Well, maybe it's even better than the original concept: now you can consume the product even if you don't have the hardware. As long as the juice is good - why not. They just need to start selling their juice packs to those who don't own the device.
Yes, but they're also out $400 on every customer. And those customers can now very easily switch to a different juice provider without losing any "investment" they made in hardware.
I can't find any info on their site about subscription pricing (always a red flag) but this whole thing seems absurdly stupid. I'd be amazed if they managed to scale this in such a way that shipping refrigerated juice to individual customers is more affordable than people picking it up in the store/receiving it with their normal grocery order.
I was thinking (in all seriousness from anyone around that had used this product), how on earth is that healthier than eating or squeezing 2-3 oranges? Apart from the convenience. Do those bags really maintain the vitamins etc or is it just a "healthy alternative to soft drinks"?
The same thing I was left wondering. What's the point here with $400 machine and juices 5-8 dollars per serving? I'm sure they could get some thousands of users, but how on earth could this be worth such a large investment?
The key idea is already in the second sentence of TFA:
"The product was an unlikely pick for top technology investors, but they were drawn to the idea of an internet-connected device that transforms single-serving packets of chopped fruits and vegetables into a refreshing and healthy beverage."
Keywords: IoT, single-serving refill packs, healthy fuit & veg.
further details reveal that the thing will track you at every single use pinging the central servers. It has a kill-switch to refuse juicing when they don't think you should be juicing anymore (for now expired package, but hey, nothing prevents updated from refining the "feature").
Need I continue?
Overall, it's a product that just rides the hype of juicing and IoT, but it's at least as nasty as the !#@%!# cloudpets [1].
For them, sure, the idea is surely interesting. But for the end-user? Why would anyone go for this over just ..buying a bottle of juice? It doesn't sound like this would be freshly pressed or anything, just from a weird container.
This is not a product for me but to be the devil's advocate for this post -
a.) single serving in one packaged delivered to customer - no need to take time out of day/week to shop/hand select, also, sometimes hard to get serving size right if doing it manually
b.) package is squeezed on device - no need to clean blender/juicer/prep utensils/prep fruits/vegetables
c.) slightly fresher than buying juice in bottle in store, and don't have to go to store
I was pouring through my mental rolodex for the episode where they do something with a juicer. I'd never heard of this Juicero but thought it sounded like something Jian Yang would be in charge of.
They've mentioned in past interviews some things too ridiculous to include. This might be one.
> Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.”
I don't see why this matters at all -- the disposable juice packs are what extract money from the consumer. It's the razor / replacement blade or printer / ink model. If someone finds out that they really only need the blades, ink, or juice packs, it's no big deal.
The problem for the manufacturer comes when consumers figure out that they can use knock-off blades, generic ink, or 3rd party juice packs.
The problem is that they raised A LOT of VC money and it was supposed to be tech startup that creates a network effect and dominate the market.
Gillette model worked because creating that infrastructure back then had a huge barrier to entry. You had to get a factory to produce the blades, etc.
Compare that to juice mix delivery service in 2017. There are tons of organic juice stores around, and there are tons of delivery services like uber/caviar/doordash. These juiceries can take advantage of the distribution startups to deliver their juice and make money if they wanted.
Basically it matters because you need to take "competition" into consideration. It's an entirely different game than razor blades.
Ah, but those are generally not throw-away products. There is an inverse relationship between the one-off cost for the printer and the per-page cost for the supplies: cheap printer, expensive supplies <-> Expensive printer, cheap supplies.
This machine is expensive and the supplies are expensive. That... does not make sense. Given that the supplies seem to be delivered by means of some subscription service they'd have done better to throw in the machine for some nominal monthly cost - and make it free for those who manage to consume more than X bags of pulp per year. This also would lower the threshold for potential customers as it would be possible to try the 'service' without needing to invest a large sum up-front. Given that the money is meant to be in the bags it only makes sense to try to maximise the number of customers.
I guess they had a look at Apple and thought their business model - expensive hardware tied to a single supplier in as many ways as possible - would fit them as well. It doesn't, not when you can pick actual apples from a tree in your garden.
How many people do you know that drag the razor across their face without the handle? Sure it's where the profit comes from, but you do need the two parts to have a consumer story. Otherwise they'd just sell the blades and drop the ruse.
