from Hacker News

Juicero May Be Feeling the Squeeze

by tomgallard on 4/19/17, 3:06 PM with 197 comments

by Yetanfou on 4/19/17, 5:18 PM
I'll offer a brief glimpse into the future. Juicero, burnt by the ease at which consumers rob them of potential revenue poaches someone away from the likes of HP or Gillette. That someone comes up with the perfect solution: add a coded valve to the juice bags which only opens when it has been inserted in a licensed Juicero machine. The added advantage is that the machine can refuse to squeeze more juice out of a bag which has been in the machine for more than X days, all for your protection of course.
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.
by aresant on 4/19/17, 4:06 PM
"Reporters were able to wring 7.5 ounces of juice in a minute and a half. The machine yielded 8 ounces in about two minutes. . . The company sells produce packs for $5 to $8 . . ."
- 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!
by simias on 4/19/17, 4:08 PM
It's the first time I hear about this product but as someone who likes fermenting vegetables this part surprised me:
>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.
by dpflan on 4/19/17, 3:49 PM
"Two investors in Juicero were surprised to learn the startup’s juice packs could be squeezed by hand without using its high-tech machine."
This sounds almost comical...
by beaconstudios on 4/19/17, 4:53 PM
The single most "Silicon Valley is a bubble" paragraph I've ever seen:
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!
by wyldfire on 4/19/17, 3:52 PM
> 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."
by tdeck on 4/19/17, 4:01 PM
I don't understand this product at all. If you're willing to buy a pack of prepared juice, why not just buy a bottle of juice instead?
by maxerickson on 4/19/17, 3:56 PM
I'm sad they didn't test how fast they could empty the juice container with the aid of scissors.
It's also unfortunate that a ridiculous, overpriced, bag squeezing machine keeps getting the charitable label "juicer".
by ghaff on 4/19/17, 4:11 PM
Then there's this $1500 toaster oven. https://juneoven.com/the-oven
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-...
by pdog on 4/19/17, 4:03 PM
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.
by afandian on 4/19/17, 3:54 PM
That looks like a waste nightmare.
> 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
by 6stringmerc on 4/19/17, 4:00 PM
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.
by dreamcompiler on 4/19/17, 4:07 PM
"The New York franchise drew rave reviews from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow."
This is absolutely not a phrase I would want to see in an article about my startup.
by mankash666 on 4/19/17, 3:52 PM
Is this the trailer for season 4 of HBO's silicon valley? It sure could be
by TillE on 4/19/17, 3:20 PM
So what's actually inside the packs, very fine bits of wet plant matter? Is there any real benefit of this over just selling bottles of fancy juice?
by michael_h on 4/19/17, 5:04 PM
'He said the company is a “platform” for a new model of food delivery, where fresh fruits and veggies are delivered regularly to the home'
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).
by colourincorrect on 4/19/17, 4:11 PM
But... what is the point of a juicer if the contents you are juicing are already liquid?
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????
by nommm-nommm on 4/19/17, 4:05 PM
Wow, I can't even... this is comedy gold:
>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.
by everling on 4/19/17, 3:57 PM
$400 for a machine that in the end doesn't give you freshly squeezed juice? I think a lot of the appeal from squeezing fruit juice is using actual pieces of fruit.
by reacharavindh on 4/19/17, 4:08 PM
In some sense, this is an example of Natural Selection in Silicon valley. Idiots get weeded out after wasting some VC money. Part of me feels amused by this.
by pascalxus on 4/19/17, 4:42 PM
This is what happens when all the most important innovation is illegal (housing, health, and transportation) and increasing shares of income goes to the top 0.01%. Innovators run out of real things to innovate on, and start creating 400$ bags of juice. You should Look forward to seeing more of this in the coming decades.
by adamnemecek on 4/19/17, 3:50 PM
Never change sv
by aloisdg on 4/19/17, 3:58 PM
"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."
by film42 on 4/19/17, 4:02 PM
I bet you could also use a straw and drink it right out of the pouch!
by panglott on 4/19/17, 5:19 PM
Was wondering why not just use a hand-operated lever press, like the sort of low-tech cast-iron device you might find on an old farmhouse.
Then realized this was the concept for the hipster Juicero.
by programminggeek on 4/19/17, 3:53 PM
Sometimes the real customer is investors willing to give millions to an idea and the real product is a company that looks investable.
by Animats on 4/19/17, 5:32 PM
The thing used to cost $700.[1] $400 is the new, lower price.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/17/14296530/juicero-juicer-pr...
by softwarefounder on 4/19/17, 3:56 PM
This whole thing sounds like a sitcom parody.
by crygin on 4/19/17, 3:52 PM
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.
by sergiotapia on 4/19/17, 4:10 PM
A "juice luminary" - Silicon Valley writes itself!
by skizm on 4/19/17, 4:28 PM
Alright, someone needs to make a hand cranked version of the juicer now. You could probably 3D print one on the cheap and open source the specs.
by RyanCavanaugh on 4/19/17, 5:44 PM
I'm waiting for the part where we find out the contents of the packets are from bottles of Odwalla purchased at the local grocery store.
by manigandham on 4/25/17, 4:09 AM
Juicero also expects customers to cut open the juice packs, trash/compost the pulp, wash them out, then ship them back in a box for recycling. It's more work than just using a blender.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i0UugILBJg&t=1m53s
by illegalsmile on 4/19/17, 3:55 PM
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.
by kozak on 4/19/17, 3:19 PM
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.
by TaylorGood on 4/19/17, 4:17 PM
Convenience at the hospitality level makes sense. That said, there is room for a squeezer with 396 less parts in sub-$200 range that provides empty open-top squeeze funnel bags. Allowing end user or companies to fill and dispense whatever..
by jlebrech on 4/19/17, 4:07 PM
why not have a bag of preselected fruit (unjuiced), you attach it to the juicer which has a fan to keep it from pulverising the plastic, and the fan stops when the blade has fully stopped spinning. and then you just have to wash the blade.
by makmanalp on 4/19/17, 6:00 PM
I'm surprised to see google ventures in here:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/juicero
Anyone have better knowledge of these VC firms?
by pablobaz on 4/19/17, 4:01 PM
Surely what they need is some way it can be consumed straight from the pack?
by Const-me on 4/20/17, 1:38 AM
Can't they replace online database with asymmetric cryptography in that QR code? This way a machine can validate manufacturing date even offline, i.e. more reliably.
by power78 on 4/19/17, 5:35 PM
These guys must have sold investors hard for Google to put 120 million into this. Maybe there is an angle here I'm not seeing.
by aarpmcgee on 4/19/17, 3:57 PM
keurig for juice? this is not what the world needs. http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/04/news/k-cups-keurig-inventor-...
by jlebrech on 4/19/17, 4:05 PM
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.
by cmdrfred on 4/19/17, 3:59 PM
This isn't a juicer as much as a juice dispenser.
by heifetz on 4/19/17, 5:01 PM
how much value do the venture capitalists add?
by jbverschoor on 4/19/17, 4:14 PM
hilarious
by grabcocque on 4/19/17, 3:50 PM
$120m from investors none of whom were aware you don't need a $400 machine to squeeze the juice from fruit?
How do people with so little sense get so much money?
by winteriscoming on 4/19/17, 4:22 PM
>> an internet-connected device that transforms single-serving packets of chopped fruits and vegetables into a refreshing and healthy beverage.
Wow, internet connected? I just can't understand this craze to connect anything and everything to internet.