19 ms·

Why Juicero’s Press Is So Expensive

484 points by pccampbell 9y ago

ironchief 9y ago
Out of all the Juicero outrage, this is the best. You can still admire something for all its flaws.
- astrodust 9y ago
  It's like a museum of flaws and lessons about what not to do that will be educational for other companies.
  - ironchief 9y ago
    Absolutely. In a Design for Manufacturing class, this extreme example will be shown on day 1.
maxxxxx 9y ago
I hope they will fail miserably together with Keurig, Blue Apron and anybody else who makes simple food preparation into something that produces piles of trash for no good reason other than costing ten times as much. This is totally the wrong direction.
- MartinCron 9y ago
  Interesting. It's obvious that Blue Apron produces more trash than buying the ingredients the traditional way, but do you think it produces more trash than, say, ordering take-out? I'm not a customer, but I've been thinking of trying it. Honest question.
  - mgberlin 9y ago
    Because when a restaurant buys vinegar, it comes in a gallon jug, if not a five gallon bucket. Hell, it might come in a 55 gallon drum. But then Blue Apron puts it in single 1 oz bottles and ships them all over the country, wasting a huge amount of packaging to supply commodity ingredients.
    - MartinCron 9y ago
      I get the basic concept, but I was thinking of all of the waste in the-take out packaging. That said, the idea of getting a single ounce bottle of something any reasonable kitchen should already have (like vinegar) does feel pretty gross.
      - vikascoder 9y ago
        Take out dinner in itself is not a thrash concept. Something like Blue Apron is. A thrash concept producing thrash. You don't have to cook with takeout. You have to cook with Blue Apron, spend extra money on groceries and produce extra thrash when the entirety of it is avoidable. And if you are nearly a good cook and follow the instructions on a prepackaged thing, you surely can go and shop groceries and cook better meals. So this kinda solution is not for the lazy (take-out crowd) and neither for the home chefs.
        pvg 9y ago
        Trash. Thrash is something else.
      - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
        Take-out trash it pretty bad, but I'd imagine that packaging every ingredient individually is even worse. More surface area to cover, if nothing else.
    - cmurf 9y ago
      1 quart of white vinegar = 80 cents for a supermarket brand. If you want organic Sprouts white vinegar it's $1.80. If you need something like rice wine vinegar, ~$2 for 12oz. Anyway, the point is that they must be making a huge mark up even if they charge 50 cents for 1 oz bottles of vinegar. Don't people poach eggs? You need vinegar for that. Boil a pot of water, two capfuls of vinegar, crack 2 eggs into something like a 3/4 cup measure, turn heat off wait for water to stop aggressively boiling, lower the measuring cup of eggs so it partly submerges, tip it to empty the contents (you don't want to drop the eggs in from altitude), lid on the pot, set a timer for 5 or 6 minutes. Play around with the time. It'll take less time if you have a stove with residual heat: glass or coils. It'll take more time if you have gas or induction. If you do it a bunch of times, you can figure out when they're done the way you like them just be jiggling the pot and seeing how the eggs move under water. The fresher the egg the more it will hold together. If it flattens out on the bottom, oh well some eggs do that even with vinegar. You'll get over it. Next start making homemade bread for your eggs. And now you'll be willing to pay $6 for really good eggs from chickens that eat insects. OK I'm carried away now...
  - dmerrick 9y ago
    I'm trying out Blue Apron right now. As far as packaging: * 1 big box * 1 "bubblewrap" cooler bag * 2 huge ice packs * Misc. plastic bags for produce * 3 small paper bags for "extras" The box and the refrigeration setup are definitely wasteful (even ignoring the environmental cost of shipping it), but the packaging on the produce is pretty minimal.
  - nameless912 9y ago
    How about instead of ordering takeout or blue apron, you go to the store and buy groceries? It literally takes less than 2 hours a week from planning meals to getting home.
    - burntwater 9y ago
      Plus 4-7 hours of cooking and cleaning. Suddenly you just spent an entire work day on dinner.
      - nameless912 9y ago
        You do that with blue apron as well....? I dunno, cooking is an inherently relaxing experience for me and many others. I don't think Blue Apron is a better solution if you're making the "counting hours" argument, as for much less money I could do marginally more work and spend marginally more time. That's a win in my opinion.
        apendleton 9y ago
        I haven't used Blue Apron, but they do all the prep, which is often the biggest time suck in cooking something complex. Anyhow, if you find that part relaxing, I think that just means you're not Blue Apron's target customer. That's fine, but insufficient for making claims about whether or not Blue Apron is a good solution in general.
        nilkn 9y ago
        It's really not marginally more work. I think it'd take me at least three hours a week to plan out meals like Blue Apron does and acquire all the ingredients myself. That's a ~42% increase in time spent if you wager 7 hours normally spent on cooking and cleaning. But I also just flat-out don't like going to the grocery store, mainly because the one near me is so busy. It's great if I go at 11PM on a weeknight, but I'm usually too sleepy to do that. It's complete chaos on a Saturday or Sunday (and go too late on a Sunday and the produce section will be emptied out too).
        irvani 9y ago
- bigchewy 9y ago
  bold statement. I'm assuming you mean the potential env. damage, correct? Have you done a thorough analysis on, say, Blue Apron's impact on the environment? for example, do people who use Blue Apron decrease usage of their car to go to restaurants? I'm not convinced it's as black and white as you imply it is
- antoniuschan99 9y ago
  Not sure about blue apron. I use hello fresh. It's sourced locally and there's no waste in food. The box is recycled and the freezer pack they pick it up once I fill up a box full. I do agree that the vinegar and a stuff like that is a waste. I would rather get a large bottle
- nameless912 9y ago
  Seriously though. Blue Apron made me seethe with anger the first time I saw an ad for it. If you can afford Blue Apron, you can afford to buy 3x as much food and have control over your ingredient choice by just going to your goddamn supermarket. Yeah, recipes are great. Yeah, tutorial videos are great. But that's what the internet is supposed to be for. You don't need some hipster wannabe "chef" assembling boxes of ingredients 200 miles away to decide what you're eating tonight, do you? That box will come with 10 little vacuum sealed plastic pouches, a bunch of packing material, instructions you could have found online, and a whole host of other crap you don't need that's just making waste for waste's sake. If you already have access to a kitchen, a decent set of cooking equipment (which you need regardless of whether you go for Blue Apron or not) is only a few hundred bucks, and the "basics" (pasta, rice, potatoes, onions, garlic, spices, veggie oil, olive oil, vinegar, flour, sugar, salt) are maybe 50 bucks more. Then, for less than a months' worth of meals from Blue Apron, you're set to start cooking for life. My fiancee and I spend a grand total of 100 bucks a week, give or take, on groceries. This is in southern California, and usually including a cheap bottle of wine. We could spend even less if we wanted, but we're cooking some gourmet shit at home and constantly have leftovers, while generating 1/2 the trash of any of our neighbors thanks both to reusable containers for everything and composting. You can do SO MUCH better than Blue Apron, both in health and in environmental impact. The same thing applies to Juicero: If I really want to start making fruit juice, I'll buy myself a decent juicer and get fresh, local fruit because it will always be cheaper than whatever they're sending out in their little pouches. I'd rather spend a couple hundred bucks on a quality machine (or better, just make smoothies since they're better for you and use the money I saved not buying a Juicero to buy a Vitamix) than buy into some cult hype bullshit.
  - nilkn 9y ago
    With all due respect, I think you've completely missed the point of something like Blue Apron. It's not about saving money at all. It's for folks who enjoy cooking, but want to completely avoid trips to the grocery store or at least greatly simplify those trips. There's also a fun element of surprise since it not only takes out the grocery store trips but even basic meal planning. That said, the one point I agree with you on is Blue Apron's generation of trash. It's wildly wasteful in that sense because so many of their ingredients are individually wrapped and packaged.
- aetherson 9y ago
  Has anyone actually analyzed things like "household share of total waste," or "food share of household waste," or impact of waste compared to other environmental problems? Generally when people rail against waste, I have a suspicion that it's focusing at a highly visible but ultimately trivial problem. But I don't know where to go to falsify my suspicions.
  - greenshackle2 9y ago
    It's a hard problem and I'd like to know too. When I was doing a MSc in environmental engineering we were careful to let the stakeholders decide what environmental problems are important based on their feelings and not try to prioritize ourselves. Part of it is practical, it's very hard to have stakeholder buy-in on problems they don't care about, but part of it is that I don't think there is consensus on how to do comparisons across problems. You have to make difficult value judgments. (How many kgs of CO2 is one beautiful pristine forest worth? etc.) Some keywords you could look into are multi-criterion decision analysis and ecosystem services. My intuition and back-of-the-envelope estimates say that household waste, recycling, and water use don't matter that much. I'm not too popular with the environmental committee at work because I like to remind them that their annoying, time-consuming eco-friendly intervention of the week matters an order of magnitude less than switching a single meal per week from beef to a veggie alternative. I think the big questions are: how big is your house? what type of energy do you use for heating/AC? how much do you drive/fly? do you eat animal products? For most people the rest is comparatively not super consequential. (With some exceptions of course, there are hobbies that are 100x worse than others. People around here drive snowmobiles with 2-stroke engines, they are much less regulated and produce horrendous pollution compared to cars.)
- burkaman 9y ago