'Juicero’s business plan reads like a pitch-perfect parody of contemporary startup culture. One investor told Bloomberg that Juicero was building a “platform” for a new model of food delivery. ...The technology is mostly superfluous from the customer’s perspective. But the technology dimension was crucial for fundraising. As one investor put it to Bloomberg, “Their venture firm wouldn’t have met with [Juicero founder Doug] Evans if he were hawking bags of juice that didn’t require high-priced hardware.”'
Vendor lock-in. You buy the razor because you want to use the blades, you buy the blades because you already have the razor. If you've got $400 in sunk cost sitting on your kitchen counter, you're far more likely to buy the proprietary pouches and far less likely to buy a carton of juice from the grocery store. That psychology is integral to the business model, it's what creates the promise of sustainable high margins. Nobody invests $120m in a startup juice company with no market share.
Well, to be strictly fair, the packs are not supposed to be of juice, but fresh-chopped solid produce. (https://www.juicero.com/how-it-works/) It's not clear how much the investors knew before this, but Juicero's clearly been misrepresenting their system to the public.
I'm not bothered by the fact that these guys got investment, it's an interesting idea and could have been a great kickstarter. But, $120 mil is a staggering amount for a company like this that should have relatively small startup costs.
Huh, I wonder if this was just with certain juice bags, or if they generally pulverize the materials in the bags to make it easier to squeeze. I can easily see this for berries, citrus, etc, but it seems less likely for beets, kale, and other hardier vegetables.
Regardless, their actual market has always been restaurants and offices that want to have juice without a mess or someone who knows how to make it, and that seems less impacted, if perhaps less appealing to their investors.
It says it has chopped raw vegetables and fruits in the packets. They would need to add fruits with lots of juice to compensate for vegetables that need more liquid to be juiced fully like beets or carrots.
> Juicero declined to comment. A person close to the company said Juicero is aware the packs can be squeezed by hand but that most people would prefer to use the machine because the process is more consistent and less messy.
"We kinda didn't think about this much because the real money is in the packets anyways. This stuff is way better than ink cartridges."
True, but the proprietary tech in the machine was supposed to be a form of defensible advantage for this business. If the product value comes entirely from chopping and delivering vegetables in a bag, it wouldn't be hard for others to replicate.
>The device also reads a QR code printed on the back of each produce pack and checks the source against an online database to ensure the contents haven’t expired or been recalled, the person said.
I really hate what those machines have done to coffee. It's difficult to explain to people at work, family, and friends how they paid a premium to be overcharged and produce extra waste without coming off like a jerk. I miss getting up from my machine and filling my mug with a regular coffee pot.
They do have one nice advantage over the office or home coffee pot, forgetful people and no warming surface. It does prevent some fires because you have people who forget the basic things.
That is something to be concerned about, but even rudimentary coffee pots have automatic shutoffs and most have other safety measures. Plus even with the long running heating element, they draw much less power than Keurigs. They bother me, but I usually keep my opinion to myself because people get emotionally invested in strong purchases (which coffee has become thanks Keurig).
In an office setting (especially outside of the morning rush), it can also make sense to have an easy and mess-free way for people to make individual servings. I suppose there are scenarios at home too but they make mediocre coffee and are expensive and wasteful. Maybe in a non-coffee drinking house where guests occasionally want one cup.
I was very amused one day in one of Sun's offices to see a big eco friendly poster of some sort--this was during their green computing kick--right above one of these pod/packet machines.
It's tough in a big office though unless someone's keeping the coffee made and fresh as is the case in a meeting setting. People take the last cup and don't make fresh coffee or they just don't want to wait.
We have both a coffeemaker with thermoses and a pod coffeemaker which seems a reasonable compromise.
Keurig can't be described as "mess free." We have one and work and the machine spews coffee all over itself and, of course, the place you put the pods and the spout gets all gunked up and nobody cleans it. It's pretty gross. Same thing happened with the old one so it's not just one model.
>Maybe in a non-coffee drinking house where guests occasionally want one cup.
I have a $20 drip pot that makes 1-2 cups and takes up a quarter of the counter space. French press is even cheaper and I have one that makes only a single cup. Then there's aeropress...
If that's such a concern a weight sensor with automatic shutoff would be much cheaper and just as effective. My $20 pot has an automatic timed shutoff.
Using K-cup reusable filters enable people to grind their own coffee. I wish that they would have started with this model instead of the singular disposable cups that produced lots of garbage. But then there's no money in saving mother nature I guess. :|
As a daily veggie shake juicer, I'd be interested in packs that could cut down on the time I spend each morning cutting stuff up, if cost effective. But I get no satisfaction from status symbols, anymore than I care that my household appliance barely found a reason to connect to my wifi.
