Blackstone Brand Guidelines: The Backyard Griddle

Blackstone is the Utah brand that built and led the backyard flat-top griddle category, now part of Weber Blackstone after a 2025 merger.

Blackstone follows Recteq as the round’s category-maker node — the Utah company that turned the outdoor flat-top griddle into a mainstream backyard category and came to dominate it, and that has just merged with one of grilling’s biggest names. Its answer to a round about who owns the grill and where it is made is a fresh-merger one: a category-creating challenger, now part of a combined outdoor-cooking giant, its griddles made abroad and designed at home.

Its identity is the backyard griddle. The flat-top griddle category, the market leadership and the 2025 Weber merger are the story here. A steel top for the yard. The backyard griddle.

(Honest notes, so the identity, the ownership and a name collision are handled accurately. First, to prevent confusion: this is Blackstone the outdoor-griddle brand, the maker of flat-top propane griddles, and it is entirely unrelated to Blackstone Inc., the large private-equity firm that shares the name — none of the private-equity firm’s facts belong here. Blackstone sells outdoor flat-top griddles as its heroes — propane griddles with a rolled-steel cooking surface and independent burner zones, plus newer electric E-Series models and accessories; we report its language as the brand’s own, and treat its claim to about eighty per cent of the US griddle market as a company claim we attribute. On origin: Blackstone is the griddle brand of North Atlantic Imports, founded by Roger Dahle and based in Logan, Utah, with its first griddle launched in 2008. On ownership, precisely and importantly: Blackstone never went public — a 2021 plan to merge with a special-purpose acquisition company collapsed in 2022 — and instead Weber and Blackstone announced a combination that closed on 5 May 2025, forming Weber Blackstone, with Dahle becoming chief executive of the combined company; because Weber was itself taken private in 2023 and is backed by BDT & MSD Partners, that ultimate ownership now sits above Blackstone too. So we describe Blackstone as part of Weber Blackstone as of 2025, not as an independent or public company. On where it is made: Blackstone designs in Logan, Utah, and its griddles are made in China, with further sites reported but not company-confirmed, so we attribute the specifics. Its designs and the Blackstone name are IP we describe but do not reproduce; there is no official brand hex; these tones are an unofficial interpretation.)

Blackstone lives in a griddle bronze. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Blackstone’s identity is category-making, dominant and merged — a griddle bronze, an ink, a pale bronze, a deep bronze, and a paper. The palette leans griddle bronze and pale bronze: a warm, metallic register that nods to seasoned steel and a flat cooking surface rather than a loud logo colour. It signals the backyard griddle — category-making, dominant and merged. The honest caveat: with no official brand hex, these values are a metallic, unofficial interpretation, not first-party colours.

The lesson is a warm bronze signals a metal, cook-surface identity. Blackstone’s world is a seasoned steel top big enough for a crowd. For designers, it is a reminder that a warm bronze and a soft pale can carry a metal-forward product brand — a seasoned tone held as an accent, not a product shot. Because a mid hue can fail as small text, keep type dark and let the colour live in the accents, palette and band. The takeaways: credit Blackstone for creating and leading the griddle category; keep it separate from the private-equity firm of the same name; attribute the eighty-per-cent share as a company claim; state that it is now part of Weber Blackstone after the 2025 merger; and split the making between Logan design and China manufacturing.

The register is a griddle sans — category-making, dominant, merged.

Blackstone’s identity carries a category-making, dominant, merged spirit — a challenger that built its own category and then joined a giant. A griddle sans captures the mood: broad, plain and confident, the register of a mass-market cook surface. Set in a griddle-bronze palette, the griddle sans feels metallic and confident — exactly the personality Blackstone carries. It behaves like a made, everyday thing rather than a loud logo, mirroring a heat-band and a char-grid. (Blackstone’s real products and the name are things we describe but do not reproduce, and the exact typeface is not ours to use.) Because it is not ours to use, the honest description is “a griddle-sans brand,” shown here in a stand-in. The type behaves like the brand: category-making, dominant and merged.

Blackstone stands for the backyard griddle.

Blackstone sits sixth in the round as its category-maker node. A griddle-bronze palette, a griddle sans and a category-creating history make one thing — the backyard griddle — the whole identity: category-making, dominant and merged. The flat-top category is the pitch, the market leadership is the proof, and the 2025 Weber merger is the turn. The point is a challenger that built its own category and then joined a giant, in a round about who owns the grill and where it is made.

Put to work, the identity is the brand told straight, the name collision prevented and the ownership stated as of the merger. A brand in this spirit would credit Blackstone for creating and leading the griddle category, keep it distinct from the private-equity firm, attribute the market-share claim, and state that it is now part of Weber Blackstone. A reader in this spirit would keep the facts right: Blackstone sells outdoor flat-top griddles as its heroes, with a rolled-steel surface and zone burners; it is the griddle brand of North Atlantic Imports, founded by Roger Dahle in Logan, Utah, with its first griddle in 2008; it never went public, a 2021 SPAC plan collapsed in 2022, and Weber and Blackstone merged into Weber Blackstone on 5 May 2025, with Dahle as chief executive and BDT & MSD-backed Weber above it; its griddles are made in China and designed in Logan; and it is unrelated to Blackstone Inc., the private-equity firm. Blackstone sits after Recteq and before Broil King. The honest editorial moves are to credit the category, to prevent the name confusion, to attribute the share claim, and to state the ownership as of 2025.

For designers and brand-builders, Blackstone carries the grill node: prevent a name collision — and state ownership as of the latest event. The lessons: a challenger can create and lead a whole category, here the backyard flat-top griddle; a shared name, with the private-equity firm Blackstone Inc., is actively separated so no facts cross over; a market-share superlative is attributed as a company claim rather than asserted; and an ownership story is stated as of its latest event, the 2025 Weber Blackstone merger, not as an outdated “independent” or a never-realised public listing. It is also a reminder to stay precise: Blackstone is the griddle category’s maker and leader, now part of Weber Blackstone — with the palette here an unofficial interpretation. The hook is that arc: a Utah company invented a backyard category from a standing start, came to own most of it, and ended up merging with a grilling giant — its founder now running the combined company. Read that way, Blackstone is less a single griddle than the backyard griddle: category-making, dominant, merged. The lesson for a brand is that preventing the name collision and dating the ownership reinforce each other, and attributing the share claim keeps the story earned. Blackstone made the-backyard-griddle the identity — proof that a category-maker’s honest ownership story can anchor a node.

Keep Blackstone’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.