  It seems at least a little debatable that Blue Apron is going the wrong direction, especially when you consider the decrease in food waste: https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/weeknight-dinner-20 https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/weeknight-dinner-20 Obviously it's not ideal, but it should be compared to current behavior, not ideal behavior.
  - paulcole 9y ago
    > the decrease in food waste Can we tell how much food waste Blue Apron is saving? I remember reading that they're extremely picky about what they're willing to ship out and end up wasting quite a bit to send out "perfect" ingredients.
    - burkaman 9y ago
      Yeah I don't have any numbers, I'm just saying there's more to it than meets the eye. It looks wasteful, but that's because the waste happens to be very visible and tangible. Grocery stores and restaurants can be wasteful in less obvious ways.
  - infinite8s 9y ago
    Although food waste in a landfill is probably better than non-decomposable waste (all of Blue Aprons individual packaging) in a landfill.
    - burkaman 9y ago
      Technically all of their packaging is recyclable, although I realize lots of people don't bother. You can also just mail the box back to them for free and let them deal with it.
- wtvanhest 9y ago
  For a good substitute at a much lower price with no ridiculous trash, you should checkout https://www.platejoy.com/ https://www.platejoy.com/. We started using them a month or so ago and its been pretty good. Disclaimer: My Fiance works with the husband of someone who works there. (Not sure if that is a real conflict of interest or not)
- tedmiston 9y ago
  Blue Apron is a piece of junk, environmental issues aside. The whole concept of not telling someone they can only make a certain subset of meal combinations and not any 3 meals, only after they've taken your credit card is such a dark pattern. I refuse to give them business after that. I filed a complaint about this and they ignored it.
- canes123456 9y ago
  I don't get people's irrational hate for just the trash they personally throw away. Most of your environmental footprint is based on being in a rich country, driving a car, flying on a plane and consuming food period. The amount of paper and plastic you throw away into your trash can is a rounding error. The fact that people complain about too many napkins and for take out food and how to recycle it is silly to me.
  - Neliquat 9y ago
    It is one of the few tangible things we do envirnmentally. Its all about intent and feelings. Honestly I would be happy if people would just make it to a trash can instead of the roadside or ocean. Imho even recycling is mostly useless. The return, both environmental and economic, on everything but metal recycling is abysmal. Most plastic and paper processes are lucky to break even, with a few exceptions (hdpe comes to mind).
    - kw71 9y ago
      I didn't know that plastic like PE is worth money (my local garbage service manages to sell it) but cardboard has been worth as much as steel for a long time now.
    - canes123456 9y ago
      Both things you mention are interrelated. People want to feel like they are doing something tangible and we waste time and money on recycling even when it doesn't work. Stop recycling and calling blue apron to complain about waste. Instead spend that time calling your congress person to start a carbon tax or to stop farm subsidies. Doing something that feels like it helps is worse than doing nothing. At least when you do nothing, you know it.
      - freeflight 9y ago
        >Stop recycling and calling blue apron to complain about waste. Instead spend that time calling your congress person to start a carbon tax or to stop farm subsidies. Sorry, but I can't really agree with that line of thinking because it's basically throwing any and all personal responsibility out of the window. While pushing for better/smarter regulation is an important part of the whole process, it's only one part of the whole process that involves many different parts. On an individual basis recycling might only add up to a rounding error but the same could be said about many improvements in energy efficiency, the point here being that many of these rounding errors add up to a bigger actual impact. If everybody thinks recycling is a waste of time and they should instead just lobby for carbon tax, then barely anybody will be more conscious about their waste production and how to prevent more needless waste from being produced, which is just as much of an actual issue (if not even more) as farm subsidies or carbon production. It's estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastics swimming in the ocean than actual fish, we are on a steady course of turning this planet into a massive garbage dump.
- pfooti 9y ago
  So, I get sun basket delivery. It's like blue apron, more-or-less. more attention paid to reusable / recyclable / compostable packaging (everything is recyclable officially, although you may find that plastic film isn't accepted in many recycling bins), and everything is organic (which is something I am prepared to pay a premium for). It's also local to my region (although people can get it delivered across the country, mine doesn't travel far). I love cooking. I cook six meals a week, the seventh is take-out or off the grid or something. Three of those six meals I cook a week are sunbasket, and those are weeknight meals where I don't have to go to the store ahead of time. I don't stress the meal plans, which means I can actually cook dinner and eat at a sane hour (say, 7pm) without having to leave work early or stress about starting cooking as soon as I'm able. I also regularly alter recipes I get, as part of the "I love cooking" bit - I add ingredients, rearrange stuff, change out the process to make it easier / simpler / better. I'm able to express myself, cooking-wise, even though the recipe is mostly fixed. Price-wise, I end up spending about $10 per person per meal. That's around 140% of my average per person per meal cost when I just shop on my own (although there's an externality here: i get more actual meals when I shop for myself, because I usually cook for at least one lunch worth of leftovers when I shop, so up the price a bit more). Personally? I'd be happy with a box of food where things weren't pre-measured and stuff (every N weeks they send you a new bottle of coconut vinegar or whatever), cutting down on the single-serving bags that hold a single clove of garlic or whatever. I'd also be happy with someone just shopping on my behalf, but these boxes are a real bargain compared to instacart prices, so there's that.
freehunter 9y ago
I'm not a mechanical engineer, but it seems like a roller would be able to provide a more efficient and focused method of squeezing than a press they're using now. What we see in most products is a result of the accountants saying "no" to too much. Cheap parts, assembled cheaply, pennies saved per part. What we see here is the exact opposite: the accountants didn't say "no" nearly often enough. Apple manufactures custom everything because they can, and because they sell at massive scales. Juicero wanted to be Apple quality without selling at Apple quantity. I fully believe you get a better cup of juice squeezing with their massive press rather than by hand because it can press over a bigger surface. I also believe it doesn't matter a bit, because this is a worthless piece of equipment. Beautiful engineering, though.
- jasonlaramburu 9y ago
  You would still likely need a large motor and drive even with a roller-type design. Gravity will cause the solids to settle at the bottom of the juice bag. The roller would presumably need to contend with this.
- pyrophane 9y ago
  It would also be trivially easy to construct something that squeezes the juice packets between, say, two wooden cutting boards, that would apply uniform pressure over a large surface area in the same way that the juicero does. Then, what do you have left? A bunch of features that I doubt people really care about, such as automatic disabling of packs (seriously, just send me an email) and reorder reminders?
  - astrodust 9y ago
    A $8 tortilla press can do the job as well or better than this over-engineered piece of junk. A $15 pasta roller can probably come pretty close.
    - jasonlaramburu 9y ago
      I don't think a roller would work. The solids in the bag would settle to one side of the bag and form a clump. You would either need a ton of torque to drive the roller and smash the clump or a slip-roller.
cJ0th 9y ago
After reading about the details in this wonderful article I am starting to believe they intended from the beginning to create a piece of postmodern art.
droithomme 9y ago
The so-called hack is that if you squeeze the bag you get 7.5 oz of juice compared to 8.0 oz from the machine. This clearly means to anyone with technical insight that what is inside the bag is not really sealed raw vegetables in a plastic bag able to handle 10,000 lbs/sq in of pressure, but is some sort of processed vegetable juice that has been artificially processed and embedded within some sort of substrate meant to appear solid-ish. An actual vegetable press that uses immense pressure does indeed produce a particular special kind of "pressed" raw juice extract that retains the vitamins and flavor. However this machine clearly does not do that and is therefore misrepresenting itself. The evidence that proves it is that people can squeeze whatever is inside it out. If the inventors and investors of this technology wish to claim otherwise I am more than willing to engage in a personal challenge where we get together and look inside the bag and find out if it is really unprocessed raw vegetables or not. Disagree? Buy a carrot. Squeeze it as hard as you can. Film the result and upload it to youtube. Do the same for a beet, for lettuce, and for celery. Post the link. Demonstrate that pressed vegetable juice from raw unprocessed vegetable is possible with simple force from the human hand, unleveraged.
- Applejinx 9y ago
  That's interesting. So basically, bag or not, you probably can't crush carrots to paste (and spinach leaves, etc) with your bare hands, yet Juicero claims to have things of that nature inside the bag? I think it's time you took some scissors or an Xacto knife, whatever's required, and cut open the bag to see what's in there. I know I'd be very interested in that result.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    They show you exactly what's in the bag in their official video: http://gizmodo.com/juicero-ceo-begs-you-do-not-open-our-juice-bags-1794507811 http://gizmodo.com/juicero-ceo-begs-you-do-not-open-our-juic... This is part of their disposal process. You're supposed to cut the bag and empty it into your green bin, etc.
- fooey 9y ago
  The bags contain something like a shredded pulp. Basically it's as close to being "juice" as you can get without having to call it "juice"
scandox 9y ago
This could become a collectible piece of hardware. A sort of beautiful tech historical folly. Might be worth the actual price over a 50 to 60 year timeline.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > This could become a collectible piece of hardware. A sort of beautiful tech historical folly. Might be worth the actual price over a 50 to 60 year timeline. Remember CueCat? (Actually I was a young kid back then, but I'd really like to have one. I like cats.)
