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.]
Related Stories
One of Silicon Valley's most infamous recent startups is shutting down:
Juicero, the company that made its name by creating a proprietary juice-squeezing machine, is shutting down. The announcement comes from Juicero's website. In its post, the company writes that it is suspending the sale of both its juice packets and its Juicero Press device. The last juice packet delivery will occur next week. All customers have up to 90 days to request a refund for their purchase of the Juicero Press, regardless of when they bought it. Fortune reports that employees are being given 60 days notice.
Previously: Juicero Squeezed by Press and Internet
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:30PM (14 children)
Seems like a great marketing opportunity. Jump on the IoT bandwagon of "cool connected gadgets" and market to an audience that is known to buy fancy kitchen gadgets and likely believe marketing for unproven health claims.
(By the way -- I'm NOT saying anyone who drinks juice or uses a juicer is gullible. Whole fruit and vegetables generally are better for you, but juice is a better choice than a lot of other stuff you could be consuming. Nevertheless, I think it's pretty clear that juicers are one of those "gadget" things that probably the majority of people buy thinking they're going to use every day, when in actuality they get it out once or twice per year and then it just gathers dust.)
Some fun quotes from TFA:
Dunn touted the device's connectivity. He said, for example, that the juice bag's QR codes allowed the company to remotely intervene in case of a product recall.
... or to remotely decide to brick your device or refuse to use juice packs that aren't the "more recent version" or allow hackers to -- I don't even know. What the hell does internet connectivity on a juicer even do??
He also advised against hand-squeezing the company's juice: "What you will get with hand-squeezed hacks is a mediocre (and maybe very messy) experience that you won't want to repeat once, let alone every day."
So, what you're telling me is that this $400 device is effectively a substitute for a decent pour spout on a pitcher?
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:40PM (1 child)
"So, what you're telling me is that this $400 device is effectively a substitute for a decent pour spout on a pitcher?"
Sounds like someone is rich and can afford to buy the $20 dollar pitcher. Some of us are stuck with the ones with the rounded lip that water tensions done the side of the pitcher instead of into the cup.
Next thing you are going to tell us is that there is some "technique" to pouring juice that makes it not do that, thats just ability shaming at its finest.
This juicer will finally solve all of the worlds problems.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday April 24 2017, @09:52AM
+1. We seem to be back at the 2000-or-so level of dotcom lunacy when a device to extract juice from a plastic bag gets $120M in funding.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:43PM (9 children)
Oh and if you think I'm being overly nasty about the marketing potential, I just read the Bloomberg piece [bloomberg.com], which has this choice quote:
The creator of Juicero is something of a luminary in the world of juicing. In 2002, Evans helped start Organic Avenue, a chain of juice bars selling cold-press concoctions in glass jars. The New York franchise drew rave reviews from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow.
Hmm... "luminary"... "juicing"... "Organic"... "juice bar"... "cold-press"... "glass jars"... "New York"... "rave reviews from... Gwyneth Paltrow"...
I think we just won some sort of "natural foods" BS Bingo in three sentences! And he's humble to boot:
In an interview with technology website Recode, he likened his work to the invention of a mainstream personal computer by Apple’s Jobs. “There are 400 custom parts in here,” Evans told Recode. “There’s a scanner; there’s a microprocessor; there’s a wireless chip, wireless antenna.”
LOL.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:58PM (4 children)
WTF is cold-press juicing? is there a hot-press? the amount of stupid in this whole story makes me think idiocracy might be optimistic
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:02PM (1 child)
It's not stupid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold-pressed_juice [wikipedia.org]
Perhaps a little bit of research on the matter before spouting off would be nice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 23 2017, @02:19AM
I wouldn't call it "stupid," but definitely overrated -- or "benefits exaggerated."
Cold-pressed juices can have different flavors and subtle textural differences, but the nutrient content is just *different*, not necessarily better. It's like cooking. Cooking was a huge evolutionary thing because it makes different nutrients more readily available. Cooking vegetables will destroy some things but release others. Cold-pressed juice has even more subtle differences, because "normal" juicers don't raise juice to cooking temps, but will tweak availability of various nutrients (and change the time profile of nutrients -- some people also irrationally believe that fresh juice must be superior, but enzyme activity will break down some things but make other nutrients available over time).
