It isn’t uncommon for Instagram-friendly products to create a fandom. Social media feeds function as the new As Seen On TV aisle, and avid online communities spring up around consumer goods, from mattresses to eyewear. In 2017, the viral product was the Instant Pot, an all-in-one pressure cooker with a delightful company story that benefited from exceptional Amazon promotional placement. This year, not only have the evangelists conquered social media, but the movement moved to the analog world as well.
The Instant Pot reached internet infamy on Cyber Monday in November, but that was the culmination of a year-long groundswell. The device is a seven-in-one cooker, meaning that in addition to doing the work of an ultra-fast crockpot it also functions as a rice cooker, a yogurt maker, and a pressure cooker, among other uses, and it does it all quickly. It’s not the first multi-use pressure cooker, but it has become the Kleenex of its kind. Amazon reviews — many of which are novel-length — explain how it has captivated consumers: “All I can say is how DID I NOT buy one sooner?!?! It’s like the TiVo or [the] smart phone. Once you’ve tried them you wonder how you’ve lived without! I basically cooked a beef stew in 30 min!!!! Can’t beat that!”
Appreciation for the gadget had been building slowly, and it erupted over the retail holiday. “The best-seller on Prime Day in Canada was the Instant Pot Duo 80 7-in-1 Multi-Use Programmable Pressure Cooker,” Amazon announced in July. According to data from internet analytics firm Chartbeat, total engaged time on articles with the phrase “Instant Pot” over the past 18 months had been steadily building, and it hit its aforementioned spike last month.
The Chartbeat data aligns with Google Trends. In early July, the search term “instant pot” spiked, enjoyed a gentle lift through the summer and fall, and then dramatically climbed during the end of November.
“I can confirm that the Instant Pot Duo80 was one of the best sellers on Amazon.com on Black Friday,” Amazon PR rep Lynsey Kehrli told me via email, though it was hardly a surprise. Earlier this month, The New York Times published a deep dive into the company behind Instant Pot, and accurately explained how the product is evidence of Amazon’s market sway. The popularity of the item — and Amazon’s push behind it — is translating to other arms of the giant retailer. During Thanksgiving, Weight Watchers Instant Pot Cookbook and Instant Pot Cookbook were among the most-read cookbooks on Kindle, according to Amazon Charts.
“And will you also tell me why people care so much about these things; because it’s kind of blowing my mind?” Chartbeat’s Lauryn Bennett asked me when I requested data on the search term’s popularity via email. The interest is fed, in part, by a trendy new cooking fad that comes with new (well, newish) technology. Like the handheld sous vide and Wi-Fi-enabled slow cooker of years past, it made for a convenient holiday gift. Yet the Instant Pot is more than a testament to Amazon’s power. It’s proof of the creative fandoms that the internet cultivates.
J. Kenji López-Alt of The Food Lab says the Instant Pot’s success is a result of the ease it’s brought to pressure cooking — and that is the basis of the company’s marketing strategy. They made a great product, he says, “and then [got it] into the hands of as many bloggers and professional food writers as possible and let the word spread from there.” In an internet brimming with ads — which we’re rapidly learning how to gloss over — organic messaging resonates more. “It gave the product a ring of authenticity that other competitors have not been able to reproduce.” The Instant Pot has such brand awareness, López-Alt says, that people don’t even realize it’s a pressure cooker. “I’ve gotten countless messages and emails from people asking if I’d ever ‘write some Instant Pot recipes,’ which is funny because I have a very wide catalog of electric pressure cooker recipes that work in any electric pressure cooker, including the Instant Pot!”
