Great Jones review: cookware that isn’t trying to be invisible

Great Jones makes cookware, bakeware and kitchen tools in colours with names like Blueberry, Broccoli, Raspberry, Mustard and Pepper, and the design is the point. The Big Deal 8-quart stock pot is $180 with its lid included, the All Aboard cutting board is $75, the Big Chill cooling rack and Breadwinner loaf pan are $40 each, and the Big Colander is $50. Coatings are made without PTFE, PFOA, PFAS, lead or cadmium. A 40% code is running on bakeware at the time of writing, which changes the maths considerably.

Buy it if / Skip it if

· Buy it if your kitchen has open shelving or a hook rail where the cookware is visible

· Buy it if you want nonstick bakeware made without PTFE, PFOA, PFAS, lead or cadmium

· Buy it if you are building a kitchen from scratch and want pieces that look like a set

· Buy it if you want fully clad stainless with welded handles rather than riveted ones

· Buy it if you are buying a wedding or housewarming gift and want something memorable

· Skip it if you want the lowest price per pan, where restaurant-supply stainless wins every time

· Skip it if you need a huge range of sizes and specialist pieces

· Skip it if you dislike colour in the kitchen, because half of what you are paying for here is colour

Who Great Jones is

Great Jones launched in 2018 as a direct-to-consumer cookware brand with an unusual premise: that cookware had become either cheap and ugly or expensive and severe, and that there was room for something in between that people actually enjoyed looking at.

The execution shows in the naming. Big Deal is the stock pot. Big Chill is the cooling rack. Breadwinner is the loaf pan. All Aboard is the cutting board. Big Colander is, unusually, exactly what it says. The colours follow the same logic — Blueberry, Broccoli, Raspberry, Mustard, Pepper.

Underneath the branding is reasonable engineering. The stainless pieces are fully clad and induction-safe with welded handles. The nonstick bakeware uses coatings specified without PTFE, PFOA, PFAS, lead or cadmium, which is a meaningful claim in a category where most brands are vague about it.

The customer is a home cook under 45 setting up or refreshing a kitchen, who cares what the kitchen looks like and is not buying for a restaurant.

What Great Jones does differently

The handles are welded, not riveted. On the stainless pieces there are no screws, rivets or seams inside the pan to trap food or bacteria. This is a real construction difference that costs more to manufacture, and it is the kind of detail that only matters once you have spent years scrubbing around a rivet head.

The nonstick chemistry is specified rather than implied. Big Chill’s coating is stated as made without PFOA, PFAS, PTFE, lead or cadmium; Breadwinner’s is designed without PTFE and PFOA chemicals, lead or cadmium. Plenty of brands say “nontoxic” and leave it there. Naming the compounds is more useful.

Lids are included rather than upsold. Big Deal comes with Big Lid, a $30 value, rather than listing the pot at $150 and charging separately — the base-only version exists at $150 for anyone who already has one. Small courtesy, but it is the opposite of how most cookware pricing works.

Pieces are designed to work with each other. The Big Colander is sized to fit Big Deal and Deep Cut. The Big Chill is sized for Holy Sheet, the half-sheet pan. The colander set pairs a large and a small so one fits the stock pot and the other fits the smaller pans. This is a system, not a catalogue.

The range, decoded

Products worth your money

Big Deal — $180 (includes Big Lid)

Best for: The anchor purchase, and the piece that justifies the brand on construction rather than looks.

Why it stands out:

· An 8-quart fully clad stock pot that boils fast and holds heat evenly, safe on all stovetops including induction

· Welded handles with no screws, rivets or seams to trap food or bacteria — a genuine manufacturing difference

· Oversized handles designed for a four-finger grip, which matters when the pot is full of pasta water

One honest limitation: 8 quarts is large. If you cook for one or two, this is more pot than you need most nights.

Bottom line: Buy the $180 version with the lid rather than the $150 base — the lid alone is $30, so the bundle is free money.

All Aboard — $75

Best for: Small kitchens, and anyone who entertains without a separate serving platter.

Why it stands out:

· Oversized and double-sided — chop on one face, serve on the other, which removes a whole category of washing up

· A textured surface and juice groove, in a recyclable nonporous plastic that will not dull knives or hold onto garlic smells

· Dishwasher-friendly and BPA-free, with a looped handle and a shape that fits standard cabinet depth

One honest limitation: $75 is a lot for a plastic board, and wooden boards at that price feel more special on a table.

Bottom line: The practicality is real, particularly in a small kitchen, but this is the piece where you are most clearly paying for design.

Big Colander — $50

Best for: Kitchens short on storage, which is most kitchens.

Why it stands out:

· Genuinely four things: colander, steamer, splatter guard and trivet, in food-grade silicone reinforced with stainless steel

· Sized to fit Big Deal and Deep Cut, so it works as part of the system rather than as a loose accessory

· Dishwasher-safe, BPA-free, and heat-resistant to 550°F

One honest limitation: Silicone colanders flex more than rigid ones, which takes a little getting used to when draining something heavy.

Bottom line: The best value item in the range if you count the four jobs it replaces, and the Colander Set at $90 adds the small size.