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:35PM
There are juicers that use steam. They've been around forever so no way of patenting them:
Here's an example: https://www.amazon.com/Norpro-619-Stainless-Steamer-Juicer/dp/B002N5TQUK [amazon.com]
Making juice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5z9ExL5Pxg [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @10:05PM
"What *are* these electrolytes? Do you even know?"
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday April 22 2017, @04:49PM (3 children)
Typical of con artists, the ego.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @04:53PM
Indeed there was nothing wireless about Jobs's Apple.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 22 2017, @08:27PM (1 child)
This is an idea so retarded it had to have come from San Francisco. * checks *
Yep, San Francisco, with an office in Los Angeles. There's no shortage of fools in California who enjoy being parted from their monies.
Can North Korea fucking nuke San Fran and L.A. already? It would solve both our faggot and Mexican problems overnight.
(Score: 1, Troll) by LoRdTAW on Sunday April 23 2017, @12:58AM
Wait, is Doug Evans a mexican faggot?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:55PM
wow. just wow. I can buy bottles of Lakewood Farms cold-pressed juices instead.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday April 24 2017, @10:00AM
It's not even a juicer as most people would understand it, it gets the juice out of a frickin plastic bag, not fresh fruit. This [youtube.com] is a juicer. Incidentally, they're hypnotic to watch if you can get to see one in action live.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:31PM (8 children)
This tends to confirm my suspicions about successful venture capitalists: they don't have a clue about business.
They are not successful because they are better at identifying or guiding businesses to success, they just have the money. They got lucky once or twice and have parlayed that success into ever more money.
VCs hire MBAs straight out of school and then have those same MBAs running or advising businesses, when there is evidence that MBAs are a negative for the businesses they advise.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:41PM (3 children)
Are there many VC then that has engineers to run and advice businesses?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:08PM (2 children)
As far as I can tell, most VC firms don't have those kinds of roles. Which seems incredibly dumb: If I'm a vulture capitalist, then I'd make a lot more money if I had people on staff who could hear the presentations and give them a rating of how realistic or crackpot their idea is.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:17PM
It seems you fail to understand how VC's make money, profitable companies is not the method, ripping off investors is, so if you take the company public you win, it does not matter what the company does or even if it does anything, so long as it sounds like it does something, or alternatively if you can't get a bank on your side to spin your IPO you rip off pensioners and people with a substantial nest egg in boiler room type scams, if the company actually makes money that's great but it's a side effect not an objective, silicon valley is mostly grifting
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:55PM
It's depressing, but: it's marketing all the way down. VCs probably don't care about your product. They care whether or not you can make a charismatic sales pitch. If you are someone who can sell ice to eskimos [wiktionary.org] (I'm sure that's not PC anymore, tough), then you get funded.
Really, it seem to be the standard Silicon Valley strategy: Get something, anything up as a product. Spend on marketing, build hype, sell at the peak, and get out before reality hits. The sociopath's way of doing business, which contributes nothing useful to society.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:00PM (2 children)
From what I can gather from the people I've known who had MBAs, what those programs teach, in a nutshell is how to:
- use Excel at a really expert level
- hoodwink people you will be dealing with: customers, investors, your bosses, and especially employees
- ruin perfectly good personal relationships by turning them into business relationships
- cultivate personal relationships primarily for how you can turn them into money-making business relationships
Or, in short, how to behave like a sociopath, whether or not you naturally are one. Obviously, people who actually are sociopathic have an easier time with these kinds of programs than others.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:10PM (1 child)
People that are naturally sociopaths are also known as psychopaths, being a sociopath is always a choice
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:04PM
I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning sociopath.
S.H.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:09PM
It's more a matter of the amount of money that venture capitalists have combined with a relatively small number of projects to fund and the lack of expertise on each idea.