On the heels of endorsements from bloggers and food writers, fan evangelists have started Facebook groups, subreddits, and Instagram accounts that have facilitated the rapid growth of ardent Instant Pot users. On YouTube, home cooks have started cooking shows like Instapottin’ With Poonam. Poonam is a Dallas-based pediatric nurse practitioner and mom of two, who, along with her friends Nicki and Dimple, launched the channel eight months ago. (All three asked that their last names be withheld.) Instapottin’ With Poonam also has a growing Instagram and Facebook presence, and her website’s shop previously included affiliate links to different versions of the Instant Pot. “I got my Instant Pot actually almost two years ago,” Poonam tells me. “After I had my second daughter, my mom bought one and gifted it to me. I still remember rolling my eyes and thought, ‘When or how am I going to use this?’” Poonam says the Instant Pot sat in its box for a year before she dove in. “Little did I know how much this gadget would change my life.” She quickly became a convert. Poonam says she has given up her oven completely in favor of the Instant Pot.
There was a slight learning curve, she said, and at the time she started using the pot, there weren’t that many resources online. Poonam was always interested in cooking, but the Instant Pot allowed her to make Indian recipes her family had enjoyed in a fraction of the time.
Poonam and her friends are thrilled with the growth of the channel. (They currently have more than 6,000 subscribers.) But what’s most exciting, Poonam says, is hearing from people who are discovering a whole new way to cook and rediscovering ethnic cuisine thanks to the Instant Pot and her show. “That’s been particularly rewarding, demystifying the Instant Pot and Indian food.”
The educational community around the Instant Pot continues to grow, helping new buyers learn how to use the device and — as in Poonam’s case — reconnect to “complicated” foods. It’s even changing kitchens: Some people, Nicki tells me, are reconstructing their kitchens so that giant cutting boards cover their stovetops, providing more real estate for their multiple Instant Pots.
The Instant Pot is spawning a small economy: There are cookbooks, decals, and, of course, YouTube cooking shows like Poonam’s.
Kevin Chan also fell in love with the Instant Pot and started a YouTube cooking channel, The Instant Pot Way of Life, devoted to it. The real estate appraiser from Mar Vista, California, got his device in July 2016, and was impressed by how much simpler (and safer) it was to use than an old-fashioned pressure cooker. “I don’t even remember what the first thing I cooked was, but I remember unsealing the steam valve then watching how smoothly the steam released without any fear that the top would fly off,” he told me via email. On his YouTube channel, Chan helps viewers with everything from recipes to side-by-side Instant Pot comparison shopping. He decided to make the show after his friends started buying Instant Pots and turning to him for advice. He says the manuals that come with the Instant Pot “are totally crap,” which is one reason the online community has been so fervent.
“I sort of became the de facto Instant Pot expert since I was constantly preaching how amazing it was,” he says. “They would all ask me a lot of questions, so I figured why not make a YouTube video explaining the basics?”
One of his early videos, “Beginner’s Guide to the Instant Pot,” has really blown up, he says — likely because of all the new holiday buyers (and gift receivers — now including this writer) out there. The channel is relatively small, he admits, but it was something he created simply to help his friends and for fun, so the traction he has gotten is icing. “I honestly was really excited when it hit 300 views, much less 300,000.” Perhaps what’s been most encouraging, though, is how … polite it all is. “Having spent a large amount of time on the internet, I’ve seen how YouTube comments can be, so I was actually very pleasantly surprised at how nice people have been,” says Chan. “Besides one guy telling me that I should have cleaned my Instant Pot more before filming, everyone has been really nice and appreciative.”
López-Alt isn’t convinced that the Instant Pot economy will stick around, or that it will continue to center on the single device. “Eventually I think other brands of electric pressure cookers will find more market share and people will go back to buying pressure-cooker cookbooks instead of Instant Pot–specific cookbooks,” he says. “It’s similar to how Crock-Pot was synonymous with slow cooker for a long time.”
He’s probably right; the Instant Pot isn’t destined to become the iPhone of pressure cookers and dominate the market indefinitely. There will be other, similar pressure cookers — but it’s unlikely they’ll bring such extreme enthusiasm, and it’s even less likely that they’ll bring a moment of positivity the internet needed. 2017 was an excessively dark year, but the silver lining to it may just be that it gave us the Instant Pot, and with it, a new, pleasant corner of the internet.