Love it electronguru. Exactly right about engineers!

Totally agree with the way Americans cook  or rather don't cook. I do believe there will be more publicity and exposure with the TM5 in the US where it is not well known. Could even appear on Chefy shows like MasterChef and no doubt celebrity chefs doing their thing as the machine is in many restaurants .

It will be very interesting to see what happens and if it takes off with the good cooks in American homes.

Gert

Oh I do so hope Vorwerk will Sell the TM5 in the US. I miss having a tmx desperately. I think the major obstacle is the measurement issue, ie metric versus imperial. When I first got here (temporarily living in the US after relocating from Australia) I was asking for 200 grams of this or that and shop assistants looked set me blankly.  The non- use of metric is a huge hurdle to overcome. I'm constantly having to convert in my head, mikes to Kms, hrsms to ounce, Fahrenheit yo Celsius etc.

I see the hardest thing for Thermomix  getting into the US is the fact that Americans still use the imperial measuring system while the rest of the world is metric.
With the scales measuring in grams, some Americans will find that a stumbling block.

I've been giving these questions some thought. How would a successful US launch of the Thermomix look?

Measurement units are important and Americans will freak at grams and celsius. But the US is also a huge market. They already made a version just for Canada. A model with ounces and fahrenheit and the 110v the Canadian version already has, is a necessary no brainer. The challenge would come with recipes on the Internet. So ideally, the new digital version can be configured for either or both and easily translate between them.  

The history of our processed food obsession goes back to WWII. We needed to get edible food (lots of it) all over the place and it needed to be stable for weeks and months. The government hired companies to come up with processes that would achieve that. And through the war, they got really good at it and got really big selling it. After the war, their built in market disappeared so they went about creating a new market. They went about teaching us how to eat faster, eat instant. First they took over the shelves and freezers of grocery stores. Then they took over the shelves and freezers of restaurants. Today, its a rare American who doesn't eat something that was dried or frozen at least part of every day. And for many, its every meal, perhaps the entire meal.

So there's huge need for such an appliance here. But how will the people who can benefit most, know that Thermomix is the answer? It costs 3-4x that of the highest cost general use countertop appliance here. To get Americans to pony up, Vorwerk needs to show why its better than everything they already have, why it won't end up collecting dust in the corner along with the last 5 appliances they bought. And Americans are very intuition based. So adding to the challenge is that the Thermomix looks like a fancy blender. Breaking through the noise and objections, will require something like this:

Old fashioned
video showing the old process (lots of time and work) with the old results (healthy and tasty)
long list of steps and time per step and huge total minutes, showing knives and pans
long list of benefits, including fiber
short list of sugar / salt / transfats

New fashioned
video showing the new process (little time or work) with the new results (unhealthy and bland)
short list of steps and time per step with tiny total minutes, showing plastic and microwaves
short list of benefits
long list of sugar / salt / transfats

Thermomix fashioned
video showing the TM process (little time or work) with the new TM result (healthy and tasty)
short list of steps and time per step with tiny total minutes
long list of benefits, including fiber
short list of sugar / salt / transfats

Thermomix: old fashioned health at new fashioned speed