My father James spent most of his career in professional kitchens. His brother, my uncle Robert, spent his mainly in materials engineering. For decades, they worked separately, but they kept running into the same problem.
āEvery pan I used in the kitchen eventually let me down,ā my father used to say. āCoatings flaking, handles loosening and pans that warped the first time they hit real heat. At some point you stop accepting it.ā
Robert had seen the same issue from a different angle.
āI was working with titanium in industrial applications and kept thinking: why isn't anyone using this in cookware? It doesn't warp, it doesn't need coatings and it's one of the most stable materials we have.ā
They both knew the answer was margins. Titanium is harder to work with. It takes longer and costs more to do right. For most brands, that math just didn't work.
For my father and Robert, it was the only math that mattered.