Why they win
Our strategic read on the brand: the founder, the launch, the voice and the idea it owns, and how it differs from the commodity players in its category. This part is opinion built on linked public sources. It is not part of the Brand Tested Score.
They grew up on the side of the counter chefs buy from
Most cookware brands borrow the chef. Made In started next to one. The founders’ note on their homepage says it plainly: “Born out of our 100-year old, family-owned restaurant supply business,” signed by Jake and Chip. Jake Kalick is the cofounder and president (Forbes Vetted, May 12, 2026) and Chip Malt is the CEO (Made In release, Sep 17, 2026).
That background is the unfair advantage. They didn’t have to guess what a line cook wants from a pan, and they didn’t have to fake the restaurant credibility. The company says its products are in more than 4,000 restaurants (Sep 17, 2026), which matches the “Over 4,000 Chef Customers” line on the homepage.
What we like: The origin story in one short paragraph, signed by both founders, with a real photo. No brand film needed.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26Plain words, restaurant credentials, and one italic word
The look is a restaurant kitchen with the lights on: black and white type, steel, a red that shows up only on buttons and the top bar. The voice is short and a little dry. They let other people do the bragging, like the Strategist line “If you’re shopping for an entire cookware set, it doesn’t get better than Made In’s.”
What we like: Third-party praise, set big, with no adjectives of their own around it.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26
Worth noting: “Industry Pricing” in the top bar. They still sell to the trade, and they tell home cooks so.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26They sell the chef’s tool, and let everyone else sell a look
Cookware has two crowded ends. Big household names sit inside conglomerates: Groupe SEB owns All-Clad and T-fal, and Meyer owns KitchenAid and Rachael Ray cookware (Inputs Daily, Oct 2, 2026). The newer DTC players lead with color and non-toxic, which is Caraway’s lane (Caraway release, Jul 13, 2026). Made In picked a third spot: the pan a professional actually reaches for. That’s the one idea they own, and “The Cookware Chefs Actually Use™” says it in five words.
The price and pack setup backs it up. They sell sets with the savings spelled out ($799 against $1,024 on the Stainless Set in our capture) and a compare table that walks you from 10 pieces to the full kitchen. That reads like a supply catalog for your house, which is exactly the point. They also back the materials with outside lab results: Light Labs found no detectable PFAS, heavy metals or BPA across the products it checked (Made In release, Jan 8, 2026).
Still growing, and now selling in Europe
As of Oct 10, 2026, the store is live and the Stainless Set page shows a working Add to Cart in our capture. Made In opened its EU direct store with local inventory on Sep 17, 2026 (release), launched its first cast iron line with Williams Sonoma on Jun 1 (Forbes Vetted, May 12) and added the Weeknight Pan on Aug 1 (Forbes Vetted, Aug 3). Its wholesale team told HomePage News that store partnerships are growing across specialty, department store, grocery and hardware (Mar 12, 2026).
Why now: Made In took its own direct store into the EU on Sep 17, 2026 (release), so the storefront below is the one they’re betting a new market on.
The storefront, screen by screen
What our dated captures of the live storefront show. This is the part the Brand Tested Score is built on.
Four words of positioning that a competitor can’t copy without lying
Cookware is a knife fight. Every brand says premium, every brand says pro, and every brand has a pan on a flame in the hero. Made In walks in with “The Cookware Chefs Actually Use™” and then spends the rest of the homepage proving it. That one word, “Actually”, set in italics, is doing a lot of work. It’s a jab at everyone else, and it’s a claim they can back up.
I love it. Their value prop scored 90 and their point of view 89, which tracks: you know what they sell and why they think they’re different before you scroll an inch.
What we like: The headline is the whole pitch. My one nit: the subhead under it is small, light text sitting on a busy video, and it’s hard to read at this size.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26This homepage reads like a trophy case, and that’s the point
Scroll for ten seconds and you get America’s Test Kitchen (“Best Overall Cookware Set”), Food and Wine (“Best Overall Saucier”), a block that says “Trusted By 1,400,000+ Cooks” and a row of chef videos under “Over 4,000 Chef Customers.” Our proof score came in at 83. For a category where people research for weeks, named third parties beat any adjective you could write yourself.
