{"id":33240,"date":"2025-11-04T20:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/33240\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T20:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:11:07","slug":"fondue-for-you-melting-pot-expands-home-product-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/33240\/","title":{"rendered":"Fondue for you: Melting Pot expands home product line"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>More fans of the Melting Pot restaurant will now be able to enjoy fondue from the comfort of their own kitchens, nationwide.<\/p>\n<p>The Tampa-based restaurant chain is expanding the retail footprint for its Melting Pot at Home line. In the largest retail push since the 2023 product launch, Melting Pot\u2019s cheese and chocolate fondue products will now be at more than 2,500 grocery stores, including Publix in Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Other new retailers include Amazon Fresh, Harris Teeter, Safeway Southwest and Safeway Mountain West.<\/p>\n<p>This is an effort to complement the restaurant experience, said Melting Pot director of retail Jennifer Lukas-Bourgeois.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Covid-19 pandemic played a role. This led the company\u2019s chairman of the board Bob Johnston to explore different ways to bring the brand into a home environment, she explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Melting Pot\u2019s cheese fondues are crafted in Switzerland \u2013 where the dish was popularized. Company representatives spent time in the country to develop the line in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-108703\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Melting-Pot-2-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>The restaurant introduced its home products the same year online, Lukas-Bourgeois said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A limited retail presence in approximately 500 stores began in 2024. Many of the initial participating stores sold Melting Pot products seasonally for the holidays.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Choosing grocery chains to work with for the expansion was partially based on location.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe really wanted to be where our restaurants are to solidify the brand presence and keep Melting Pot top of mind,\u201d she explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>New retail products will be launching next year, including various cheese spreads.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Melting Pot, which opened its first restaurant in 1975 in Maitland (near Orlando), has more than 90 locations in 31 states and Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The company previously had a St. Petersburg location at 4th Street N. for more than 30 years; it closed in 2020, during the pandemic. A new Melting Pot location opened on Central Avenue in April of this year.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More fans of the Melting Pot restaurant will now be able to enjoy fondue from the comfort of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-33240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}