(Clockwise) The Prepara Salad Bar at The Inspired Home Show; Prepara SVP Michael Karyo and IHA President & CEO Derek Miller at the gia Awards; and Prepara’s Berry Pod and 2026 gia Award.
Who knew that plastic pipe cutters would help pave the way to a celebrated kitchenware brand? As Prepara prepares for its 20th anniversary, we sat down with SVP Michael Karyo to learn more about the company’s origins, evolution and North Star — and how the company leverages opportunities at The Inspired Home Show® to connect their brands and innovative products to thousands of buyers, media and influencers.
Prepara is coming up on its 20th anniversary. Tell us about your origin story.
Prepara grew out of Pollen Design, the industrial design firm founded by Dean Chapman and Ed Kilduff. Pollen had designed everything from treadmills to cleaning tools, and when we started developing our own kitchen tool concepts, we initially thought about licensing them. Licensing carries a lot of risk and limited upside, though, and frankly we wanted to challenge ourselves, so we launched our own brand. Our very first product was a one-handed garlic crusher inspired by the high-force mechanisms in plastic pipe cutters. That’s still a good snapshot of how we think: borrowing smart engineering from anywhere and applying it to everyday problems in the kitchen.
Prepara SVP Michael Karyo speaks at CHESS, IHA’s annual conference
for senior industry leaders, on Sept. 29, 2026.
What can you tell us about the company’s evolution since 2007?
Our mission has always been to give home cooks high-quality, novel, and exceptionally well-designed kitchenware that makes preparing and cooking food more enjoyable. What’s evolved is the “why” behind it. Early on, we were focused on clever prep tools. Over time, our development has centered more and more on helping people eat healthier and store food safely, from the Herb Savor (2007) to Evak airtight storage (2014), our taco accessories (2021), Latchlok containers (2024), and now our Pod line, with the Salad Pod (2025) and Berry Pod (2026). Today we have more than 100 SKUs, more than 40 patents, and distribution well beyond the U.S., including Australia and New Zealand.
Products in the Prepara Pod collection.
Over the years, you’ve developed a reputation for quality and innovation. How do you maintain that reputation and keep pushing forward with smart new ideas?
It starts with our roots as a design firm. We don’t begin with a product category; we begin with a frustration. Herbs wilt in a day or two. Berries get soggy when you pack them with lunch. Salads go limp before noon. Then we engineer our way to a solution and test it in real kitchens until it truly works better, not just looks better.
How do you achieve both goals?
We also hold ourselves to a high bar on materials and durability. The Salad Pod, for example, is made from clear Tritan that’s lightweight and break-resistant, freezer- and dishwasher-safe, and stain- and odor-resistant. And we design in systems, not one-offs. The Berry Basket is a modular accessory that fits the existing Salad Pod, so customers who already own one can expand without starting over. That approach has earned us GOOD DESIGN Awards, Housewares Design Awards, and a spot on Oprah’s Favorite Things list twice, but the real measure is customers coming back for the next Pod.
Your products are sold by leading retailers like Williams-Sonoma, The Container Store, Sur La Table, Uncommon Goods and Bucees. How do you build and maintain strong relationships with retail partners?
We try to make it easy for our retail partners to succeed with us. That means bringing them products with a clear story a shopper understands in seconds, such as salad prep and storage, Mexican food accessories, pantry storage, and fresh produce storage, instead of just another gadget on a peg. It means consistent quality and dependable fulfillment so they never have to worry about what lands on their shelves. And it means giving them a steady cadence of genuinely new products that keep their assortment fresh.
Products in the Prepara Taco Collection.
Your Berry Pod was a big hit with media at last year’s Show, as was the Salad Pod the year before that. What role does media and creator coverage play in your success?
A huge role. Our Pods are very visual and very easy to demonstrate. When a journalist or creator layers a salad in the Salad Pod, pops open the front hatch to turn it into a bowl, or rinses and drains berries right in the Berry Pod, people get it immediately. That kind of coverage builds awareness we could never buy, and it sends shoppers into our retail partners’ stores already knowing what they want.
