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How Juicero's Story Set the Company Up for Humiliation
- Animats 9y agoIn 2004, the Coca Cola Company tried to launch "Dasani", in the UK. Dasani is tap water run through a de-ionizing plant, after which flavoring is added. They were laughed out of the business.[1] Not only did Coca Cola not try again, they gave up on launching in France and Germany. Now that was a humiliation. An even worse failure was Odwalla's "Killer Juice". Odwalla made a big deal about their juice being "natural" and not pasteurized. Then they had a contamination problem. One person died, 66 sick, sales down 90% afterwards. The company was eventually acquired by the Minute Maid unit of Coca Cola. All product is now pasteurized. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3809539.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3809539.stm
- SerLava 9y ago>Odwalla made a big deal about their juice being "natural" and not pasteurized. Then they had a contamination problem. One person died, 66 sick, sales down 90% afterwards. Reminds me of Chipotle. As they were switching to their organic supply chain, they ran a rather insulting, emotionally manipulative ad campaign [1] implicitly slandering any and all competing restaurants for not being organic. As with all organic food marketing, their product was presented as the only alternative to disgusting poison. They even made it into a fucking phone game. [2] And then this same supply chain was not properly quality controlled, and it poisoned a bunch of people. Empty Chipotle restaurants give me some measure of schadenfreude. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUtnas5ScSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUtnas5ScSE [2] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chipotle-scarecrow/id689470205 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chipotle-scarecrow/id6894702...
- kristianc 9y agoDasani was also found to be contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2004/mar/20/medicineandhealth.lifeandhealth https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/...
- regularfry 9y agoThe Dasani contamination story is the icing on the cake: they took perfectly drinkable tapwater, deionised it, then added too much buffer to it, making it toxic. That takes some talent.
- midgetjones 9y agoThe advertising for Dasani also proudly proclaimed that it was "full of spunk", which has a very different meaning in the UK to the US.
- lasc4r 9y agoSame meaning in the US, at least for me.
- Chris2048 9y agoThere's a certain controversially-named energy drink brand that could adopt that line :-)
- Overtonwindow 9y agoAre you referring to the British made energy drink .... "pussy" ?
- Chris2048 9y agoYes, or it's asterix-ed reincarnations.
- Overtonwindow 9y agoLOL I've yet to get my hands on this. The energy drink I mean... I feel like you could sell the empty cans to some countries as souvenirs.
- Chris2048 9y agoAbsolutely can
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- HappyTypist 9y agoI lost this when I watched this 2 minute video on how to make juice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i0UugILBJg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i0UugILBJg "Your Juicero needs to be connected to Wifi to make juice" WTF?
- kuschku 9y agoThe bags have DRM, and it’s used to prevent you from accidentally using bags after they’ve gone bad, or accidentally using third-party bags.
- nannal 9y agoIf it's the same DRM as kenco can you just take off the QR code, tape it over the camera and then squeeze anything you want over wifi using your $400 wifi-enabled squeezing machine. I guess that would only work during the sell-by period of the bag, but there's a chance their QR codes are forgeable.
- kuschku 9y agoThat’s why it needs internet: The QR code is a UUID queried via the API, returning the bag’s info, best by date (after which the QR code will be disabled), and so on. Each bag can only be registered with one juicer at a time. It’s a surprisingly well-engineered DRM system for such a shittily engineered juicer. In fact, the DRM system might be the only good part in this entire device, from an engineering perspective.
- chinathrow 9y agoWTF indeed. And they have a camera in there too... I wonder if they take regular pictures with it once you open the door.
- zyx321 9y agoHow else would they gather the data required to "customize content for you that [they] think you might like, based on your usage patterns" and "provide aggregate usage information to [their] partners"? [1] https://www.juicero.com/privacy-policy/ https://www.juicero.com/privacy-policy/
- argonaut 9y agoYes, it's all bogus marketing, but people mocking Juicero should be reminded that bottled water and luxury fashion goods of any kind are all multi-hundred billion dollar markets, not to mention any of the trillion (?) dollar commodity prepared foods segments. Many of these industries differentiate through intellectually-nonsensical lifestyle marketing.
- 2muchcoffeeman 9y agoWell at least with water, there are actually countries where drinking water straight from the tap may not be safe and bottled water is the norm. But the water is much cheaper than what you generally find. And you don't need to be connected to the internet.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- a_imho 9y agoPaywalled, web link does not work for me, site hijacks back button.
- _mikz 9y agoIt just complains about Ad-blocker to me. Disabling it works.
- Overtonwindow 9y agoUse Brave!
- circadiam 9y agoRemoved: http://outline.com/FH8mkj http://outline.com/FH8mkj
- niftich 9y agoThis is perhaps a great example that proves that not all publicity is good publicity. While they flew under the radar, they weren't widely mocked, and they might even have succeeded in building a following. After all, on face value, K-cups are similarly ridiculous, where a pricey appliance is used to make a single serving of product from an even pricier single-use packet, complete with DRM where they were locking out unofficial cups. And yet, Keurig has sold a lot of their brewers and officially-licensed cups, and it turns out the single-serving model was an advantage rather than a drawback. It's undeniable that Juicero's own promoters can lay on the spiritual-tinged marketing drivel thick, and they were swiftly slaughtered in the court of public opinion with one slickly-produced viral video. Perhaps the lesson is, even if your model is pure BS, don't do something that could be mocked in three minutes, and used to entertain at your expense.
