fingers crossed for Crate and Barrel, as well as restaurant supply stores. They may well be struggling too.
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The 5 SLT stores that are closing here in the Bay Area are in high-rent places like San Francisco and Santana Row in San Jose. Iâm hoping they keep their Livermore Outlet store.
Hope so too, @StephanieL; SF Union Square closure was a true shock, but considering the rents there now, in all reality, shouldnât have been a surprise. Under those metrics, some in the Seattle area may be in the crosshairs. The location by Pike Place Market, must be ok due to sheer volume of foot traffic, and am pretty sure itâs their flagship location. Not fact checked yet.
Three of the five SLT within an hour or so are closing. All of them are too far for us.
I agree with you. I used to live in Seattle and would often visit the Pike Place Market store. Only place Iâve ever seen a copper croquembouche mold âin the wild.â That alone speaks to the non-dilution of merchandise for me!
I donât think the Market is getting normal foot traffic. No cruise ships spewing out tourists, and many of the shops are still closed 
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That makes me sad. I havenât bought much from them, having much more kitchen stuff than I wil ever need, but Ioved the catalog.
Dang!
All these years later I dropped into the SLT in the Domain in Austin. As I reflected on this experience as compared with the original SLT, the differences were shocking. In the original, the vast majority of cookware was tinned copper or carbon steel. Neither were to be had in the new one. In the original, all the molds were tinned. In the new one there were a few tinned molds, but most were nonstick or silicone. In the original, most of the knives were carbon steel. In the new one they were all stainless. In a half a century SLT had gone from fin de siecle to all in on the 21st. Almost all vestiges of the old ways are gone. I am not saying one approach or the other is better, but I am saying it would be very unusual for a new student in cooking school to learn to use the old equipment and techniques and make the old classics.
years back, we had a Fanteâs in King of Prussia Mall.
they had everything . . .
the KoP store closed, now they have only one location in Philadelphia.
been to several SLT stores - was stunned at the prices. not âas compared to on-lineâ - but just âhow much for that?â
during/since covid, we do a lot from Amazon. if one opts to spend the time/effort/gas to go to local stores , , , , they donât have the color/size/whatever one is looking for.
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I loved Fanteâs, but when they changed their website and eliminated the alphabetical list of everything I sensed a disturbance in the force. They are still awfully good, especially for their Italian things.
For any tools or other items, I go online to Etsy and to Bernal Cutlery. It is amazing the cool things you can track down on Etsy like a top of the line NIB Bron mandoline for under $50 or a NIB tinned steel mouli. I am using my Apilco gratins more and more and can get four essentially new for less the price of one at W-S. It would be fun to offer more gratins for dinner parties.
Totally. But I also remember indie consumer kitchen stores. Seattle had quite a few (Sur la Table itself being one). IMO, SLT and W-S killed off most of the countryâs small kitchen shops well before Amazon buried that market segment.
Itâs too bad, because now thereâre very few opportunities to handle wares before purchasing.
I agree that SLT and W-S were major contributors to the demise of independent cooking wares stores. They also performed a pretty significant bait and switch. Early on they were truly stores for cooks. Over time they morphed into kitchen fashion stores, urging cooks to buy matching sets in colors that changed at least annually, often more, with coordinating kitchen linens, table linens, and tableware. Shelves with rainbow rows of Staub and Le Creuset, ranks of clad pans, and appliances to perform culinary miracles are on walls opposite shelves of premade sauces and mixes to pour into those pans and a dazzling array of condiments and seasonings. Those also change with the seasons. If you walk in looking for tinned copper, untreated aluminum, tinned steel, carbon steel knives, or anything that does not come in a matchy-matchy mode but is used only for serious cooking from scratch, go home and log on to a place like Etsy or even Dehillerin. If you succumb to a matched set of anything from SLT or W-S and later need to add to the set or replace a piece, good luck. Even something as timeless as blue Brasserie plates gets discontinued, a subtle nudge that it is time to update your look.
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