The company's original pellet grill product was developed by Joe Traeger in Oregon starting in 1985, with the first grills becoming available for retail in 1988.
Traeger Grills held a patent on pellet grill manufacturing until 2006, making them the sole manufacturer of pellet grills for a twenty year period. Upon the expiration of that patent, other grill companies began manufacturing pellet grills. 2006 was also the year in which the Traeger family sold the company assets for a reported $3.4 million, in addition to intellectual property and marketing materials for another $9 million.
Traeger Grills were manufactured in an Oregon facility until 2010, when manufacturing became outsourced to China.In 2014, former Skullcandy CEO Jeremy Andrus acquired a minority stake in Traeger along with private equity firm Trilantic Capital Partners. Later that year, Andrus and Trilantic acquired the rest of Traeger Grills, and Andrus became CEO of the company. In September 2015, Traeger Grills relocated its company headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah, ceasing all Oregon operations in 2016.
In July 2019, Traeger Grills filed a lawsuit against Joe Traeger and his son Brian, along with rival grill company Dansons, who allegedly misused marketing materials belonging to Traeger Grills. In October of that year, an Arizona U.S. District Court judge granted a temporary injunction ordering Dansons to cease uses of the Traeger name and related marketing materials. In December, the civil suit was settled in Traeger Grills favor.
