Sub in one of my mom’s friends for the consultant and all the women in her bible study, add twenty years, and this is pretty much exactly like what one of the parties was like. Someone got to pound out their frustrations (kids are crazy, work is crazy, husband is a doof) on that slap chopper thing, someone got to use the Apple/Peeler/Corer/Slicer, and someone got to do the stirring in a special batter bowl. A Pampered Chef party was like watching the Food Network and the schmaltzy Pioneer Woman before it was a thing.
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Who doesn’t need their husband’s approval to buy a pizza stone or some measuring cups? Side note, I didn’t know Ramona from Real Housewives of NYC was a Pampered Chef spokesperson.
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If you went to college in the early 2000s and had a mom who dragged you with her to her friend’s home parties (seriously, countless Pampered Chef parties. I would be a consultant), you most likely own a few pieces of Pampered Chef your Mom sent you off to on-campus housing with… like this that is still in my kitchen:
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THE Can Opener
This piece is my most used Pampered Chef item and the most confounding to norms who have never tasted a taco ring made out of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. The can opener is apparently so advanced, I found this tutorial on YouTube. It’s pretty great and you won’t cut your fingers. WIN.
Source
NO Pampered Chef party was complete without the taco ring! And were you really living without dropping a few dollars on their stoneware? Totinos on the pizza stone was next level.
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Pampered Chef is still an MLM
The thing with Pampered Chef is that you never got the vibe from any of the consultants that they were wanting to convert you, sell you a bill of goods and not deliver or that what they were selling was junk. It seemed like most of them just wanted you to throw a party so they could pack of their gear and get out of the house and away from their kids for one night. I was also a pre-teen when Pampered Chef was a big deal and this was pre-Facebook and pre “Can I take you to coffee and tell you about my small business?” era, so I can’t really be trusted on the post-modern Pampered Chef world. It’s not Rodan and Fields though, that’s for sure.
Since we know most MLM consultants never turn a profit, and in fact a lot of them LOSE money, I wanted to dive in and see if Pampered Chef was a big scam that we never knew about because we were too distracted by the sugar cookie fruit pizza, or if consultants make a decent income.
First off, the buy in (which again, no real company would make YOU buy their product to sell it for them) is pretty cheap, starting at $100-250 for a nice kit. When you think about LulaRoe’s initial buy-ins are in the $5000 gees range, this looks like a steal. But again, it’s an MLM! So I went onto the Pampered Chef website to learn more about how consultants get paid and I found this commission chart…
Commission:
- $1-$749 sales in a month earns you 21% commission
- $750-$1249 sales in a month earns you 22% commission
- $1250-$2499 sales in a month earns you 23% commission
- $2500-$3999 sales in a month earns you 24% commission
- $4000 and above sales will earn you 25% commission
Extras (are these really extras??)
• Recruiting a team will allow you to earn an extra 3% on the sales of each member
• Discounts On all products
• Bonuses including free products and points toward vacations
Doing the math, you find out that even if you are BALLIN’ and selling $4000 worth of salad spinners and meat tenderizers and making the top commission bracket, you would only make $1000 and while that’s nothing to cough at, you could probably make this with a standard part-time job with less hassle and less dishes and less SELLING. And if you are the average consultant and made the base commission and sold $749 worth of product, you’d take home $157 bucks (pre-tax I ASSume)… and if you think that the majority of the products come in at 20-50 bucks, you’d need to sell a whole lotta product (like 400 ice cream scoops) at a whole lotta in-home parties. And yea, that’s kinda depressing.
Or ya know, you could just buy your Pampered Chef products on their website and skip the taco ring and the awkward small talk with your Mom’s bible study group altogether. YAY!
Ladies, AGAIN, do not buy into an MLM even if you have fond memories and would like to role play your female Guy Fieri cooking show in your neighbor’s living room and make a little side cash with your own “business.” Don’t do it!
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Does anyone still know an actual Pampered Chef consultant? Do they still do demos? Are they still making the taco ring?