  - scandox 9y ago
    No but that is cool looking. My former business partner had a tangentially related idea. He wanted a mouse that copy-pasted across different computers.
    - shliachtx 9y ago
      Have this https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/project-details.aspx?project=mouse-without-borders https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/project-details.aspx?...
  - dboreham 9y ago
    Still have mine on the shelf in the office.
  - gwern 9y ago
    A discouraging idea - checking eBay, brandnew Cuecats are like $10. I think that's well below their original selling price, even after all these years of inflation.
    - Arizhel 9y ago
      Actually, no, that's infinitely higher than their original selling price, literally. They were given away for free at Radio Shack. I used to have one; I spent a few minutes playing with it, then stashed it away thinking I'd eventually find something useful to do with it, but never did. I eventually gave it to Goodwill or something.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
Wow, that is amazing. I've seen less engineered products never make it to production. I would quibble about the custom power supply though, they are not as difficult as they were in the past. Much of the 'magic' of building good SMPS supplies has been encapsulated into very clever chips and certification bodies have seen enough of them now that the checklists are pretty straight forward. I don't get the outrage though.
- djrogers 9y ago
  > I don't get the outrage though. I'm. It sure it's outrage (for most) so much as a massive internet-wide SMH after Bloomberg reported that the $700 machine (now dropped in price) does nothing your bare hands can't do: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-valley-s-400-juicer-may-be-feeling-the-squeeze https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-v...
- astrodust 9y ago
  If it actually made juice then it would be an interesting product. Instead it squeezes packages with pulp and juice to force the juice out. That's not a juicer. That's an inefficient, over-engineered sieve.
- fudged71 9y ago
  They went mass market is the problem. If this were for seniors it would have been totally acceptable.
Nition 9y ago
Wow, this is an amazing teardown of the machine. Re the "apply force to the whole thing equally at once" problem mentioned at the end, I wonder if you could do something more like a roller on one side and a plate or another roller on the other, that rolls down from the top of the pack to the bottom. Also, as overwrought and unnecessary as the Juicero product is, I can't agree with the "it's useless because you can do it by hand" argument. I could probably hand wash my clothes as well as the washing machine does in the same amount of time, but it's hardly useless. While the Juicero is pressing your juice you can be making your lunch or something. Who knows why the CEO's response skipped straight past "having the machine do it saves you time" to "it can automatically lock you out if your pack expired."
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  The washing machine trades money for time, but the Bloomberg video showed that squeezing the juice pack is actually faster than using the machine.
  - Nition 9y ago
    It was 1.5 minutes by hand vs. 2 minutes for the Juicero. But I'm not sure if you get my point. Even if I could hand wash my washing in 30 minutes and the washing machine took 45, I'd still use the washing machine because I don't have to be there washing it. I'm assuming of course that you don't have to stand at your Juicero and babysit it while it squeezes your juice.
    - imsofuture 9y ago
      But you could also pour juice out of a bottle, which is effectively free, and takes approximately 0 minutes. I don't care about a more efficient bag squeezing method, that there's a bag at all is a bizarre and useless distinction.
      - Nition 9y ago
        Well yeah, I'm only talking about the benefit for people who actually want what Juicero offers. I'm not sure if those people actually exist.
dsmithatx 9y ago
I bought a $300 juice 15 years ago and it's a simple design and can juice anything. It's basically a giant motor with a plastic assembly attached to the front to hold the food. If you are serious about juicing you can find cheaper products that don't require packets. This is a convenience item for people with a lot of money. There is no way this company will be worth $120MM unless they design a low cost model.
- inimino 9y ago
  Sounds like the design of the Champion juicer, those things were great. Lasted forever.
guelo 9y ago
Part of the problem is that the cold-pressed juice fad is not really rational to begin with. Somehow customers are convinced that the method of juice extraction is extremely important to the juice's health benefits, to the point that it's worth spending 3x comparable juices. It's great marketing on the verge of fraud. In order to capitalize on the fad the startup probably thought they needed a really fancy, distinctive press since the press has become of mythical importance in the customers' mind. And since cold-pressed customers have already proven to be cost insensitive they figured price is no object, so let engineering go wild!
- nestlequ1k 9y ago
  To me, cold pressed orange juice I buy tastes 3X better than any other orange juice I've tried at the store. To me, that's worth 3X more. Some people value taste more than others, to each his own.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Have you done a double-blind test with some top-brand non-frozen orange juices?
  - deegles 9y ago
    It tastes better, but is juice (of any kind) actually good for you? I'm not convinced.
    - asciimo 9y ago
      Here's your article, good sir. "As Juicero gets publicly shamed, let us not forget that juice itself is a lie" https://qz.com/965505/juicero-turns-out-to-be-pointless-so-is-juice-itself/ https://qz.com/965505/juicero-turns-out-to-be-pointless-so-i...
      - senorjazz 9y ago
        The article does not say it is a lie. the article says some over exaggerate the benefits. It says the actual fruit is better. But also says juice (reasonable amounts) is good for you.
huangc10 9y ago
> the massive force required to press the packs across the entire surface at once. The machine must apply equal pressure to ~64 square inches of surface area at once, meaning the drivetrain must be able to apply thousands of pounds of force to squish all that produce. What if the package was a cube (16 square inches for ex. with 4 inch height) This would roughly fit in the average human palm. Wouldn't we be able to easily more or less apply equal pressure on the packaging? Just a thought. I would consider buying these cube packs.
cateye 9y ago
Yes, definitely over-engineered and needlessly expensive for it's purpose. But at the same time, it feels like they have achieved such a great quality that the learning and experience to design and execute could be very valuable as an unintended consequence. So, maybe quality always wins in the long run nevertheless. Wouldn't you hire these guys and pay a premium, if you wanted to manufacture great hardware?
- jansho 9y ago
  > Wouldn't you hire these guys and pay a premium, if you wanted to manufacture great hardware? Well, according to another source* one investor said that he expected the machine to be a lot smaller and that it would mush large chunks of fruit and veg. When the startup demoed at early stage, there wasn't even a working prototype - which is fine but I think it's fair to say that there was a bit of misleading. Only way to justify how it managed to raise $120 million... *https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-valley-s-400-juicer-may-be-feeling-the-squeeze https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-v...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mohn 9y ago
This was great reading, I really enjoy this style of content: someone with expertise tearing down electrical and mechanical equipment and commenting on which parts are well done or poorly done. I'll definitely be on the lookout for other write ups from Ben Einstein. To anyone wanting more content like this, I also recommend the "Bored of Lame Tool Reviews?" (BOLTR) series of videos from YouTuber AvE: https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil
- tacostakohashi 9y ago
  You might like the EEVblog teardown videos. There is indeed something strangely compelling about a knowledgeable person providing an unbiased running commentary on somebody else's work.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    Also, if you enjoy teardowns of cheap Chinese crap, big Clive's got your back: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA What I've learned watching his channel: Don't skimp on your USB chargers, get Anker or IKEA ones (seriously, the IKEA charger was amazingly well-designed).
    - mohn 9y ago
      Absolutely! I think my introduction to Big Clive's channel was a review of one of those electrode heater deathtraps for rapidly boiling water. I need to check out more of his stuff.
  - blackguardx 9y ago
    As an electrical engineer, I find EEVblog to be pretty salty. He complains (like huge rants) about pretty minor things. I prefer MikesElectricStuff. His criticisms are usually more valid and he is sure to praise ingenuity when he sees it.
    - 9y ago
godmodus 9y ago
Beauriful but over engineered for its niche and utterly useless. 700bucks for abag squeezer? Something went terribly wrong. It feels like they aimed to produce some advanced robotics and built the wrong product. Could turn this into a limb for amputees, makes more sense and actually good use of the resources.
- Mendenhall 9y ago
  I was not familiar with the product and after reading article I question if I am understanding this right. This press is only for their custom bag of pulp ?
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    Correct. You can't use anything else with it. There's a QR code scanner where the bag sits, meaning the press won't even operate unless there's a bag with a recognized (and validated via internet connection) serial number.
    - noam87 9y ago
      This company has to be a front for something; there has to be more to this story... I refuse to believe this is real. $120 million raised!
      - CamperBob2 9y ago
        Only thing I can think of is that they've been granted some extremely broad patents on the general idea of IoT-based food processing.
      - netsharc 9y ago
        Some kid came up with an idea, his bro econ student joined in and drafted a sales pitch, the investment glut means there's too many people with too much money just sitting around in their bank accounts and they thought they could invest in this, because it "surely" will make money since it has analytics (big data) and IoT, and there you have it.
gyrgtyn 9y ago
Looks like they are getting a bunch of free press.
- johansch 9y ago
  I lol'ed.
