As with most things this is debatable but worth looking into before making your purchase. The quick easy answer would be the inventors of the infrared grill, TEC. Because TEC invented the infrared grill they also claimed a patent on the technology so that other companies could not take advantage of the market. For ten years TEC went on creating, improving, and enhancing their infrared grills. When a company firsts invents something, although it will typically carry out the task as designed, it is usually not without many bugs, unwanted flaws, or unknown hazards (like unexpected flare-ups). When a new product like an infrared grill is first released, there is also much speculation as to the safety of the device.
What this all means for the consumer is that TEC has invented, tested, and had ample time to improve their grills to ensure that you are getting the best quality product that money can buy. While other manufacturers who have joined the infrared grills market since TEC ran out of their patent, they have not had the time or experience that TEC has had in order to learn and improve on their equipment.
TEC has also won numerous awards for their grilling products including the “Kitchen Innovations” award in 2006, the Gas Foodservice Network award, as well as the Hearth and Home award in 2005 for their grilling products. TEC has proven themselves to be a reliable and trustworthy manufacturer of infrared grilling products. You can be sure that when you purchase an infrared grill from TEC that you are getting a top of the line product, but is the extra price tag really worth it? Are there other manufacturers that are just as good?
When a company decides to join a marketing niche such as infrared grills, the first thing they do is research their competitors. You can be sure that for every manufacturer of infrared grills that exists, that is not TEC, they also own a TEC grill that has been torn to pieces for research purposes so they can share those best practices. By doing this they can implement things into their grill that TEC has already gone through the hard task of learning. This is a huge advantage for these people because not only are they going to have their own unique ideas and innovations, but they will also have those of TEC. The difficulty in this is perfecting the process of building the infrared grills to the same specs of TEC.
It will be a difficult road for other manufacturers to take in competing with TEC, but as time goes buy and the marketing battle goes on, loyalties will change, and if not then TEC will remain as the king of infrared grilling. The best thing you can do when searching for your infrared grill is to read reviews and go out to the stores and look at them yourselves. There are other brands that are up and coming and quickly making their name in the infrared grills community, one of those being Texas Sizzler Grills In the end all of the infrared grills will cook your food by the same method and the differences will be overall subtle.
