Juicero May Be Feeling the Squeeze(bloomberg.com) |
Juicero May Be Feeling the Squeeze(bloomberg.com) |
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/17/14296530/juicero-juicer-pr...
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
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.
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.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/juicero
Anyone have better knowledge of these VC firms?
If it’s contaminated ‘coz expired, it’s doable. Many devices have accurate real-time clocks even offline, e.g. GPS. It’s easy to include the expiry date in that cryptographically-signed data. BTW, Kerberos protocol does similar things with their timestamps.
If however it’s contaminated just because the producer decided to recall a batch of their product, then yes, a centralized server is a good choice.
How do people with so little sense get so much money?
Wow, internet connected? I just can't understand this craze to connect anything and everything to internet.
Looks like people/companies don't focus on how to solve a problem and make money from the solution but more like how they can get into our homes and monetize on the activities recorded.
Next thing consumers take knives to the bags to circumvent the coded valves. Bags are reinforced. Consumers use better knives. Bags are made double-walled with some nasty tasting/coloured liquid in between the two walls, all for your protection.
Next step is Juicero goes bankrupt, consumers are left with useless machines which end up on flea markets or landfills.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Me? I just eat an apple, an orange or a banana. My daughter prefers to put them through the blender first and calls it a smoothie. Takes all of a few minutes and works with apples and oranges and bananas from any source.
On another note, Juicero doesn't care what you or your daughter do to make juice, because you were never meant to buy a Juicero. It's a safe bet that their strategy was to sell B2B to large corporations and into the high-end hospitality industry (hotels, cruise ships, colleges) rather than B2C. I'm sure they extrapolated some crazy TAM/SAM/SOM for the B2B amenities market based on Keurig's success and used it to score an easy $120m.
"Owners Of Discontinued Keurig Rivo Having Trouble Buying Coffee Pods That Will Work"
https://consumerist.com/2017/02/27/owners-of-discontinued-ke...
> The company sells produce packs for $5 to $8 but limits sales to owners of Juicero hardware. The products were only available in three states until Tuesday, when the company expanded to 17.
Which one? Not trolling, but I've bought (and returned) 3 different juices in the 300 - 500$ range that were a pain to clean, dry and put away. Even the ones made in Korea that are "only 5 parts" are annoying. I've had soft shreds getting stuck in the ejection tube, and the only way to clean it is (that I've found out) by using an ear bud to push it out.
- So the machine is 6%, give or take, more efficient than hand. If I'm serving two juices a day during weekdays for me and spouse at average cost of $6.5/unit that's $0.78/day, $3.90/week, say I do this 50 weeks a year so $195 in juice recovery value (JRV) by using the machine :).
- Also saves the household example above 3 minutes of time a day by using machine. Let's say average household who can afford $8 packets of juice is in the $100k/yr club at least so time value (for sale) of $50/hr gives me an efficiency gain of 750 minutes or $625/year in Juicer Time Return (JTR).
Using machine provides one year JRV of $195 and a JTR of $625 = $820
Product cost is $400.
FOLKS you are DOUBLING YOUR MONEY!
http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2016/08/how-is-this-thi...
Oh you mean a single person household. A bro living a one bedroom apt filled with useless gadgets type perhaps
>We finish by sealing the produce (completely raw and never pasteurized) into our Packs, which get shipped to your door the day they're made.
Wouldn't raw, unpasteurized chopped fruits and vegetable start fermenting very quickly in those packs? Are they shipped refrigerated?
This entire thing is so weird to me. Those packs cost around $6 each and they only produce a small glass of juice. This is less cost effective than some hipster juice bars, and at least here you don't have to clean the glass afterwards.
Buying a good juicer sounds like a much better investment, although admittedly they're probably more painful to wash up.
EDIT: after some more digging up, it turns out that the packs are delivered refrigerated. On top of that the machine will refuse to juice expired or any kind of 3rd party packs and apparently needs an internet connection and a smartphone app to function. Preposterous.
Here's the getting started video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i0UugILBJg
Step 1: open the box
Step 2: plug in the juicer
Step 3: sign up to your juicero account through the smartphone app
Honestly if you had shown me this video 2 hours ago I'd have assumed satire.
This sounds almost comical...
Doug Evans, the company’s founder, would compare himself with Steve Jobs in his pursuit of juicing perfection. He declared that his juice press wields four tons of force—“enough to lift two Teslas,” he said. Google’s venture capital arm and other backers poured about $120 million into the startup. Juicero sells the machine for $400, plus the cost of individual juice packs delivered weekly. Tech blogs have dubbed it a “Keurig for juice.”
I've got bingo!
"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."
It's a form of the sunk cost fallacy that's frequently exploited in marketing.
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.
It's also unfortunate that a ridiculous, overpriced, bag squeezing machine keeps getting the charitable label "juicer".
In all fairness, most of the reviews are fairly positive. Though this takedown is pretty hilarious: https://www.fastcodesign.com/3065667/this-1500-toaster-oven-...
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
> 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...
> 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.
This is absolutely not a phrase I would want to see in an article about my startup.
Obviously, less useful for startups in other markets.
"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...
For the past five years, I have gotten a box of fresh fruits and veggies delivered every Monday. The produce is organic, often local, always tasty, the box they come in is reusable, and it doesn't have DRM (that I'm aware of).
Edit: “Williams, a self-proclaimed health-food evangelist, said she’d like to see the company sell packs by themselves to people who can’t afford the device”
Can't spare $400 for the device? How about $5-$8 for 8 oz of fresh juice? Make sure to put it into a paper cup with a lid and a straw so we can maximize the amount of waste generated (along with the juice packet).
I am in a state of panic right now because I cannot fathom how a group of people thought this was a good enough idea long enough for them to develop a final product. What????
>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.
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!
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.
Then realized this was the concept for the hipster Juicero.
Lemme try this - I'll chop up a bunch of spinach, kale, and carrots, place them in a reinforced bag, and squeeze them by hand. Yeah - that's not gonna give me juice...
[1] http://www.businessinsider.sg/juicer-juicer-product-review-2...
[2] https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5710e74c9105842...
> The products were only available in three states until Tuesday, when the company expanded to 17. Packs can’t be shipped long distances because the contents are perishable.
> 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...
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...
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.
'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.”'
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.
Given the opportunity, how much of your own money would you invest?
Your friends don't care about environmental concerns. My friends do. Swings and roundabouts.
Does not really compute with
> I get no satisfaction from status symbols
http://www.dasprogramm.org/electrical/household/braun-multip...
You mean, I go out and get a machine, something that will take constant handling at home, and waste some precious space, so it can make juice. And as a bonus, it's slower than the no-machine alternative (so it will make me wait). And I didn't even come into the cost of finding their brand of juice for buying, instead of any other one.
I did never hear about this company before, but I'm surely not becoming their client.
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.
>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'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".
>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...
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.
