GRILL MASTER
A lifelong welder and his wife develop a high-end line of weather resistant grills for beachside homes
George and Mary Sandoval in their Palos Verdes home. Photo
One of the first investments that George and Mary Sandoval made when they moved into their new oceanside home in Palos Verdes 20 years ago was a top-of-the-line barbecue grill. The couple loved to cook outdoors.
But a few years later, they were disappointed to find that the burner was giving out and the metallic surfaces were corroding. It clearly wasn’t built to last in the salty, coastal air.
“And I said to myself, I’m never buying another one,” George, 71, recalls. “So I started designing one.”
That’s how American Cooking Equipment was born some 15 years ago. To date, the company has sold about 1,500 high-end grills to grill enthusiasts, restaurateurs and hotel kitchens across the country. Manufactured in Sandoval’s own facility in Gardena, they’re sold factory-direct in their only store in Torrance. Next year, he plans to open two more stores in West L.A. and Irvine.
George’s entrepreneurial spirit dates back to his childhood, first in Wyoming then Lawndale. As the fourth of seven kids, he always opted to make his own toys, slingshots and bone arrows. When he turned 12, his next-door neighbor taught him how to weld in his garage. George was immediately taken. At Leuzinger High School, he learned as much as he could about welding. By night, he was at El Camino College, taking higher-level courses in custom welding so he could provide future welding services.
“Most of my experience throughout my life was in metal shops,” he says. “It just came naturally to me.”
After high school, George got a job in a Gardena-based manufacturing company for beauty and barber furniture. Starting at a minimum wage of $150 an hour, he was promoted to production manager within two years. At age 20, he was overseeing a production team of 40 workers. He stayed there for nine more years until he founded his own company in 1974, at 29 years old, in a 1,500 sq. ft. warehouse space in Gardena.
Today, Artistic Welding Inc. (Precision Sheet Metal) occupies a 100,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility in Gardena. In its 41 years of operation, the company has taken on manufacturing for the likes of Hughes, Raytheon, IBM and Teledyne. But due to the industrial sector’s decline in the state since the ‘80s, a number of Artistic Welding’s initial clients have moved to more business-friendly states, such as Texas, George explains. One product that has stayed consistently in demand since 1977 is airport body scan machines and x-rays.
“The customers are relying on you to do what you say, say what you do, on time and good quality,” says Mary, who oversees Artistic Welding. “Over these years, [George] has had that philosophy and way of thinking and working the whole time, and that’s how the business has built up.”
Mary grew up in Walnut and attended San Diego State University to become a teacher. When she became pregnant with her son Travis, she decided to leave school and find a job. She saw a listing seeking an office person at Artistic Welding’s facility and told herself it would be a temporary arrangement.
“My original thoughts were, I’ll work for a year here, get bored and go on and do something else,” Mary recalls. “But it turns out, there’s never a dull moment in manufacturing. I got hooked and interested in everything we were doing. There’s a lot that has to come together for these parts to come out right. He started teaching me about the business and I started learning and taking charge.”
As administrator, she coordinated jobs between Artistic Welding’s team of 50 employees, to whom she credits the company’s success. One current worker started at the company when he was 18 — that was back in 1980.
“We have the best employees,” she says. “We work together with these men who have been with us, many of them well over 20 years. Without them we’d be nowhere.”
Since tying the knot in 1996, Mary and George have formed a multifaceted partnership that capitalizes on each other’s area of strength. With Mary overseeing the day-in and day-out of the manufacturing operation at Artistic Welding, he is able to pursue designing his own products.
American Cooking Equipment’s weather-resistant grill, pizza oven and wok are built with a low carbon steel. Photo by Robert A. Perez
For American Cooking Equipment, George has designed and developed an entire line of high-end grills and pizza ovens, particularly for coastal areas. The appliances are manufactured in their facility using 316L surgical stainless steel, a low carbon steel that’s extremely resistant to rust and corrosion. He believes they are the only manufacturer on the market extensively using this type of steel.
The couple’s own backyard carries the entire outdoor kitchen set, complete with a 10-burner grill, pizza oven and wok. They grill three to five times a week — the other day, they grilled a 50-pound pig. They also throw their harvest of carrots, potatoes, broccoli and tomatoes on the grill from their own green house, an 11-feet by 20-feet structure that George designed and built.
There’s a new smoker in the works — one of three or four new products that George is adding to the line this upcoming year.
“I’m always designing things,” George says. “I’m never idle.” PEN