Isn't it though? On top of not only the waste you have the waste of shipping/transportation.
> Step One: Cut off the bottom section of the Pack and remove the pulp
> Step Two: Rinse the Pack.
> Step Three: Set the Pack aside until you’re ready to recycle.
> Step Four: MAIL THEM IN Request a prepaid shipping label from by clicking the “Get Started” button below.
At this point I'm better off not only saving money, packaging and associated shipping pitfalls but saving time by simply juicing everything myself at home and buying produce when I make my regular trips to the grocery store.
The worst part is that if a pack is too old, the machine won't squeeze it for you! So people just throw them out. That's how my friend figured out you can just squeeze them by hand.
I think this waste/recycling thing is more of a SV/HN concern. Keurig tried to introduce a recyclable pod, called the Vue when their previous patent expired for k-cups. Seems to be a massive failure. Also HelloFresh and Blue Apron seem to get brought up a lot here for being hard to recycle and generaring a lot of trash, dozens of people I know have used these services and not one has mentioned the trash issue.
Nonsense, IMHO. I am a programmer and I like technology but I'm a million miles away from Silicon Valley geographically, conceptually and spiritually. Waste affects every part of life, although technology seems to produce more than its fair share.
Your friends don't care about environmental concerns. My friends do. Swings and roundabouts.
I think this waste/recycling thing is more of a SV/HN concern. Keurig tried to introduce a recyclable pod, called the Vue when their previous patent expired for k-cups. Seems to be a massive failure. Also HelloFresh and Blue Apron seem to get brought up a lot here for being hard to recycle and generaring a lot of trash, dozens of people I know have used these services and not one has mentioned the trash issue.
I think this waste/recycling thing is more of a SV/HN concern. Keurig tried to introduce a recyclable pod, called the Vue when their previous patent expired for k-cups. Seems to be a massive failure. Also HelloFresh and Blue Apron seem to get brought up a lot here for being hard to recycle and generaring a lot of trash, dozens of people I know have used these services and not one has mentioned the trash issue.
I think this waste/recycling thing is more of a SV/HN concern. Keurig tried to introduce a recyclable pod, called the Vue when their previous patent expired for k-cups. Seems to be a massive failure. Also HelloFresh and Blue Apron seem to get brought up a lot here for being hard to recycle and generaring a lot of trash, dozens of people I know have used these services and not one has mentioned the trash issue.
There is another thing about this machine which is not recyclable: your investment in the thing itself. The second-hand value of these will be close to zero.
Can someone solve the added waste and transportation problem these companies (Juicero, Blue Apron, etc...) have created by using home deliveries and lots of specialty packaging? Yes, some perishable food delivery services offer recycling but you're still left with the transportation issue.
The waste and transportation is easy to solve: just don't use these companies. Go back to the old-fashioned way of obtaining your food from the store.
The real problem would need solving (and I'm not sure it really does, because how popular are these things, really?) is people's desire for these wasteful services.
I kind of wish stores would just sell pre-cut vegetables. There HAS to be a way to do this en masse. The pre-cut kale at whole foods is almost ALWAYS sold out. Not to speak of the cauliflower "rice" that people actually battle over at Trader Joes.
If stores stocked these kinds of pre-cut veg, that would take 3/4 of the pain out of cooking.
My local mid-range grocery store sells peeled garlic, containers of chopped onions and other vegetables and fruits. It's great for people who want to save time or lack the dexterity to do it easily on their own. I personally don't buy them because I can and don't mind doing it myself.
$400 for a machine that in the end doesn't give you freshly squeezed juice? I think a lot of the appeal from squeezing fruit juice is using actual pieces of fruit.
"He owned a cup which served also has a bowl for food but threw it away when he saw a boy drinking water from his hands and realized one did not even need a cup to sustain oneself."
Anybody else get flashbacks to the Tom Hanks movie Big where using the mentality of a kid renders all the focus group and marketing analytic charts, well, kind of irrelevant. "Who wants to play with a building?" correlates to "Why don't I just squeeze this weird Capri-Sun pack thingy into the cup?" pretty nicely to me. Neat to see this, kind of humorous in a non-catastrophic way. It's not like the machine catches fire or explodes. This is...just life.
The bottle of juice wouldn't let you discard a capri-sun package full of squeeze fruit husks. This lets people know you're wealthy enough to not care about excess.
