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Juicero, a startup that sells a pricey juice press, found that out firsthand. The company's Wi-Fi-enabled machine produces cold-pressed juice out of packets sold exclusively to owners via subscription.
Received as both Silicon Valley cautionary tale and commentary on conspicuous consumption, Juicero's story was chronicled this week in a Bloomberg News piece.
[...] In all, the company raised some $120 million.
But Bloomberg says investors' confidence waned once it emerged that people didn't actually need the press to get juice from the packets but could simply squeeze it out by hand.
A Silicon Valley startup slain before it could blossom into a unicorn.
[Ed. Note: Also at ExtremeTech with a bonus link to Juicero's very silly marketing video.]
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Juicero Squeezed by Press and Internet
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:44PM (3 children)
Packets? Could we have used a more-confusing term in this context? They're goddamn Capri-Suns with kale juice in them!
Not quite - I saw a video (go on, waste 60 seconds of your life, too [vimeo.com]) of someone cutting one open and it looked like it contained mulched carrots that were only halfway along the road to drinkability.
However, what the advantage was supposed to be c.f. just buying cartons of juice (or just eating fruit and veg and getting some fibre with your sugar), I don't know.
I think some MBA looked at the success of coffee pod machines without thinking it through:
Then again, even savvy consumers are stupid. Some people obsess about sticking it to The Man by getting refillable pods for their coffee pod machines. Duh! The only point of coffee pod machines is making single servings of something better than instant without having your perfect life blighted by the sight of soggy coffee grounds. If you're going to get refillable pods that you have to wash out anyway then better and cheaper methods of turning ground or beans into coffee are available
.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:03PM (2 children)
In most cases, I agree.
But my grandmother lives by herself, and likes to have the fancier cups as a treat when she has company. She also prefers to drink plain coffee as a daily ritual. Using refillable cups in the Keurig means one gadget rather than two, and the bulk of her consumption is no more expensive. (Not sure whether she could afford to just buy store-brand K-cups for daily consumption; I don't know, but wouldn't think the price difference was that big. Anyhow she grew up in the Great Depression, so she has a lifelong habit of frugality.)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:14PM (1 child)
Or, she could just get something like a Ninja Coffee maker. Makes one cup or an entire carafe and uses normal ground coffee and a standard cone filter to do it. The unit itself is less than what you'd pay for a typical Keurig machine and you're not having to mess around with small k-cups that become more and more of an issue as people age.
Or if people really want quality with minimal headache, there's pour overs, cold brew and french presses. All have minimal time requirements and produce better results at a lower price.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @01:16AM
Yeah, but what does that do for "fancy" (in relative terms, obviously) coffee/cocoa/what-not when she has company? Nothing, so you end up with two gadgets.