carsongross 9y ago
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations" --Orson Welles
- nemo1618 9y ago
  "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit... the arbitrariness of the constraint only serves to obtain precision of execution." - Igor Stravinsky
archagon 9y ago
Incredible. Does this make Juicero the first mass-market example of chindōgu? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chindōgu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chindōgu
- testtesttest3 9y ago
  No, that would be the selfie stick http://imgur.com/gallery/WJsAZ http://imgur.com/gallery/WJsAZ
  - Neliquat 9y ago
    Selfie sticks work wonderfully... for pointing out distracted and self-absorbed people to the rest of us. And taking shaky selfies too!
toddmorey 9y ago
They could have (and seems should have) created an elegant manual press, maybe with a crank mechanism of some kind. Would have arguably taken about the same amount of counter space and I still think that something beautiful yet manual would have played with the demo. Think pour over coffee crowd... a bit of easy manual work makes you feel like an artisan. Still would have packet subscription, still would have app potential for expiry notices and subscription management.
- idlewords 9y ago
  They did use an elegant crank mechanism, but it was in the funding model.
- CameronBanga 9y ago
  But can you add DRM to your juicer if you use a manual crank!
Animats 9y ago
That's a cute piece of mechanism. I can see how they got into that overdesign. There must have been insistence that the pack must be crushed between two flat plates. Once you insist on that, it gets complicated. I once got a chance to look closely at the mechanism of SF's JCDecaux overpriced automatic street toilets in SF. Those cost about $150K each. The mechanism is all Telemecanique industrial control components. If you built a washing machine that way, which you could, it would cost $5000-$10000. Compare the Portland Loo.[1] [1] http://theloo.biz/ http://theloo.biz/
- arbuge 9y ago
  "There must have been insistence that the pack must be crushed between two flat plates." Either it was intentional, or somebody didn't realize that you could do things much cheaper by pinching between rollers and applying a more limited force over a longer time. I would think the result is pretty much the same.
  - Arizhel 9y ago
    Rollers I don't think work right if you're squeezing intact, whole vegetables. But of course, these Juicero packets don't have intact, whole vegetables in them at all (proven by the ability for people to squeeze them out by hand).
    - ascorbic 9y ago
      I imagine what happened is that they designed it with flat plates so that it could press whole vegetables. However this didn't work, because as you need to mill anything except soft fruit before they are pressed. They changed the composition of the produce packs so that it did work. However by doing this they'd made the packs so easy to press that a roller (or your bare hands) were sufficient. By this point they'd already designed this beautiful over-engineered solution with flat plates, so probably didn't even try using rollers at that point.
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      I think rollers would work. Common sugarcane juice machines easily crush a thick, hard (almost like wood) cane into dry paper-like sheets. They can easily crush vegetables, unless you try to put a whole pumpkin into it.
gcb0 9y ago
I hate to point to conspiracy theories but the only reason someone might invest in this company is if they are investing money not in the product (because it is obviously a flop) but to gauge if consumers will eventually be dumb enough to allow abuse from appliances just like they allow from internet and mobile phone companies.
pfooti 9y ago
Given the breakdown, it seems like the juicero press could do a lot more than just pressing bags full of pre-chopped stuff. Do you think they engineered it to do more, but then ended up being unable to actually make premade bags that contained big enough chunks of fruit / veg to work?
phonon 9y ago
Sounds like they needed the inventor of the AeroPress to be involved.
maverick_iceman 9y ago
What a Rube Goldberg contraption.
issa 9y ago
I'm a little bit shocked by everyone's reaction to this. It is nothing new for people to spend more money than required to accomplish a task. First class plane tickets. Luxury cars. Mansions. Expensive restaurants. And a million other things.
- stupidhn 9y ago
  >I'm a little bit shocked by everyone's reaction to this. It is nothing new for people to spend more money than required to accomplish a task. First class plane tickets. Luxury cars. Mansions. Expensive restaurants. Yes, people buy those things. Will people buy this thing? Probably not. And they took a whack of VC to build it.
- Steko 9y ago
  > to accomplish a task People are outraged because it doesn't actually accomplish any task. A number of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ comments seem to miss that this doesn't actually make juice. You're paying for them to hide 8 oz of juice in $8 packets and then again to extract the juice with this contraption (assuming your internet is working). I suppose there's some entertainment value in "juice press theatre" but you could say the same thing about a gadget that lights your money on fire.
- piaste 9y ago
  A first class plane ticket is better than an economy class one. A luxury car is better than a cheap car. Those upgrades might cost too much for their value, but they are valuable. The Juicero is roundly mocked because, despite the cost, it is worse than a regular juicer in a whole lot of ways, and only better in a very few ones. To use your examples, it's mocked much in the same way an expensive restaurant is mocked when it offers crappy food under a veneer of pointless luxury.
2muchcoffeeman 9y ago
From a hardware perspective is this well designed? Forgot what you think of the product and whether it's excessive. I mean with that handy USB connector to flash the firmware, a $400 appliance that does one thing well is not that bad if you can do that one thing on whatever you want.
Taniwha 9y ago
A Note From the New CEO of Lobstero https://www.somethingawful.com/news/juicero-lobster-pouch/ https://www.somethingawful.com/news/juicero-lobster-pouch/
PaulHoule 9y ago
$400 for a juice machine is not crazy; if you spend that much on an ordinary juicer you can make gallons of carrot juice for a very low price. (It saves money, it doesn't cost money) You do have to clean up a mess, but if your time is that valuable you can hire a maid to do it for about that $5-$8 price point of the packs.
xg15 9y ago
(Half-)joking, but the irony is, with so many interest and high-quality parts, the press looks like it could be a desired object for makers. In particular, it contains: - two motors, one of them exceptionally strong - a durable drive train - a control board with flash memory, wifi, a camera and a USB plug for flashing without additional tools(!) - a durable aluminum frame Those parts look like they could be building blocks for some interesting hobby projects. Did they ever think about selling to makers?
- Neliquat 9y ago
  Except a maker could just source the parts alone cheaper, unless they bought it used, and then there goes the incentive to the mfg.
TD-Linux 9y ago
The two strangest parts of this are probably the door locking mechanism and the DC motor supply. The door locking was pretty well explained, but I was really surprised at the DC motor. From previous pictures I had assumed it was a 170VDC motor (using just a rectifier + filters for noise) but according to this it's actually a 330V active power correction boost converter. I guess that gets you 100-240V range support, but it seems horribly expensive for driving a motor. Even 170VDC permanent magnet motors are pretty uncommon - they fill an awkward middle ground where the motor is too big to reasonably use a low voltage DC one (due to power supply costs), but too small to use a universal AC motor directly off line power. The only tools AvE has reviewed of this design are the Kitchenaid mixer and Drill Doctor, for reference. Also, I don't believe "330V 15A" for a second. Maybe 2A...
- Neliquat 9y ago
  > 330v 15a Just do the math. You get about 13a tops on a 115v plug before any household circuit will trip. That is over twice that. Same with those '5hp' power tools.
  - tgtweak 9y ago
    1.5a 330v would make more sense (or in this application, less nonsense).
  - wiredfool 9y ago
    6 and a half horsepower.
- blackguardx 9y ago
  I think a series-wound motor would be cheaper than a custom high voltage DC motor. I'm not sure about the power output tradeoffs, though.
- kjdndisneinj 9y ago
  The 330V is for sure a misprint. It doesn't look like they have the insulation for a high voltage motor, so my guess would be 30/33V @15A. Reading the linked spec sheet confirms it's in the range. That would put it much closer to a cordless drill motor. (450W, not 5kW, which is obviously impossible on 120VAC/15A)
Neliquat 9y ago
Useless precision. The anathama of profit. I love some engeneering porn, but that is when form follows function, that is dubious here.
Steeeve 9y ago
I think there's a big gap between the target market for this device and the average consumer. A commercial cold press countertop juicer is usually a few thousand dollars. A consumer model is ~$3-400. Cold press juicers are supposed to retain nutrients a bit more, and produce more flavorful juice. (who knows if that is true) The Juicero is the pro-sumer k-cup version of a juicer. It's not aimed at people who are price conscious at all. Price conscious people could get something close-enough for sub $30. My guess is that the $700 juicer was designed to get a high-end reputation, with lower-end follow on products once they established the brand. At this point, they are ruined. It's collective common sense that this is a bad deal and the value of the brand is diminished dramatically. Their engineering decisions are questionable. If you are going for a high-end high quality unique product that will push people to spend double what the competitive product provides, it should be more appealing to look at. It's like they tried as hard as they could to make a cube-shaped plastic lined product as expensive as possible to manufacture. I'm all for sturdy commercial quality components, but not in something that looks like it was manufactured by nintendo. The Bloomberg article was in poor form. At least let a company get out of the gate and establish itself before tearing them apart. But that's the danger involved with investing big money in companies based on a business plan and not vetting that they are good decision makers. This all could have been avoided if their PR people were on top of things. You'd think they'd have top notch PR people in place for this market segment... another bad decision.
- CameronBanga 9y ago
