Wow, thank you so much everyone for your candid feedback and thoughts! It's really helpful, and I'm very grateful!
Being a one trick pony is definitely a huge concern of mine. The main reason I got curious if something like this could be useful to others is because there are some one trick pony products out there that people seem to have gone bananas over.
Just this one egg boiler, for example, has over 127,000 reviews on Amazon! And all it does is boil eggs! Granted, it's super inexpensive...
Thanks for the idea! Limited mobility was vaguely in the back of my mind but you pinpointed much clearer scenarios. Any thoughts on where I might go to ask if this would be useful to folks in those situations? For example, I can look up home care facilities, not sure if there's a better way.
Yup, it alerts you when it's done. And it can leave it on "warm" so that it stays warm even if you can't get to it immediately. Thank you for the idea about hotel breakfast...I was having a bit of a hard time visualizing someone using this in a hotel because I wasn't sure if they'd be willing to pick up a raw egg (even with tongs) and drop it into the machine...but having egg storage and dispensing so that they just walk up to the machine and ask for a fried egg...that seems pretty in-line with the pancake tunnel you're mentioning (which I assume is something like this video below)
Good question, and thanks for highlighting that it was confusing terminology! (haha another reminder that sometimes one can get so absorbed in what you're working on that you assume it makes sense to others!)... I meant that it pre-heats the pan to the right temperature before cracking the egg into the pan.
With that shape pan, it can only do a sunny side up fried egg (and if you wanted it over easy/over medium, etc., you would have to manually flip it). Technically, it's not difficult to add a little holder and lid like the egg boilers do so that it can boil eggs....or a cradle for poached eggs... more "attachments" is a concern of mine, personally, though going back to the egg boiler example...people seem to use those for boiled eggs, poached eggs, even steamed "omelettes" (if you can call it that).