- Nullabillity 9y agoA Keurig/Nespresso at least does some sort of brewing, which is arguably more convenient than doing it yourself (though I don't own one myself). Juicero was just a slower, less convenient, and more expensive way to open a juice bottle.
- moomin 9y agoI've heard it said by coffee enthusiasts (at least, those prepared to consider Nespresso for thirty seconds) that Nespresso/Keurig are one of the best ways to make coffee at home if you don't want it to be a hobby.
- bipson 9y agoOh no, I strongly doubt any coffee enthusiast would say such a thing. Nespresso is simply not good coffee. It is just terribly convenient, well marketed as being great, and OK if you don't know any better. Once you had better coffee (e.g. any Jura machine can make better coffee), you somehow don't want that stuff anymore... It is like junk food. You might be OK with it, but it is simply not enjoyable. And it is simply idiotic generating that much trash each time for a fake-crema coffee.
- employee8000 9y agoI know a couple of people that work at Juicero and unlike 99% of you I've actually tried the juices. To call it a scam is harsh. There are legitimate concerns with supply chain, what foods can be mixed together because of acidity and preservation, etc. I've tried a bunch of the juices, and I didn't like many of them but I could see how people who were into the green juice would find it appealing. The pomegranate was really delicious however but The yield was really low. I don't think that's one you could just squeeze with your hands. I think they should have done a blind taste test to see if the press actually had any value over hand squeezing because some of the ingredients would be harder to squeeze. The price used to be higher for the press, I think it was $700-800 which I thought was ridiculous. I even made the point that they could replace the press with two books and someone standing on it. The wifi connectivity was dumb and you really have to be dumb to think that was useful. The drm and "checking" of the packets was a little more than an excuse to not squeeze anything more than their own packets. But the juice itself is definitely something that is superior if you're into that juice. I heard a ton of celebrities love it, but you can't sustain a business with just celebrities. As with most things like this, I doubt they care as much about the press as the subscription to the juice packets. Personally I think they should embrace this and come up with a line of juice packets that are hand squeezable.
- taurath 9y agoIf they didn't care about the press they'd not be charging $400 for it. There's not much added value here, it's a diced produce distribution system that tries to convince their customers it's a lifestyle thing.
- brian-armstrong 9y agoWhat functional differences are there between a squeezable packet and a bottle? Is there any reason these couldn't just be sold as juice bottles at Whole Foods?
- employee8000 9y agoIt wouldn't taste as good in a preserved bottle vs squeezed right there in front of you.
- quesnel 9y agoThey should have used the effects of artificial scarcity and marketed the pulp squeezer to offices, stores, airports, etc. There are plenty of YouTube vloggers that can stumble upon one of the squeezers at a store or an airport. Then they can sell it to consumers. The best thing about this story is the Juicero's CEO saying that people that squeeze their pulp bags are hackers [1] So when I saw this week’s headlines about hacking and hand-squeezing Produce Packs, I had a one overriding thought: ”We know hacking consumer products is nothing new. [...]” and then people mocking the juice hackers as jackers on Twitter [2]. [1] https://medium.com/@Juicero/a-note-from-juiceros-new-ceo-cb23a1462b03 https://medium.com/@Juicero/a-note-from-juiceros-new-ceo-cb2... [2] https://twitter.com/XEECEEVEVO/status/855152667722526720 https://twitter.com/XEECEEVEVO/status/855152667722526720
- wolf550e 9y agofrom https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-20/juice-machines-and-red-flags https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-20/juice-mac... : Of course Juicero could probably make a nice living selling $8 juice packs without bothering with a fancy machine. But then it wouldn't be a tech company. One investor told Huet and Zaleski that "their venture firm wouldn’t have met with Evans if he were hawking bags of juice that didn’t require high-priced hardware." You can be a hardware company or a software company or a platform company or a cloud company or an internet-of-things company, but you can't be a food company.
- xg15 9y agoI found that bullet boint list of Juicero's supposed added value the most amazing part of it all: * - The first closed loop food safety system that allows us to remotely disable Produce Packs if there is, for example, a spinach recall. [...] - Consistent pressing of our Produce Packs calibrated by flavor to deliver the best combination of taste and nutrition every time. - Connected data so we can manage a very tight supply chain [...]* So according to the CEO(!) the added value for end-users(!) is 1) DRM, 2) bullshit and 3) tracking. My hunch is that this mindset would explain a lot of the more baffling IoT devices out there - but I haven't seen it stated so openly before.
- Chris2048 9y agoNo 2 might be something like; the Press doesn't over-extract juice by pressing with exactly with the right amount of pressure, ala espresso machines. However, I doubt this is actually true - I've not heard of pressed juice over-extraction before.
- Zelmor 9y agoIt was a stupid, consumerist idea of a product. The investors deserve every penny lost on this one. In no way or fashion would this product further humanity. It only generates even more waste. Also, it's staple IoT madness with vendor-lock.