  Poor form? You could squeeze the bag and get almost an identical amount of juice. They should provide some sort of actual value to their customer. Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form? Should Unroll.me get some runway to test this revenue model before the NYT includes them in a story? Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed or fail on the market. But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't some "fake news" drive for clicks. It's an actual issue, which Juicero was apparently shocked by, and they should have to defend themselves.
  - 9y ago
snackai 9y ago
Guys, cancer. It's still out there. Donate for research instead of wasting 400 Bucks on a fu*king juice press. No one can justify this useless piece of crap.
bane 9y ago
I wonder if the upcoming season of Silicon Valley will feature a startup called "Juicaneros" which features a technology that tests blood collected by pricking a single finger, and then squeezing all of the blood out of an arm through the new pricked hole by putting the arm into a 4-ton press.
lwander 9y ago
Oh this is interesting: > The two primary exterior plastic parts are huge, detailed injection molded parts with multiple slides and actions, large changes in wall thickness (which makes it very hard to mold without imperfections) Does anyone know why large changes in wall thickness makes molding these parts more difficult?
- eweinhoffer 9y ago
  Molding parts with uniform thickness is tricky enough - without great tooling design and the perfect temperature/pressure settings, you'll get hot spots, flow lines and all sorts of visual defects in your part. Varying thicknesses make achieving these "Apple-like" levels of perfection in the plastics even more difficult, thanks to the fact that the material will cool and change shape at different rates.
  - lwander 9y ago
    Oh that's fascinating - thanks!
3xnis 9y ago
I thought this was silly until I read this point [1]: >No prep. No mess. No clean up. That's brilliant because people don't like cleaning. Cleaning regular juicers is annoying to the point that only few people use them regularly. There are enough people with money to spare that this can become a success. I haven't seen it mentioned, so let me spell it out: This is Nespresso for fruits. [1]: https://www.juicero.com/how-it-works/ https://www.juicero.com/how-it-works/
- hammock 9y ago
  You can buy juice at whole foods....
  - henrikschroder 9y ago
    Exactly, if you want really fresh squeezed juice, there are plenty of options with about the same shelf life as these juice packs. There's zero value-add in this product compared to stocking up on a week's worth of fresh-squeezed juice. In fact, the nanny-scans of the QR-codes that make the machine occasionally go "NO" is of negative value to the consumer. Imagine buying a bottle of fresh juice, and on the third day you can't open the bottle any longer because it's past the expiry date. And imagine paying $400 for the "privilege" of this. Complete WTF.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
IAmGraydon 9y ago
I think the machine is fine and I don't feel like $400 is very much for a well built appliance. What kills me about this thing is the fact that they take so many steps to lock you in to their juice packs, which are priced so high that a regular user will have spent more on juice in the first month than the entire machine. Couple that with requiring a nanny QR scan to make sure you can't press "expired" packs as if we are unable to simply read an expiration date and it gets ridiculous. By the way, has anyone mentioned that the expiration on the packs is 8 days after the date of manufacture? Subtract shipping time and you literally have 4 days to use your packs before you shiny new machine says "gotta buy more!" What if I'm ok with a 9 day old pack? Too bad. I think that's what will kill the Juicero. It makes customers feel like they're being hustled.
- ghaff 9y ago
  The $400 is fine. I got a factory refurb model but Vitamixes are in that sort of range. However Vitamixes can just use random fruit and vegetables including prepared versions from the produce department and freezer section of the grocery store. I agree that it's the $400 + juice packs + nanny scans. Making smoothies isn't a big deal. And if you're willing to trade off a few $$ for a little prep effort savings there are tons of options--including ingredient subscription services.
mianos 9y ago
Using all those CNC milled parts is simply crazy. CNC is for prototypes, small runs, super specialised load characteristics or runs of parts that are practically impossible to make otherwise. This use does not tick any of those boxes.
- TD-Linux 9y ago
  I especially love the pusher. Lots of milled out pockets to save weight. They need to save weight because... ?
- astronautjones 9y ago
  the whole thing is crazy. this is a slap in the face of anyone who has taken an engineering course, let alone anyone who was able to grow up with common sense
dreamcompiler 9y ago
I blame modern VCs for this. VCs love continuing revenue streams and monopoly suppliers, and this crazy thing had both of those in spades. The funders must have been salivating so much about those factors that they never questioned how stupid the device ultimately was. There has to eventually come a tipping point where consumers just get sick of devices that require constant rent payments in order to continue functioning, with no choice in suppliers. Not to mention ridiculous amounts of packaging waste.
- lucio 9y ago
  Nespresso seems to be doing well. I bet they sold it as "Nespresso for juice".
  - coredog64 9y ago
    What if they went one step further and hired part time drivers to deliver the juice packs: Uber for Nespresso for juice.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
jacquesm 9y ago
I don't think Juicero cares one way or another about your ability to side-step their juicer, as long as you buy the packs because that is where the money is. They'd probably give you the juicer for free if you signed up for a 3 years worth supply of juice packs.
PascLeRasc 9y ago
I think this is a good example of why the Keurig method of hardware sales[1] works so well. People would be okay with buying marked-up juice pouches because that's the real product. The juicer is just a means to an end. [1] https://blog.bolt.io/keurig-accidentally-created-the-perfect-business-model-for-hardware-startups-18e9c3b4e796 https://blog.bolt.io/keurig-accidentally-created-the-perfect...
justinzollars 9y ago
Misallocated Capital. Maybe I'm bitter because my startup wasn't funded, but I feel like we can and must do better than this.
kazinator 9y ago
This reminds me of the King's Toaster, an ancient allegory about overengineering a food appliance: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html
lips 9y ago
I bet this was really fun to work on.
phoenixProgram 9y ago
the people who decided to take calories off the market, increase their price, and sell them back to consumers are effectively driving up the cost of calories. if you let rich people create a calorie cartel, they will. let me repeat that: if you let them, rich people will literally create a calorie cartel and starve you to death. let me repeat that: rich people are willing to FORCE you to live in fear and trade their dead trees with ink blots for calories that you NEED TO LIVE. they will go all the way to genocide. look at the great famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) rich people went all the way to genocide. people who had all the wealth of the world demanded starvation and death from the most miserable people on planet earth. we are talking about evil people who are using starvation as a siege weapons against innocent civilians. this is literally french revolution level evil. this is the kind of evil decent human beings purge from the earth because they are sick of seeing utter filth. people are sick of seeing this filth.
daemin 9y ago
I have to say I do find it disheartening that everything is aiming for a subscription model. Software, food, etc. I know that it is a very profitable business model but it does make me wonder if I really want to live in a world where everything is by subscription. These subscription models, or even machines that require only a certain type of consumable, are effectively leases. Sure you may buy a piece of hardware, but it is only useful for as long as you buy and use the required consumable. I am comfortable in renting a place to live - especially since I have moved about every 2-3 years in recent memory - and I am comfortable paying a subscription fee for some software and services. But I am not that comfortable when I have to subscribe to food or clothing for example.
- rodionos 9y ago
  Food is already a 'subscription'. We sign up with protein, fat, and carb service providers (e.g. chicken, if I may) and we pay for their services on a daily basis. Sometimes we kill the underperforming providers and eat them too.
- exergy 9y ago
  Completely agree with you. What I particularly despise is the absurd lack of discussion on the amount of packaging waste. Why doesn't that make these piece of shit things non-starters? Excuse the vitriol, but it absolutely makes my blood boil, the fucking Keurigs, these idiot juicers, Blue Apron, and that one company that even delivers a box of clothes each month? WTF?! I buy clothes every two years, and even I could do better. Also, even if they offered to collect the packaging, and recycle/reuse it, it's a needless complication to an issue that shouldn't exist to begin with. Why isn't a low-tech, low-carbon footprint life celebrated more? A french press/moka pot coffee, a mixer to make your juice (because, you know, you take the time to peel the motherfucking fruit beforehand), and cooking your own god damned food on a frying pan.
  - twoquestions 9y ago
    > Why isn't a low-tech, low-carbon footprint life celebrated more? A french press/moka pot coffee, a mixer to make your juice (because, you know, you take the time to peel the motherfucking fruit beforehand), and cooking your own god damned food on a frying pan. Reading your comment was deliciously cathartic, and now I know that moka pots are a thing. If I get a coffee habit again I'll have to look into trying one.
grappler 9y ago
A machine with that level of quality has a lot of appeal for me. Something generally useful like a blender or stand mixer, that might be kept visible on the counter and used often, I could see dropping $400 or even $700 on. But this thing doesn't appear “generally useful” based on what I've seen about this story. It seems to want to lock you into using food from a particular vendor. How much less appealing would my stand mixer have been as a purchase if it were outfitted with a QR reader looking to make sure that the KitchenAid™ cookie dough I was giving it was fresh? That would be a deal breaker.
- _nedR 9y ago
  Also, I am not really sure about the "quality" aspect. All that complexity, all those moving parts, high power components next to low power components - seems a lot could wrong down the road. Ofc they seem to be well built so the components could last a while.
  - grappler 9y ago
    Yeah, I would wait for a judgement from somebody like Wirecutter or Consumer Reports on whether such a product is likely to hold up.