Yeah, as far as I could tell this is more expensive, less convenient, and harder to obtain than juice bottles, takes up more space, and the consumables have about the same shelf life or shorter. Bizarre product. (Also, since it requires an internet connection to check if the juice packs are valid, if the internet goes down and you decide that's a good time to take a juice break...)
To be fair, that "internet goes down" aspect can be mitigated in software by pushing IDs of the packages that were ordered for your account to the machine as soon as they are known.
Why not simply encode the expiry date itself into the qr codes, then just decode that using software on the device. Even better, stamp a human readable date on the package like every other grocery product. Oh but then they couldn't track your usage and juicing habits! And you'd have to be able to read or something.
Furthermore, I admittedly mostly use fruit but tossing what I need into a blender is not a big deal. A lot of what you need is in the supermarket freezer section these days. And if that's too much work, there are (of course) smoothie ingredient subscription services. https://www.wellandgood.com/good-food/daily-harvest-vs-green...
I read that vitamins in juice break down over time rather quickly. Juicero is supposed to be as fresh as possible, and therefore be nutritious and taste better than anything in a bottle.
I can't speak to the actual differences, though. I'm not really a juice person unless rum or tequila is involved.
Sure, their juice is fresh, so it's better than most non fresh bottled juice. But you can buy bottles of fresh juice. It goes bad fast, but so do these bags of juice. I'm really not seeing how this product is anything but a con to take advantage of people who don't realise that a well marketed solution isn't necessarily better than what you already had.
That's honestly a good enough idea already, especially if the pouch was recyclable. Then the straw could be metal (reusable) with a pointy end to pierce the pouch. Boom, solid business to have 10 of these pouches delivered weekly.
What do the contents of a juice pack look like prior to juicing? As far as I know, it's not possible to manually extract meaningful amounts of juice from leafy greens or root vegetables (e.g., spinach, romaine, kale, beets, ginger) so the ingredients must be processed before going into the packs.
Juicero workers receive truckloads of produce from nearby organic farms, triple-wash it, then chop it into specific shapes. A specialized machine then fills each pack, ready to be shipped.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/business/juicero-juice-sy...
this sounds like what lexmark do (used to do?) with printer cartridges, most of the electronics in the cartridge and you have to buy a new cartridge costing more than the original printer with a half full cartridge.
208 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 221 ms ] threadI can't find any info on their site about subscription pricing (always a red flag) but this whole thing seems absurdly stupid. I'd be amazed if they managed to scale this in such a way that shipping refrigerated juice to individual customers is more affordable than people picking it up in the store/receiving it with their normal grocery order.
"The product was an unlikely pick for top technology investors, but they were drawn to the idea of an internet-connected device that transforms single-serving packets of chopped fruits and vegetables into a refreshing and healthy beverage."
Keywords: IoT, single-serving refill packs, healthy fuit & veg.
further details reveal that the thing will track you at every single use pinging the central servers. It has a kill-switch to refuse juicing when they don't think you should be juicing anymore (for now expired package, but hey, nothing prevents updated from refining the "feature").
Need I continue?
Overall, it's a product that just rides the hype of juicing and IoT, but it's at least as nasty as the !#@%!# cloudpets [1].
[1] https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/creepy-iot-teddy-be...
This sounds almost comical...
I forget the exact line but it has something to do with "why does he have 2 juicers"
http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/silicon-valley-almost-painfully...
> Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.”
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon-va...
Erlich has some choice vulgar things to say.
Jared chimes in with a cheery way to look at the situation.
The problem for the manufacturer comes when consumers figure out that they can use knock-off blades, generic ink, or 3rd party juice packs.
Gillette model worked because creating that infrastructure back then had a huge barrier to entry. You had to get a factory to produce the blades, etc.
Compare that to juice mix delivery service in 2017. There are tons of organic juice stores around, and there are tons of delivery services like uber/caviar/doordash. These juiceries can take advantage of the distribution startups to deliver their juice and make money if they wanted.
Basically it matters because you need to take "competition" into consideration. It's an entirely different game than razor blades.
This machine is expensive and the supplies are expensive. That... does not make sense. Given that the supplies seem to be delivered by means of some subscription service they'd have done better to throw in the machine for some nominal monthly cost - and make it free for those who manage to consume more than X bags of pulp per year. This also would lower the threshold for potential customers as it would be possible to try the 'service' without needing to invest a large sum up-front. Given that the money is meant to be in the bags it only makes sense to try to maximise the number of customers.