Raising the capital gains taxes to something more reasonable at the same time that interests rates are allowed to return to something more normal would likely go a long way towards addressing problems like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:49PM (10 children)
Where I will just start ranting like a maniac and presumably some very rich idiot will give me 100 million $ for whatever hair brained insanity come out of my mouth since that is how it seems to work!
FFS it's no wonder there is no functioning economy
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 22 2017, @04:24PM (9 children)
Michael David Crawford will be the next SV billionaire
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @04:33PM
You mean he's not already? But he talks so much? Aren't the smooth-talkers always filthy rich? Whatever happened to that proprietary closed-sourced money-making trading-software scam he invented? Why isn't MDC a trillionaire by now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:04PM (7 children)
You mean this guy?
http://www.warplife.com/mdc/drawings/ [warplife.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:17PM (6 children)
You mean the genius inventor of libmdc ?
http://www.warplife.com/source-code/libmdc/ [warplife.com]
Naming a whole lib after himself, MDC is a regular DJB, he sure is!
DJB is the king of lazy selfish naming: djbdns, djbfft, djb2.
Our own MDC can do more! Name some more things mdc!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:25PM (5 children)
Yep I'm now lost I have no clue who any of these people are I'm a terrible programmer and suck a famous people.. bands, movie stars, reality TV people I don't know most of them so all I have to inform me is the sad failure of google
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:30PM (4 children)
Google is too famous for me. I only use tinfoil hatter search engines like DickDickGo or DicksQuick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:33PM
Sorry I don't swing that way, but thank you
also I still don't know who any of them are
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:35PM (1 child)
Jesus, someone is bent out of shape about privacy advocates. Embrace Google! Google is life, Google will fix everything with COMPUTERS!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:50PM
ddg.gg [ddg.gg]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 22 2017, @08:31PM
DuckDuckGo has been compromised by Jews.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Saturday April 22 2017, @04:51PM (7 children)
Juicero, a startup that sells a pricey juice press, found that out firsthand.
Wait.....found what out first hand?
FTA: Sometimes, it's the Internet of stings.
Oh god, nevermind!
The company's Wi-Fi-enabled machine produces cold-pressed juice out of packets sold exclusively to owners via subscription.
Packets? Could we have used a more-confusing term in this context? They're goddamn Capri-Suns with kale juice in them!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:04PM (1 child)
Inkjet printer filled with vegetable juice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:11PM
Except they skipped the part where the vendor sells the printer at a very low price.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:07PM
I am so happy you disambiguated the discombobulation I was having I can see clearly now the rain has come, I can see all obstetrical in my way...
(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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:44PM (5 children)
In all, the company raised some $120 million."
WTF?! For a $400 juicer that isn't even capable of juicing actual fruit? When a real juicer [amazon.com] costs a fraction of that?
The juice comes in bags (produced who knows how). The machine empties the bags into your glass. This isn't a juicer, it's drink dispenser. But it's IoT, and probably has an app, so some sucker will buy it. The theory was, apparently, that owning the product would make you buy the bags. Sort of like printer ink, but you normally expect printer ink to come in proprietary cartridges. Juice, on the other hand, normally comes in public domain containers. [wikimedia.org]
Are venture capitalists so desperate to lose their money? Why would anyone with a brain invest in a product like this?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:31PM (4 children)
I would have wanted to buy one at first glance. $400 isn't all that much for a professional juicer. Those Ninja blenders cost huge bucks, but *nobody* confuses those things with Walmart/Amazon crap you get for under $50. You can make hot soup with a Ninja, and excellent smoothies. It's the difference between a Hummer driving on the road and an actual military Humvee that can take on difficult terrain the Hummer won't go.
This is a cold press juicer that is supposed to deliver around 4 tons of pressure. Those CapriSun 2.0 bags Juicero sells have partially mulched veggies in it that need to be run through the cold press in the juicing unit. It's not completely and wholly stupid since it does actually get more juice out than you could on your own from the veggies and fruit. There are different levels of quality in juicers, and I understand that you can get slightly better nutrition not to mention more juice with a higher quality juicer. Also, there is a different type that is more like a cork screw that can mash up stuff that a normal juicer cannot.