484 points by pccampbell 9y ago

ironchief 9y ago

Out of all the Juicero outrage, this is the best. You can still admire something for all its flaws.

astrodust 9y ago
It's like a museum of flaws and lessons about what not to do that will be educational for other companies.
- ironchief 9y ago
  Absolutely. In a Design for Manufacturing class, this extreme example will be shown on day 1.

maxxxxx 9y ago

I hope they will fail miserably together with Keurig, Blue Apron and anybody else who makes simple food preparation into something that produces piles of trash for no good reason other than costing ten times as much. This is totally the wrong direction.

MartinCron 9y ago
Interesting. It's obvious that Blue Apron produces more trash than buying the ingredients the traditional way, but do you think it produces more trash than, say, ordering take-out? I'm not a customer, but I've been thinking of trying it. Honest question.
- mgberlin 9y ago
  Because when a restaurant buys vinegar, it comes in a gallon jug, if not a five gallon bucket. Hell, it might come in a 55 gallon drum. But then Blue Apron puts it in single 1 oz bottles and ships them all over the country, wasting a huge amount of packaging to supply commodity ingredients.
  - MartinCron 9y ago
    I get the basic concept, but I was thinking of all of the waste in the-take out packaging. That said, the idea of getting a single ounce bottle of something any reasonable kitchen should already have (like vinegar) does feel pretty gross.
    - vikascoder 9y ago
      Take out dinner in itself is not a thrash concept. Something like Blue Apron is. A thrash concept producing thrash. You don't have to cook with takeout. You have to cook with Blue Apron, spend extra money on groceries and produce extra thrash when the entirety of it is avoidable. And if you are nearly a good cook and follow the instructions on a prepackaged thing, you surely can go and shop groceries and cook better meals. So this kinda solution is not for the lazy (take-out crowd) and neither for the home chefs.
      - pvg 9y ago
        Trash. Thrash is something else.
    - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
      Take-out trash it pretty bad, but I'd imagine that packaging every ingredient individually is even worse. More surface area to cover, if nothing else.
  - cmurf 9y ago
    1 quart of white vinegar = 80 cents for a supermarket brand. If you want organic Sprouts white vinegar it's $1.80. If you need something like rice wine vinegar, ~$2 for 12oz. Anyway, the point is that they must be making a huge mark up even if they charge 50 cents for 1 oz bottles of vinegar. Don't people poach eggs? You need vinegar for that. Boil a pot of water, two capfuls of vinegar, crack 2 eggs into something like a 3/4 cup measure, turn heat off wait for water to stop aggressively boiling, lower the measuring cup of eggs so it partly submerges, tip it to empty the contents (you don't want to drop the eggs in from altitude), lid on the pot, set a timer for 5 or 6 minutes. Play around with the time. It'll take less time if you have a stove with residual heat: glass or coils. It'll take more time if you have gas or induction. If you do it a bunch of times, you can figure out when they're done the way you like them just be jiggling the pot and seeing how the eggs move under water. The fresher the egg the more it will hold together. If it flattens out on the bottom, oh well some eggs do that even with vinegar. You'll get over it. Next start making homemade bread for your eggs. And now you'll be willing to pay $6 for really good eggs from chickens that eat insects. OK I'm carried away now...
- dmerrick 9y ago
  I'm trying out Blue Apron right now. As far as packaging: * 1 big box * 1 "bubblewrap" cooler bag * 2 huge ice packs * Misc. plastic bags for produce * 3 small paper bags for "extras" The box and the refrigeration setup are definitely wasteful (even ignoring the environmental cost of shipping it), but the packaging on the produce is pretty minimal.
- nameless912 9y ago
  How about instead of ordering takeout or blue apron, you go to the store and buy groceries? It literally takes less than 2 hours a week from planning meals to getting home.
  - burntwater 9y ago
    Plus 4-7 hours of cooking and cleaning. Suddenly you just spent an entire work day on dinner.
    - nameless912 9y ago
      You do that with blue apron as well....? I dunno, cooking is an inherently relaxing experience for me and many others. I don't think Blue Apron is a better solution if you're making the "counting hours" argument, as for much less money I could do marginally more work and spend marginally more time. That's a win in my opinion.
      - apendleton 9y ago
        I haven't used Blue Apron, but they do all the prep, which is often the biggest time suck in cooking something complex. Anyhow, if you find that part relaxing, I think that just means you're not Blue Apron's target customer. That's fine, but insufficient for making claims about whether or not Blue Apron is a good solution in general.
      - nilkn 9y ago
        It's really not marginally more work. I think it'd take me at least three hours a week to plan out meals like Blue Apron does and acquire all the ingredients myself. That's a ~42% increase in time spent if you wager 7 hours normally spent on cooking and cleaning. But I also just flat-out don't like going to the grocery store, mainly because the one near me is so busy. It's great if I go at 11PM on a weeknight, but I'm usually too sleepy to do that. It's complete chaos on a Saturday or Sunday (and go too late on a Sunday and the produce section will be emptied out too).
      - irvani 9y ago
bigchewy 9y ago
bold statement. I'm assuming you mean the potential env. damage, correct? Have you done a thorough analysis on, say, Blue Apron's impact on the environment? for example, do people who use Blue Apron decrease usage of their car to go to restaurants? I'm not convinced it's as black and white as you imply it is
antoniuschan99 9y ago
Not sure about blue apron. I use hello fresh. It's sourced locally and there's no waste in food. The box is recycled and the freezer pack they pick it up once I fill up a box full. I do agree that the vinegar and a stuff like that is a waste. I would rather get a large bottle
nameless912 9y ago
Seriously though. Blue Apron made me seethe with anger the first time I saw an ad for it. If you can afford Blue Apron, you can afford to buy 3x as much food and have control over your ingredient choice by just going to your goddamn supermarket. Yeah, recipes are great. Yeah, tutorial videos are great. But that's what the internet is supposed to be for. You don't need some hipster wannabe "chef" assembling boxes of ingredients 200 miles away to decide what you're eating tonight, do you? That box will come with 10 little vacuum sealed plastic pouches, a bunch of packing material, instructions you could have found online, and a whole host of other crap you don't need that's just making waste for waste's sake. If you already have access to a kitchen, a decent set of cooking equipment (which you need regardless of whether you go for Blue Apron or not) is only a few hundred bucks, and the "basics" (pasta, rice, potatoes, onions, garlic, spices, veggie oil, olive oil, vinegar, flour, sugar, salt) are maybe 50 bucks more. Then, for less than a months' worth of meals from Blue Apron, you're set to start cooking for life. My fiancee and I spend a grand total of 100 bucks a week, give or take, on groceries. This is in southern California, and usually including a cheap bottle of wine. We could spend even less if we wanted, but we're cooking some gourmet shit at home and constantly have leftovers, while generating 1/2 the trash of any of our neighbors thanks both to reusable containers for everything and composting. You can do SO MUCH better than Blue Apron, both in health and in environmental impact. The same thing applies to Juicero: If I really want to start making fruit juice, I'll buy myself a decent juicer and get fresh, local fruit because it will always be cheaper than whatever they're sending out in their little pouches. I'd rather spend a couple hundred bucks on a quality machine (or better, just make smoothies since they're better for you and use the money I saved not buying a Juicero to buy a Vitamix) than buy into some cult hype bullshit.
- nilkn 9y ago
  With all due respect, I think you've completely missed the point of something like Blue Apron. It's not about saving money at all. It's for folks who enjoy cooking, but want to completely avoid trips to the grocery store or at least greatly simplify those trips. There's also a fun element of surprise since it not only takes out the grocery store trips but even basic meal planning. That said, the one point I agree with you on is Blue Apron's generation of trash. It's wildly wasteful in that sense because so many of their ingredients are individually wrapped and packaged.