I guess they had a look at Apple and thought their business model - expensive hardware tied to a single supplier in as many ways as possible - would fit them as well. It doesn't, not when you can pick actual apples from a tree in your garden.
'Juicero’s business plan reads like a pitch-perfect parody of contemporary startup culture. One investor told Bloomberg that Juicero was building a “platform” for a new model of food delivery. ...The technology is mostly superfluous from the customer’s perspective. But the technology dimension was crucial for fundraising. As one investor put it to Bloomberg, “Their venture firm wouldn’t have met with [Juicero founder Doug] Evans if he were hawking bags of juice that didn’t require high-priced hardware.”'
Given the opportunity, how much of your own money would you invest?
How do people with so little sense get so much money?
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/juicero/investors
Regardless, their actual market has always been restaurants and offices that want to have juice without a mess or someone who knows how to make it, and that seems less impacted, if perhaps less appealing to their investors.
edit: Or maybe finely chopped stuff. Unclear. I would think they wouldn't bother putting stuff like orange pulp in the bags though.
Life imitates art i guess
"We kinda didn't think about this much because the real money is in the packets anyways. This stuff is way better than ink cartridges."
>The device also reads a QR code printed on the back of each produce pack and checks the source against an online database to ensure the contents haven’t expired or been recalled, the person said.
It's tough in a big office though unless someone's keeping the coffee made and fresh as is the case in a meeting setting. People take the last cup and don't make fresh coffee or they just don't want to wait.
We have both a coffeemaker with thermoses and a pod coffeemaker which seems a reasonable compromise.
>Maybe in a non-coffee drinking house where guests occasionally want one cup.
I have a $20 drip pot that makes 1-2 cups and takes up a quarter of the counter space. French press is even cheaper and I have one that makes only a single cup. Then there's aeropress...
I'm paying for time. I can just press a button and have coffee in ~1 minute. No need to grind beans or clean the coffeemaker after.
Worth it for me.
The elevator pitch to investors for this is probably "Keurig for organic juice".
Does not really compute with
> I get no satisfaction from status symbols
It's a form of the sunk cost fallacy that's frequently exploited in marketing.
> The only element not recyclable by municipal methods are the Packs themselves
> Request a prepaid shipping label from by clicking the “Get Started” button below. We will then collect the Packs...
https://www.terracycle.com/en-US/brigades/juicero
> Step One: Cut off the bottom section of the Pack and remove the pulp
> Step Two: Rinse the Pack.
> Step Three: Set the Pack aside until you’re ready to recycle.
> Step Four: MAIL THEM IN Request a prepaid shipping label from by clicking the “Get Started” button below.
At this point I'm better off not only saving money, packaging and associated shipping pitfalls but saving time by simply juicing everything myself at home and buying produce when I make my regular trips to the grocery store.
I love how companies word things.
Marketing does a great job on pointing out that great big nothing and people recite the marketing material without any critical thinking.
Your friends don't care about environmental concerns. My friends do. Swings and roundabouts.
The real problem would need solving (and I'm not sure it really does, because how popular are these things, really?) is people's desire for these wasteful services.
If stores stocked these kinds of pre-cut veg, that would take 3/4 of the pain out of cooking.
It's also unfortunate that a ridiculous, overpriced, bag squeezing machine keeps getting the charitable label "juicer".
The marketing was completely misleading. The bags seem to be filled with prepared, liquid juice.
You don't need a machine because they are just sending out Capri sun bags of juice.
The machine is just a lie to make you think something is being prepared fresh.
The bottle of juice wouldn't let you discard a capri-sun package full of squeeze fruit husks. This lets people know you're wealthy enough to not care about excess.
I can't speak to the actual differences, though. I'm not really a juice person unless rum or tequila is involved.
Juicero workers receive truckloads of produce from nearby organic farms, triple-wash it, then chop it into specific shapes. A specialized machine then fills each pack, ready to be shipped. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/business/juicero-juice-sy...
Customer(?) with an open bag: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cfj8DI-UEAAGi5F.jpg
>four tons of force
>delivered weekly
>QR code
>online database
>patent-pending
>400 custom parts
>scanner
>microprocessor
>wireless chip
>wireless antenna
>revolutionary machine
>subscription model
>“platform” for ... food delivery,
Guys, we are talking about a juicer here.
http://www.danielsen.com/jokes/objecttoaster.txt
It's not even that! It's literally just a $400 machine to squeeze out the contents of a bag. It comes pre-juiced in the packets!