Bo and I started working on the Burdy grill in it's present round, table-top form around September 2025. Our prototypes were hand-welded and made from somewhat readily available parts. They were rough—I'm not the world's greatest welder—but they allowed us to light fires, test, and iterate. The prototypes proved out the concept and helped us to find our design direction. Making and testing them set the stage for designing real parts.
By late October I'd modeled a preliminary design and I was ordering prototype parts for factories in Guangdong, China. Our first factory parts were made astonishingly fast, arriving shortly after Thanksgiving, kicking of more rapid development—grilling, electronics tinkering, testing, and design iteration. Getting our sample parts through US customs actually took longer than making the steel molds!
It's not surprising that we found our manufacturing partners in Guangdong, they call it "the factory of the world" for a reason. But in fact our search for manufacturing partners started with casting a wide net, with the hope that it'd be economically viable to work with domestic partners. This was all during a period of really high trade and tariff volatility. But as quotes came in it became apparent that manufacturing in the US would not be feasible, both in terms of economics, time, and finding a complete supply chain. So, off to the beautiful Pearl River valley, the factory of the world.
Our next round of prototype parts was ready in January, shipping out right before Chinese New Year factory closures. After another round of grill testing—this time in the depths of a really cold and snowy winter—we got more or less to the current iteration of the Burdy. I sent out design revisions, ordered a fresh round of sample parts, and bought tickets to China. If everything worked out, the parts would all arrive at our assembly partner's facility on time and we'd be able to run through the assembly hands-on, in person—a perfect way to identify issues and work toward the development of a smooth QC and assembly process.
My friend, former teaching partner, and fellow Kickstarter veteran, Craighton Berman agreed to accompany me on the trip, take photos, and supply another informed voice in conversations with suppliers ... not to mention joining as essential food buddy.
It came down to the wire with the sample deliveries, but our supply partners came through and we got to do what we set out to do—build our final prototypes. Most of the parts came together well. There were some fit issues too. Practice assembly provided a perfect backdrop for talking about quality control, design optimization, and assembly operations. It also surfaced issues that have lead to more iteration, design refinement, and manufacturing readiness.
So on the weekend after our assembly meeting, we packed up our new prototypes and set out for supplies. Much to our surprise our guide Benny steered us to a nearby Walmart for charcoal, fire-starters, and groceries. It was my first time to a Walmart outside of North America and I was pleasantly surprised by all of the pre-skewered, frozen bbq-ready foods we found.
All that was left to do — grill!
Our hotel was a very out of the way architect-designed, boutique place built into a restored historic village—really beautiful, quiet, and out in the farm land on the edge of a megalopolis that is home to over 60 million people (yes, 60M, not a typo!). All week the promenade around the villiage's ancient stone-lined lagoon was empty, with only local kids hanging out with their motor bikes drinking teas after dark. So we thought setting up outside by the lagoon would be a fun, mellow spot for a Saturday evening barbecue.
When we got back from Walmart we found ourselves in a fully different scene. The villiage was packed with people! Saturday night and the start of the Tomb Sweeping holiday and we were all the sudden in the middle of a hot evening out destination. Undaunted, we pressed ahead and our little cook out quickly became a big curiosity for families out for a stroll. What are these Meiguoren guys doing grilling out here!?
In fact, people were really interested in the grill. Barbecuing is a hugely popular past time in China. With so much manufacturing in the area people were stopping, checking out the fit and finish, and giving us super specific feedback and complements on the quality of the parts and materials. And in a land of rectangular grills—largely oriented to the grilling of skewered delights—people found the round grill pretty novel.
Before long a nearby business owner spotted us and welcomed us to get more comfortable outside his shop at the end of the lagoon. The shop owner, Ming, had a stainless steel table and seats outside that he invited us to use. He was closing up shop to go home for dinner with family but said he'd be back. It was a barbecue upgrade! We continued chatting with people, collecting grilling tips, sharing food, and enjoying cold local lagers.
Ming came back with his daughter Sunny, a Hong Kong lawyer, fluent in english. We continued to grill, swap stories, and reflect on the ease of socializing around a fire, especially in contrast to the friction between our countries' leadership, engaged at the time heavy trade battles. We marinated more chicken in soy sauce, got more beer, and grilled well into the night.
Craighton and I had an early departure the following day, driving and training to Hong Kong, so we wrapped things up before it got too late. Ming insisted on cleaning out the grill for us. He took it apart, scrubbed off the gates, and hosed down the parts so we didn't have to travel with a dirty grill. The warmth, generosity, and hospitality we experienced blew our minds and drew a sharp contrast with the narrative of conflict and animosity between countries that dominated the news at home.
I've done a lot of grill testing in my day, but this session was remarkable and is going to stand out in my memory forever.
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