Owners of Pyrex, Instant Pot to merge

NEW YORK — The maker of kitchen classics like Pyrex and CorningWare is adding a new culinary darling, the Instant Pot, to its cupboard.

Corelle Brands, which owns Pyrex and other brands, said Monday that it planned to merge with Instant Brands, the Canadian producer of electric multi-cookers that have taken the public by storm.

Such is the popularity of the Instant Pot — a sort of hybrid of gadgets like a pressure cooker and a slow cooker — that it has legions of self-described “Pothead” fans online. An Instant Pot group on Facebook has 1.8 million members.

It was created by Robert Wang, a computer scientist who spent $350,000 of his own money trying to create a cooker that could handle several different tasks.

The Instant Pot went on sale in 2010. A confluence of factors — its availability on Amazon, touting of technological advancements like sensors to help optimize cooking, relatively low price and popularity among bloggers — helped make it a phenomenon.

Now Instant Pot’s parent, which is based in Ottawa, Ontario, is itself set to become part of a much bigger company. Corelle, previously known as World Kitchen, was acquired by private equity firm Cornell Capital in 2017. It has 21 offices on three continents.

Corelle’s chief executive, Ken Wilkes, said in a statement that Instant Brands and its products “have become a staple in kitchens in North America, fundamentally changing how consumers think about cooking.” Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.