The Pod Collection shows how that coverage builds on itself. The Salad Pod generated strong buzz at the 2025 Show, and that interest carried over to the whole family: the 6-cup Harvest Pod for hearty grain and protein bowls, the compact 1.6-cup Sprout Pod for snacks, sides, and overnight oats, and now the Berry Pod, which washes, drains, and stores fresh berries in one container and was named a Global Honoree in the Kitchenware category at the 2026 IHA Global Innovation Awards (gia). Each new Pod gives media and creators a fresh story, and each story introduces people to the rest of the collection. Because the Pods share the same design DNA (vertical layering, leakproof dressing capsules, and durable, BPA-free Tritan), nest together for storage, and come in multi-packs, a shopper who discovers one Pod through a video often comes back for the others.
The Prepara Harvest Pod.
How long have you participated in The Inspired Home Show, and how has it benefited the company?
We’ve been exhibiting since 2008, our first full year in business, so the Show has been part of nearly our entire history. In those early days, when we were a relatively unknown company, it gave us a platform to put our unique, innovative products directly in front of buyers, whichwould have been very hard to do any other way. Many of our longest retail relationships started with a conversation in our booth. Today, it remains the one place where we can showcase our full brand story under one roof. It’s also our best real-time product test. Watching how thousands of buyers, media, and creators react to something new tells us very quickly whether we’ve solved the problem we set out to solve.
The Prepara Booth at The Inspired Home Show.
You always draw a crowd at the Show with sampling opportunities and creative activations. Tell us about those efforts and how they’ve paid off.
I’ve always felt that when you go to the effort and expense of exhibiting at a trade show, you need to create energy and a dynamic around your booth. For us, that comes from three things. First is new product, because newness drives the conversation. Second is an inviting, interactive booth where buyers can get a sense of our brand essence and identity and picture how the products and merchandising will look in their own stores. Third is demos. Now more than ever, the experiential opportunity for a buyer to see, test, and use a product at the Show is invaluable.
We step that up by building sampling around our new product launches. Over the years we’ve served tacos, infused cocktails, and most recently Salad Pod salad giveaways. When you have 50 people lined up at your booth, it creates real energy and interest around the brand. And in this era of social media and viral videos, those moments generate a tremendous amount of content, often from attendees tagging us in their own posts. It’s real-time proof of concept.
Looking ahead, what’s Prepara got on tap for the rest of 2026?
For the rest of 2026, we’re focused on two things. The first is finishing the year strong on the success of the Pod family, along with the continued strength we’re seeing in our Taco Collection and other core products. The second is completing our new product development for 2027. We have some really amazing new products and categories launching next year that will continue to show that Prepara is a leader in design and innovation.
What are you looking forward to at the 2027 Show?
The 2027 Show is special for us because it falls in our 20th anniversary year. We’ll use the Show to unveil those new products and categories, and we can’t think of a better way to mark 20 years than by showing buyers what’s next. We are looking forward to celebrating with the buyers, partners, media, and fellow exhibitors who have been part of our story since 2007 and hope to have some special in-booth celebrations including another “Food Bar” around a 2027 product launch.
One thing we wish buyers and retailers knew more about:
How deep our assortment goes. Over the years, we’ve evolved from an “item” business into a collection business. Our taco and Mexican food accessories, our Evak pantry storage, and our Pod family are full programs, not single items, so buyers can go deep into an assortment or collection, and they merchandise beautifully as a set.
Personal favorite product:
For the moment, it’s the Pods. I take the Salad Pod to lunch every day, but our Pods have also become our everyday food storage containers at home, for leftovers in the fridge, food on the go, and snacks.
Tip for first-time buyers attending the Show:
Plan your must-see booths in advance, but leave time to wander. Some of the best discoveries are in sections like Debut and Inventors Corner. And stop by the booths that are sampling. Seeing a product used tells you far more than a spec sheet.
Prepara at The Inspired Home Show 2026.