Who is Cook and Can? And why should I buy from you?

Great questions! Let’s start by answering who we are…

As you may have read on our “About Us” page, Cook and Can is a family-owned and operated business founded in 2024 that specializes in providing “everything you need to Cook and Can”. We are based in the Indianapolis area – Fishers, Indiana to be exact.

We are currently an online only store. That said, we’d love to have a brick-and-mortar storefront – if we could build a time machine and go back to an era before big box stores and a company named after a river, we would totally be a brick-and-mortar store! But if this were “back then”, this blog – much less the internet – wouldn’t exist, so we guess we’ll take the bittersweet trade of a brick-and-mortar store for the ability for you to browse and buy from us anytime, anywhere!

We believe that, in 2025 as we write this, we are far better off starting with an online store and working towards having a brick-and-mortar someday than the other way around as, unfortunately, we’ve witnessed many small and beloved local retailers close their doors over the last few decades. It breaks our hearts to see all the small, local retailers that have closed up over the years, often with their former storefronts sitting empty and abandoned to this day.

We hope to buck that trend by starting online and building a solid foundation of happy, passionate customers (who love to cook and can!) first before we commit to the expensive overhead and other challenges of having a retail storefront. In the meantime, we want to take advantage of being online only – such as not being limited on what we can offer based on square footage – to provide you with the best possible selection and cost savings we can offer of “everything you need to Cook and Can”.

So why buy from us?

As you may have gathered, we miss the era of small, family-owned specialty brick-and-mortar stores where you could go in and see, touch, smell – and sometimes even test – what you were about to buy. That is actually one of the main reasons we launched Cook and Can – we want to provide our customers with the next best thing to that in-person buying experience by providing:

Competitive pricing: Every product we sell on Cook and Can is competitively priced, even versus big box stores and multibillion-dollar online retailers!
KWYG = Know What You’re Getting: If you’re ordering from us, you’ll receive the product you ordered and are expecting! For instance, if there are size variations, we make it as clear as possible which size you’re getting – no more unpleasant surprises!
Excellent product photos: Speaking of knowing what you’re getting, we work hard to provide clear – and often unique – photos of every product to help you understand what you’re getting.
Unboxing videos: We’ve found that unboxing videos are extremely helpful for those of us who miss the in-store purchasing experience. We’re working to add unboxing videos as quickly as we can but, in the meantime, if you see a product that doesn’t have one but would like one, let us know!
Full descriptions: Every product page includes a description, a features and benefits section, what’s included, and specifications that include measurements and other important details, including information that is often hard to find (or find at all!) on other sites.
An excellent return policy: We offer a “no questions asked” return policy that is on par – or better than – many of our competitors. See our full policy here.
Country of Origin: At Cook and Can, we want to know who is making our products and where they’re being made. While we can’t always find certain products from America, Europe, and other “friendly” places (we hope to share more about those challenges as they come), we can, at a minimum, give you the ability to filter by Country of Origin so you can make informed buying decisions.
Transparency: At Cook and Can, we believe in “canparency”, which is our commitment to you to be as transparent as possible. It starts with things like giving you the ability to filter by “Country of Origin” when shopping and continues with things like communicating order updates as soon as they happen. We also want to provide unmatched transparency and candor on why we’ve chosen certain products, including any challenges we’ve encountered with trying to meet our goal of finding products made in America – stay tuned!
We use what we sell: We are customers too! If it’s on our website, it’s in our kitchen!

Speaking of using what we sell – perhaps we should take a step back and note that we’ve spent hundreds of hours walking trade show floors, scouring the internet, talking to, screening, and testing vendors and products to give you one of the most curated, quality collections of cookware on the planet! We hope that our time, effort, and energy that has gone into curating our high-quality selection saves you countless hours of research – and money! We’ve done all the work for you – all you have to do is shop our selection and rest assured any product you buy on Cook and Can is a great choice.

Based on all of the work we do to find, screen, and test products and vendors, we thought about marketing ourselves as being “like a bouncer for your kitchen” but our marketing department felt that leading with “everything you need to Cook and Can” was the better choice. We agree but… we’re like a bouncer for your kitchen! (Expecting a call from marketing in 3…2…1…)

In all seriousness – we hope to continue showing what sets us apart over the coming weeks and months. But until next time… stay calm and keep canning!