One Light Charcoal

An industrial design process collides with a new idea for a charcoal bag.

Design Process:

The spark of an idea…

History:

How do we start fires to cook on today?

First thoughts:

Led to a cylindrical solution…

That created too much debris and was not feasible financially from a manufacturing standpoint.

Manufacturing constraints led to a more conventional rectilinear form factor with a thinner ply construction.

We unfortunately had to burn our prototypes…

…and over the course of two years finally achieved a consistent controlled burn.

The final solution: One Light Charcoal

One Light Charcoal was designed to be a fast, clean and reliable way to light charcoal without the aid of lighter fluid. The idea was to create a unique bag that uses convection rather than petroleum based accelerants to ignite and then roast the coals. This reduces the amount of low level ozone released into the atmosphere as well as ensuring clean tasting food. The One Light Charcoal bag incorporates an internal corrugated cardboard chimney to draw air through the product, ensuring that the coals roast from the inside out. Three years later and thousands of test bags, One Light Charcoal is out-selling major brands on the shelves of Wall-Mart, HEB and Wholefoods Market. The bag includes a couple of long matches inside the corrugated chimney insert for lighting convenience.