The value of the Juicero, as implied by the cost, is a superior cold press mechanism that indeed would be better than the other juicers on the market. All of that being said, this a IoT device for people that can't fucking cut a veggie or fruit in half and feed it into a juicer. Whatever superior cold press technology there is in Juicero is destroyed by that fucking subscription bullshit. I wanted to use my own veggies and fruit in it, not forever be subject to their prices to get my fruits and veggies. That's fucking bullshit.
It's a Keurig for veggies and fruit, and not really a cold press juicer at all. If it was a superior cold press juicer, than $300-$400 is the high end of that market from what I can tell.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:47PM (2 children)
That's fair enough: $400 for a really top-quality juicer. The point, of course, is that this isn't a juicer. You cannot put a carrot into it, or an apple, or indeed anything but a pre-processed bag. In other words, the juicer is in a factory somewhere, and the end-user has no control over the quality or source of material that went into that bag.
Four tons of pressure - whoopie. High pressure is not actually what you want. For a well-known example, consider olive oil: the really good stuff is "extra virgin", which is released with the least pressure.
Also, as you say, the subscription system is the gimmick. The bags expire in under a week, you apparently have to order at least 5 of each type, and the machine will refuse to press expired packs. So you cannot, for example, buy a supply, and put some in the freezer for later.
Really, it's printer ink scam, but worse.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:18PM
To be fair, the bags expire in one week because they're using fresh fruit that's the part of this that I have the least amount of trouble with. They're processing the produce and not adding preservatives which is going to result in a lessened shelf-life once the consumer gets it. That's probably a part of why they need the bar code as this type of juicing makes it really easy to get food poisoning if anything along the way went wrong.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:12PM
Exactly. We don't control the input.
That almost seems nonsensical. How do you release the olive oil if you only ever exert a light amount of force? Perhaps you could explain that more.
That is extra shitty, I agree. However, the cold press part of it is valuable. The mechanics of it are solid, the problem is input. What if you hacked a bag and reused it? :)
You could then use your own produce and end up having a decent cold press system in your kitchen. Although, I'm not spending $400 to find out.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday April 22 2017, @10:23PM
Whatever superior cold press technology there is in Juicero is destroyed by that fucking subscription bullshit.
The Bloomberg article explains that a subscription model is what investors want:
Evans’s subscription model had hit on a sweet spot for venture capitalists, said Brian Frank, who invests in food-tech companies through his FTW Ventures fund. The successes of Nespresso and Dollar Shave Club have made VCs eager to chase such deals, he said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:18PM
No VC's needed, no binary blobs and no covers to improve esthetics, just solid metal and heavy plastic parts -- there has been one of these in our family for over 40 years, https://www.hamiltonbeach.com/manual-commercial-citrus-juicer-932 [hamiltonbeach.com]
I think we paid $160 around 1980. Looks like they are discounted online to less than USD $250. You might get lucky and find a used one at a thrift store?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:48PM
I don't even know what to make of this, except to say these assholes are going to the same circle of Hell HP's printer and ink manufacturers are. Fuck them, and also fuck anyone stupid enough to buy into this.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:31PM (1 child)
Really, there's nothing wrong with this. They're selling a subscription to fresh fruit and vegetable juice, with some bit of extra marketing and selling a one-time doodad which may have been better thought out. Yet everyone seems to be obsessed with the damn pressing unit. I wouldn't be suprised if there were some advantages to the press, like it's easier to ship half-pressed fruit than fully pressed juice, and having the QR code to automatically check expiration date or contamination. The main sell is the fresh juice without preservatives, and that's not a bad idea if you're willing to pay for convenience.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday April 23 2017, @12:58PM
Its engineered improperly. Its kinda the systemd of the juice world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @11:13PM (1 child)
Google invested in this, just like they did in D-Wave quantum computing. Haaaaaaaahaaaaaaaa.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday April 23 2017, @01:10AM
With a name like D-Wave, how could you not imagine being screwed?