A Char-Broil electric grill can lose its ground wire and shock whoever is cooking

One grounding wire inside the Char-Broil Bistro Pro electric grill is supposed to give stray current somewhere safe to go. On about 10,605 grills sold in the United States, that grounding wire for the heating element can disconnect, and once it does the grill loses its fault protection. What remains is an electric shock hazard for whoever is standing at the cooktop.

A ground lead matters because of how electric cooking appliances are built. The heating element sits inside a metal-bodied cabinet, and the third conductor ties that metal back to the household earth connection. If insulation fails or a live lead touches the housing, the fault current is meant to travel down the ground wire and trip a breaker. With the wire detached, the same fault can leave the grill body energized with nothing to shut it off, and the person gripping the lid or the side handle becomes the path to ground.

Ground wire and heating element

The notice posted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on September 17, 2026, describes the defect in one sentence: “The grounding wire for the grill’s heating element can disconnect and lose fault protection, posing an electric shock hazard.” Char-Broil LLC of Columbus, Georgia, is the recalling firm, the grills were made in China, and the agency filed the action as recall number 26-773.

The notice describes no shock actually happening. The CPSC lists no incidents and no injuries, so the recall rests on the wiring risk alone.

Canadian regulators issued a parallel alert covering a smaller group. Health Canada’s recall page counts 342 units sold between October 2025 and June 2026 and states that, as of August 26, 2026, no incidents or injuries had been reported in Canada or the United States. The same grounding-wire wording appears in both countries’ notices, so the hazard is described identically on each side of the border.

The Canadian filing also identifies its product by a stock number, SKU 25302177, that does not appear among the nine U.S. model numbers, a reminder that the same grill family can carry different identifiers on each side of the border and that owners should match the paperwork for the country where the unit was bought.

Nine model numbers, three date codes

Not every Bistro Pro is caught. Fox 13 Seattle counted nine model numbers in the range from 25302145 to 25302163, spread across full-size and tabletop versions. The recalled units come in three configurations: the Grill and Griddle with Charcoal Mode in black, red or emerald, with or without a cover (models 25302145, 25302146, 25302151, 25302159 and 25302163); the Grill with Charcoal Mode in blackout or black (25302147 and 25302148); and the Tabletop Grill in black or red (25302149 and 25302150).

The second filter is the manufacturing date. Reporting by WPXI confirms that only grills with date codes 2510, 2511 and 2512 are included, meaning units built in October, November and December 2025. A matching model number with a different date code falls outside the recall, which narrows a population that would otherwise include every Bistro Pro sold in that period. The three-month production window is also why the recall is far smaller than the product line’s retail run, which stretched across nine months of sales.

Retail reach was wide. The grills sold at Ace Hardware, Lowe’s, Walmart, Wayfair, QVC, Amazon and Charbroil.com between October 2025 and June 2026 for $150 to $250. Seven sales channels mean a proof of purchase could sit in a store loyalty account, a marketplace order history or a manufacturer web order, and the model number plus date code on the unit is the more reliable way to tell whether a given grill is covered.

A repair kit and a $25 gift card

Char-Broil is not replacing the grills. The remedy is a free repair kit containing tools, hardware and instructions, requested through a registration page the company created for the recall. Until a unit is repaired, the CPSC’s instruction is to stop using it immediately.

The company is also paying owners to finish the job: a $25 digital gift card goes to anyone who submits photo documentation of the completed repair. CookOut News described that payment as unusual for an industry where a recall typically ends at the free fix. It also shifts the work to the owner, since reconnecting a ground lead on a heating element means opening an electrical appliance, and the gift card arrives only after the photo does.

On the CPSC’s count, 10,605 grills in the United States and another 342 in Canada carry a ground wire that can come loose, and neither regulator had logged a single shock by the time the notices went out.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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