aetherson 9y ago
Has anyone actually analyzed things like "household share of total waste," or "food share of household waste," or impact of waste compared to other environmental problems? Generally when people rail against waste, I have a suspicion that it's focusing at a highly visible but ultimately trivial problem. But I don't know where to go to falsify my suspicions.
- greenshackle2 9y ago
  It's a hard problem and I'd like to know too. When I was doing a MSc in environmental engineering we were careful to let the stakeholders decide what environmental problems are important based on their feelings and not try to prioritize ourselves. Part of it is practical, it's very hard to have stakeholder buy-in on problems they don't care about, but part of it is that I don't think there is consensus on how to do comparisons across problems. You have to make difficult value judgments. (How many kgs of CO2 is one beautiful pristine forest worth? etc.) Some keywords you could look into are multi-criterion decision analysis and ecosystem services. My intuition and back-of-the-envelope estimates say that household waste, recycling, and water use don't matter that much. I'm not too popular with the environmental committee at work because I like to remind them that their annoying, time-consuming eco-friendly intervention of the week matters an order of magnitude less than switching a single meal per week from beef to a veggie alternative. I think the big questions are: how big is your house? what type of energy do you use for heating/AC? how much do you drive/fly? do you eat animal products? For most people the rest is comparatively not super consequential. (With some exceptions of course, there are hobbies that are 100x worse than others. People around here drive snowmobiles with 2-stroke engines, they are much less regulated and produce horrendous pollution compared to cars.)
burkaman 9y ago
It seems at least a little debatable that Blue Apron is going the wrong direction, especially when you consider the decrease in food waste: https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/weeknight-dinner-20 https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/weeknight-dinner-20 Obviously it's not ideal, but it should be compared to current behavior, not ideal behavior.
- paulcole 9y ago
  > the decrease in food waste Can we tell how much food waste Blue Apron is saving? I remember reading that they're extremely picky about what they're willing to ship out and end up wasting quite a bit to send out "perfect" ingredients.
  - burkaman 9y ago
    Yeah I don't have any numbers, I'm just saying there's more to it than meets the eye. It looks wasteful, but that's because the waste happens to be very visible and tangible. Grocery stores and restaurants can be wasteful in less obvious ways.
- infinite8s 9y ago
  Although food waste in a landfill is probably better than non-decomposable waste (all of Blue Aprons individual packaging) in a landfill.
  - burkaman 9y ago
    Technically all of their packaging is recyclable, although I realize lots of people don't bother. You can also just mail the box back to them for free and let them deal with it.
wtvanhest 9y ago
For a good substitute at a much lower price with no ridiculous trash, you should checkout https://www.platejoy.com/ https://www.platejoy.com/. We started using them a month or so ago and its been pretty good. Disclaimer: My Fiance works with the husband of someone who works there. (Not sure if that is a real conflict of interest or not)
tedmiston 9y ago
Blue Apron is a piece of junk, environmental issues aside. The whole concept of not telling someone they can only make a certain subset of meal combinations and not any 3 meals, only after they've taken your credit card is such a dark pattern. I refuse to give them business after that. I filed a complaint about this and they ignored it.
canes123456 9y ago
I don't get people's irrational hate for just the trash they personally throw away. Most of your environmental footprint is based on being in a rich country, driving a car, flying on a plane and consuming food period. The amount of paper and plastic you throw away into your trash can is a rounding error. The fact that people complain about too many napkins and for take out food and how to recycle it is silly to me.
- Neliquat 9y ago
  It is one of the few tangible things we do envirnmentally. Its all about intent and feelings. Honestly I would be happy if people would just make it to a trash can instead of the roadside or ocean. Imho even recycling is mostly useless. The return, both environmental and economic, on everything but metal recycling is abysmal. Most plastic and paper processes are lucky to break even, with a few exceptions (hdpe comes to mind).
  - kw71 9y ago
    I didn't know that plastic like PE is worth money (my local garbage service manages to sell it) but cardboard has been worth as much as steel for a long time now.
  - canes123456 9y ago
    Both things you mention are interrelated. People want to feel like they are doing something tangible and we waste time and money on recycling even when it doesn't work. Stop recycling and calling blue apron to complain about waste. Instead spend that time calling your congress person to start a carbon tax or to stop farm subsidies. Doing something that feels like it helps is worse than doing nothing. At least when you do nothing, you know it.
    - freeflight 9y ago
      >Stop recycling and calling blue apron to complain about waste. Instead spend that time calling your congress person to start a carbon tax or to stop farm subsidies. Sorry, but I can't really agree with that line of thinking because it's basically throwing any and all personal responsibility out of the window. While pushing for better/smarter regulation is an important part of the whole process, it's only one part of the whole process that involves many different parts. On an individual basis recycling might only add up to a rounding error but the same could be said about many improvements in energy efficiency, the point here being that many of these rounding errors add up to a bigger actual impact. If everybody thinks recycling is a waste of time and they should instead just lobby for carbon tax, then barely anybody will be more conscious about their waste production and how to prevent more needless waste from being produced, which is just as much of an actual issue (if not even more) as farm subsidies or carbon production. It's estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastics swimming in the ocean than actual fish, we are on a steady course of turning this planet into a massive garbage dump.
pfooti 9y ago
So, I get sun basket delivery. It's like blue apron, more-or-less. more attention paid to reusable / recyclable / compostable packaging (everything is recyclable officially, although you may find that plastic film isn't accepted in many recycling bins), and everything is organic (which is something I am prepared to pay a premium for). It's also local to my region (although people can get it delivered across the country, mine doesn't travel far). I love cooking. I cook six meals a week, the seventh is take-out or off the grid or something. Three of those six meals I cook a week are sunbasket, and those are weeknight meals where I don't have to go to the store ahead of time. I don't stress the meal plans, which means I can actually cook dinner and eat at a sane hour (say, 7pm) without having to leave work early or stress about starting cooking as soon as I'm able. I also regularly alter recipes I get, as part of the "I love cooking" bit - I add ingredients, rearrange stuff, change out the process to make it easier / simpler / better. I'm able to express myself, cooking-wise, even though the recipe is mostly fixed. Price-wise, I end up spending about $10 per person per meal. That's around 140% of my average per person per meal cost when I just shop on my own (although there's an externality here: i get more actual meals when I shop for myself, because I usually cook for at least one lunch worth of leftovers when I shop, so up the price a bit more). Personally? I'd be happy with a box of food where things weren't pre-measured and stuff (every N weeks they send you a new bottle of coconut vinegar or whatever), cutting down on the single-serving bags that hold a single clove of garlic or whatever. I'd also be happy with someone just shopping on my behalf, but these boxes are a real bargain compared to instacart prices, so there's that.