What we like: Awards tied to specific products, so the shopper knows which pan won what.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26
What we’d fix: The bar chart has no average and no counts on it. Put the 4.8 and the counts here, the same way the product page does.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26That chart is the one spot where the proof gets vague. The bars are there, the numbers aren’t. The product page, meanwhile, shows the whole distribution, including 94 one-star reviews. I’d take that honesty and put it right on the homepage. A real 4.8 with visible one-stars is more believable than a pretty bar with no labels.
What we like: Every star level, with a count. This is the version of the chart the homepage should borrow.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26The best seller row does the math before you ask
Every card in the homepage best seller row carries a star rating, a review count and the price, and the sets add the compare-at price and the savings in dollars and percent. The Stainless Set card reads $799, $1,024, “SAVE $225”, 22% off, with 4.8 stars from 5,147 reviews. That’s a lot of information on a small card and it still reads clean.
What we like: Rating, count, price and savings on every card. A shopper can pick a set without opening a single product page.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26The popup asks a great question and hides the answer
On our phone capture, a takeover popup showed up titled “Unlock Your Secret Offer.” It asks what you’re shopping for, with six answers like “Upgrading to professional-quality kitchenware,” “Outfitting a new home” and “Shopping for a gift,” then asks for an email. I like the segmentation a lot. Knowing whether someone is outfitting a new home or buying a gift is gold for the emails that follow.
What I’d change is the secret. The fine print says “*First full priced purchase $149+,” but the popup never says what the offer actually is. A shopper is being asked to trade an email for a mystery. Name the number and the trade gets a lot easier.
What we’d fix: Smart question, full screen, and no number. Say what the offer is.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26A $799 decision, broken into pieces a person can actually say yes to
The Stainless Set buy box is tidy. Three sizes, care and add-on upsells as simple checkboxes with their prices, Afterpay at “4 payments of $199.75,” and an Add to Cart button that repeats the price and the strikethrough. Under the button, “Additional discounts do not apply” is honest and saves a support ticket.
What we like: Rating at the top, savings next to the price, upsells that don’t feel like a trap.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26Then comes the best row on the whole site, and it’s small. Free shipping over $99, a 60-day risk-free trial and a lifetime warranty, with a short customer quote under it. Those are three of the strongest reasons to buy cookware online, set in small type under the button.
What we like: The best three promises on the site. They earn more room than this.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26The compare table further down is a smart touch too. It lines up the 10-piece, 13-piece and Complete Kitchen sets with every pan in each, and tags the $2,999 Complete Kitchen “MOST SAVINGS” (it saves $720). Fair warning for their team: in percent, the 10-piece saves more (22% vs 19%), so “most savings” is a dollars claim.
Worth noting: Side by side sets with every piece listed. This is how you sell up without a pushy upsell.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26The homepage never says what happens if you hate it
Here’s the biggest gap, and it’s an easy one. That trial, the warranty and the free shipping threshold live on the product page. In the homepage text we captured on Oct 10, none of them appear above the footer, where “Returns & Exchanges” and “Warranty” are plain links. The homepage has a founders’ note, chef videos and award winners. It does not have the one line that takes the risk off a $799 order.
Worth noting: The bottom of the homepage: an email field and links, and still no line about the trial. One sentence here would do it.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26It’s like having a great closer and keeping him in the bullpen until the ninth. The homepage is where first-time visitors decide whether to keep going, and “60-day risk-free trial” is the line that lets them.
On a phone, the price rides along with your thumb
The phone versions hold up. The homepage headline makes the first screen with both buttons, and the product page keeps a sticky Add to Cart bar at the bottom with the price and the strikethrough in it, so the buy button never scrolls away.
What we like: The headline and both buttons fit on the first screen.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26
What we like: The sticky bar carries the price and the savings the whole way down.
Source: madeincookware.com, Oct 10 ’26A custom build our scan can only partly read
Made In runs a custom storefront, and our public-code scan saw very little of the stack behind it. So we don’t publish a Stack Score for them and the tools behind it are left out of their Site Experience score, which is reweighted across the areas we could measure. A thin scan here says more about our scanner than their setup. They clearly run a quiz, a segmenting popup and a review platform, we just can’t see which ones from the outside.