Breadwinner — $40

Best for: Banana bread, and anyone wanting nonstick bakeware with a specified chemistry.

Why it stands out:

· A 1-lb loaf pan with a wavy corrugated bottom designed to release baked goods and resist scratching

· Coating designed without PTFE and PFOA chemicals, lead or cadmium

· Oven-safe and dishwasher-friendly, in three colours

One honest limitation: All nonstick coatings degrade eventually, and this is no exception — treat it as a multi-year item, not a lifetime one.

Bottom line: At $40, and considerably less with the current bakeware code, a sensible buy.

What owners actually say

Consistently praised:

· The colours, which is the single most repeated point and the reason most people buy

· Build quality on the stainless pieces, particularly the welded handles

· The multi-function accessories earning their shelf space

· Lids being included rather than charged separately

Consistently criticised:

· Price against plain stainless equivalents, which cost substantially less for the same function

· Nonstick coatings wearing with heavy use, as all nonstick does

· Limited size and piece range compared with established cookware brands

· Some colourways going out of stock and staying out

The money question

Great Jones sits above basic cookware and below the heritage European brands, and the question is what you are buying with the gap.

On the stainless side, the premium buys real construction. Fully clad with welded handles is a different manufacturing process from a cheap pot with riveted ones, and $180 for an 8-quart clad stock pot with a lid included is competitive rather than inflated. The Big Deal & Saucy bundle at $230 from $330 is the strongest value in the catalogue, saving $100 on two serious pieces.

On the accessories, you are paying more for design. A $75 cutting board and a $50 colander are above the market rate for what they do, and if function per dollar is your metric you will find cheaper versions of both. What you get instead is a kitchen that looks coherent.

The current bakeware promotion is worth checking — a 40% code is listed against the bakeware items, which takes Big Chill and Breadwinner from $40 to considerably less and changes the calculation on both. Promotional codes rotate, so confirm what is live at checkout.

The honest framing: buy the cookware on the construction, buy the accessories because you want them to look like that.

How it compares

Buying it

Buy from greatjonesgoods.com, where the full colour range and the bundles live. Colours do sell out and do not always return, so if a specific shade is the reason you are buying, do not wait.

Check the bundles before buying individually. Big Deal & Saucy at $230 against $330 is a $100 saving, and the Colander Set at $90 and Big Chill Duo at $80 both price below two singles.

Watch the promotional codes — the bakeware currently carries a 40% code, which is a large enough difference to change which pieces are worth buying. Confirm what is active at checkout rather than assuming.

For care: the stainless pieces are induction-safe and built to last. The nonstick bakeware is dishwasher-friendly but will last longer hand-washed, and Big Chill is oven-safe to 450°F while the silicone colanders handle up to 550°F.

Questions people ask

Does Big Deal come with a lid?
Yes, at $180. Big Lid is included and is a $30 value on its own. A base-only version is listed at $150 for anyone who already has a compatible lid.

What is the nonstick coating made of?
Great Jones specifies its bakeware coatings as made without PTFE, PFOA, PFAS, lead or cadmium. Big Chill uses a dual-layer reinforced nonstick on heavy-weight aluminized steel.

Is the cookware induction-safe?
Yes. The fully clad stainless pieces including Big Deal are safe for all stovetops, induction included.

Why are the handles welded?
Welded handles have no screws, rivets or seams inside the pan to trap food or bacteria, and they are harder to manufacture than riveted ones. It is one of the few places where the brand’s engineering is doing something the competition mostly does not.

Can I put it in the dishwasher?
The All Aboard board, the colanders and the bakeware are dishwasher-friendly. Nonstick lasts longer hand-washed regardless of what the label permits.

Which colours are available?
It varies by product. Blueberry and Broccoli run across most of the range, with Raspberry, Mustard and Pepper on some items. Check the individual product page, since availability moves.

The verdict

Great Jones made a bet in 2018 that home cooks would pay for cookware they liked looking at, in a category where the options were essentially professional severity or supermarket beige. That bet has largely been proven right, and the naming — Big Deal, Big Chill, Breadwinner, All Aboard — is the most consistent piece of brand voice in the kitchen category.

The pleasant surprise is that the engineering keeps up with the styling. Fully clad construction with welded handles on the stainless pieces is a genuine step above riveted cookware, and specifying the exact compounds absent from the nonstick coatings is more honest than the vague “nontoxic” claims that dominate the category. Including the lid rather than charging $30 for it separately is the kind of small decision that tells you how a company thinks.

Where the honest reservation lands is on the accessories. A $75 cutting board and a $50 colander are priced above function, and anyone optimising for cost per job will find cheaper equivalents without much effort. That is not a flaw so much as a description of what you are buying — a kitchen that reads as deliberate rather than accumulated.

Buy Big Deal at $180 for the construction, or the Big Deal & Saucy bundle at $230 if you want two pieces and the $100 saving. Buy the colander for the storage it saves. Buy the bakeware while the 40% code is live. And buy the cutting board only if you will enjoy looking at it, because that is genuinely what it is for.