Char-Broil is recalling 10,605 electric grills whose grounding wire can disconnect and deliver a shock

Char-Broil is recalling about 10,605 Bistro Pro electric grills in the United States, plus 342 more sold in Canada, because the grounding wire on the heating element can work loose and leave the appliance without its fault protection. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, or CPSC, posted the notice as recall 26-773 on September 17. Nobody has reported being hurt.

Only grills built in the last three months of 2025 are affected, which makes this a narrow recall inside a product line that sold widely. The grills were sold from October 2025 through June 2026 for $150 to $250, so an owner is likely to still have the box, the receipt or the order confirmation.

Which Bistro Pro grills carry the loose wire

The CPSC notice lists nine model numbers across three configurations. The Bistro Pro Electric Grill and Griddle with Charcoal Mode covers 25302145, 25302146, 25302151, 25302159 and 25302163. The Bistro Pro Electric Grill with Charcoal Mode covers 25302147 and 25302148. The Bistro Pro Tabletop Electric Grill covers 25302149 and 25302150. Colors include black, red, Blackout and Emerald, and the grills were sold at Ace Hardware, Lowe’s, Walmart, Wayfair, QVC and Amazon.com, among other online stores.

A model number alone does not settle the question. Char-Broil’s recall page says the affected grills carry a manufacturing date code of 2510, 2511 or 2512, written year then month, so the codes correspond to October, November and December 2025. On the full-size grills the label sits on the bottom shelf, and on the tabletop model it is on the side bar. A grill with the right model number and a code from 2601 or later is outside the recall.

The timing matters for owners. Production stopped at the end of December 2025 for the affected batch, yet sales ran into June 2026, so a grill bought in the spring, at the start of the outdoor season, could easily carry a late-2025 date code. The recall notice was posted about three months after the last recorded sale, and CPSC reported no incidents in that gap, a small comfort for grills that were plugged in every weekend.

What a disconnected ground wire takes away

A ground wire does nothing on an ordinary day. It sits idle until something inside the appliance goes wrong, such as a frayed heating-element lead touching the metal body, and then it gives that stray current a safe path back to the circuit. Without it, the metal stays live and the next thing to touch it can be a hand or a wet countertop.

Ground fault protection depends on that path existing. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration explains in its electrical safety guidance that a ground fault circuit interrupter compares the current going out with the current coming back and opens the circuit when the two differ by roughly 5 milliamperes. The Electrical Safety Foundation International says outlets of that kind have helped cut the number of home electrocutions in half. A grill whose grounding wire has come free can defeat both safeguards at once, because the fault current has nowhere useful to go.

CPSC’s wording is short and specific: the wire “can disconnect and lose fault protection,” which the agency classes as an electric shock hazard. Neither the commission nor the company has described how the wire comes loose, whether through vibration in shipping, a weak terminal or assembly.

Repair kit, digital gift card and the Canadian numbers

Owners are told to stop using the grill immediately. Char-Broil is not asking for the grills back. The company will send a free repair kit, containing the screws, a screwdriver, a wrench and a replacement label, to anyone who registers at charbroil.com/BistroProFix, and it publishes a video walkthrough of the repair. Owners who send photo proof of the finished fix receive a $25 digital gift card. The phone line is 866-671-7988, open 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mountain time, Monday through Saturday, and the email address is [email protected].

The gift card is an unusual sweetener, and it answers a practical problem: most recalled products stay in use because owners never finish the paperwork. Paying for photographic proof turns a passive recall into one with a checkable completion step. Whether $25 is enough to get a Bistro Pro owner to pick up a screwdriver is something CPSC does not report and Char-Broil has not disclosed.

In Canada, the Health Canada notice gives the same remedy for the 342 grills sold there and records no incidents or injuries in either country as of August 26, 2026. The grills were made in China and imported by Char-Broil LLC of Columbus, Georgia, according to the U.S. recall notice. With no injuries on the record, the count of 10,605 is a count of grills that lost a safeguard, not of accidents.

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

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