Huge respect to the Made In team. They landed at 81 on our board, a B+, good for #5 of the 182 brands we’ve scored. When my biggest note is “move your best promise up the page,” that’s a team doing most things right. See the full Made In score.
The one next move
Put the trial and the warranty on the homepage
The product page already says “Free Shipping Over $99”, “60-Day Risk Free Trial” and “Lifetime Warranty” in one tidy row under the button. Our Oct 10 capture of the homepage doesn’t mention any of the three above the footer links. Copy that row, as is, under the hero buttons or right under the best seller cards. It’s three icons and nine words, and it answers the question every person about to spend $799 on pans is asking: what if I hate them?
What the read stands on
- Brand Tested Score 81 (B+), #5 of the 182 brands we rank: Brand DNA 73 (B-), Site Experience 86 (A). Site Experience parts: first impression 90, point of view 89, proof 83, getting to checkout 72, one story everywhere 81, the product page 95.
- The tools behind it are left out of Made In’s Site Experience score: it runs a custom storefront where our public-code scan sees very little, so we label it a partial scan instead of guessing.
- Homepage H1 on Oct 10, 2026: “The Cookware Chefs Actually Use™”, with the subhead “Chef-trusted Stainless Clad, built for the pace of a professional kitchen.”
- Homepage proof on Oct 10: “120,000+ 5-Star Reviews”, “Trusted By 1,400,000+ Cooks”, “Over 4,000 Chef Customers”, and award lines for America’s Test Kitchen and Food and Wine.
- Stainless Set PDP on Oct 10: 4.8 stars (5,147), $799 against a $1,024 compare-at price (“SAVE $225”, 22% off), “4 payments of $199.75”, and the row “Free Shipping Over $99”, “60-Day Risk Free Trial”, “Lifetime Warranty”.
- PDP review breakdown on Oct 10: 4,729 five-star, 225 four-star, 58 three-star, 40 two-star and 94 one-star reviews, all shown.
- The homepage text we captured on Oct 10 has no trial, guarantee or free shipping line outside the footer links “Returns & Exchanges” and “Warranty”.
See Made In’s full score and the checks behind it How the Brand Tested Score works
No brand or app on this page paid to be here, and none of the links on it earn us anything. How we make money.
Sources
- Made In homepage, madeincookware.com, captured Oct 10, 2026, desktop 1440 and phone 390, logged out.
- Made In Stainless Set product page, madeincookware.com/products/the-stainless-sets, captured Oct 10, 2026.
- Made In, “Made In Cookware Launches in the European Union,” GlobeNewswire via The Manila Times, Sep 17, 2026, manilatimes.net.
- Made In, “Made In Cookware Partners with Light Labs for Third-Party Testing,” GlobeNewswire, Jan 8, 2026, globenewswire.com.
- Forbes Vetted, “Made In Launches Its First-Ever Cast Iron Cookware Collection,” May 12, 2026, forbes.com.
- Forbes Vetted, “Made In’s New Weeknight Pan Is Designed For Easy One-Pot Cooking,” Aug 3, 2026, forbes.com.
- HomePage News, “Made In Makes Inspired Home Show Debut as Retail Expansion Gains Momentum,” Mar 12, 2026, homepagenews.com.
- Inputs Daily, “Caraway turns big cookware lawsuit over PFAS claims into a marketing message,” Oct 2, 2026, inputsdaily.com (for who owns All-Clad, T-fal, KitchenAid and Rachael Ray cookware).
- Caraway, “Caraway Expands Retail Presence with Walmart Launch,” PR Newswire, Jul 13, 2026, prnewswire.com.
- Brand Tested Brand Tested Score audit and storefront scan, methodology v2.0. The full score and the checks behind it.
The Brand Tested Score measures how well a brand’s own online store sells, from the first impression to checkout. Scores are Brand Tested’s opinion, built from public storefront pages and the apps we detected on the scan date and our published v2.0 methodology. They aren’t statements of fact about any company. See something wrong? Request a correction. Brand names and page images appear only to identify and comment on the brand we cover; Made In has not endorsed or sponsored Brand Tested.