freehunter 9y ago

I'm not a mechanical engineer, but it seems like a roller would be able to provide a more efficient and focused method of squeezing than a press they're using now. What we see in most products is a result of the accountants saying "no" to too much. Cheap parts, assembled cheaply, pennies saved per part. What we see here is the exact opposite: the accountants didn't say "no" nearly often enough. Apple manufactures custom everything because they can, and because they sell at massive scales. Juicero wanted to be Apple quality without selling at Apple quantity. I fully believe you get a better cup of juice squeezing with their massive press rather than by hand because it can press over a bigger surface. I also believe it doesn't matter a bit, because this is a worthless piece of equipment. Beautiful engineering, though.

jasonlaramburu 9y ago
You would still likely need a large motor and drive even with a roller-type design. Gravity will cause the solids to settle at the bottom of the juice bag. The roller would presumably need to contend with this.
pyrophane 9y ago
It would also be trivially easy to construct something that squeezes the juice packets between, say, two wooden cutting boards, that would apply uniform pressure over a large surface area in the same way that the juicero does. Then, what do you have left? A bunch of features that I doubt people really care about, such as automatic disabling of packs (seriously, just send me an email) and reorder reminders?
- astrodust 9y ago
  A $8 tortilla press can do the job as well or better than this over-engineered piece of junk. A $15 pasta roller can probably come pretty close.
  - jasonlaramburu 9y ago
    I don't think a roller would work. The solids in the bag would settle to one side of the bag and form a clump. You would either need a ton of torque to drive the roller and smash the clump or a slip-roller.

cJ0th 9y ago

After reading about the details in this wonderful article I am starting to believe they intended from the beginning to create a piece of postmodern art.

droithomme 9y ago

The so-called hack is that if you squeeze the bag you get 7.5 oz of juice compared to 8.0 oz from the machine. This clearly means to anyone with technical insight that what is inside the bag is not really sealed raw vegetables in a plastic bag able to handle 10,000 lbs/sq in of pressure, but is some sort of processed vegetable juice that has been artificially processed and embedded within some sort of substrate meant to appear solid-ish. An actual vegetable press that uses immense pressure does indeed produce a particular special kind of "pressed" raw juice extract that retains the vitamins and flavor. However this machine clearly does not do that and is therefore misrepresenting itself. The evidence that proves it is that people can squeeze whatever is inside it out. If the inventors and investors of this technology wish to claim otherwise I am more than willing to engage in a personal challenge where we get together and look inside the bag and find out if it is really unprocessed raw vegetables or not. Disagree? Buy a carrot. Squeeze it as hard as you can. Film the result and upload it to youtube. Do the same for a beet, for lettuce, and for celery. Post the link. Demonstrate that pressed vegetable juice from raw unprocessed vegetable is possible with simple force from the human hand, unleveraged.

Applejinx 9y ago
That's interesting. So basically, bag or not, you probably can't crush carrots to paste (and spinach leaves, etc) with your bare hands, yet Juicero claims to have things of that nature inside the bag? I think it's time you took some scissors or an Xacto knife, whatever's required, and cut open the bag to see what's in there. I know I'd be very interested in that result.
- astrodust 9y ago
  They show you exactly what's in the bag in their official video: http://gizmodo.com/juicero-ceo-begs-you-do-not-open-our-juice-bags-1794507811 http://gizmodo.com/juicero-ceo-begs-you-do-not-open-our-juic... This is part of their disposal process. You're supposed to cut the bag and empty it into your green bin, etc.
fooey 9y ago
The bags contain something like a shredded pulp. Basically it's as close to being "juice" as you can get without having to call it "juice"

scandox 9y ago

This could become a collectible piece of hardware. A sort of beautiful tech historical folly. Might be worth the actual price over a 50 to 60 year timeline.

mschuster91 9y ago
> This could become a collectible piece of hardware. A sort of beautiful tech historical folly. Might be worth the actual price over a 50 to 60 year timeline. Remember CueCat? (Actually I was a young kid back then, but I'd really like to have one. I like cats.)
- scandox 9y ago
  No but that is cool looking. My former business partner had a tangentially related idea. He wanted a mouse that copy-pasted across different computers.
  - shliachtx 9y ago
    Have this https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/project-details.aspx?project=mouse-without-borders https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/project-details.aspx?...
- dboreham 9y ago
  Still have mine on the shelf in the office.
- gwern 9y ago
  A discouraging idea - checking eBay, brandnew Cuecats are like $10. I think that's well below their original selling price, even after all these years of inflation.
  - Arizhel 9y ago
    Actually, no, that's infinitely higher than their original selling price, literally. They were given away for free at Radio Shack. I used to have one; I spent a few minutes playing with it, then stashed it away thinking I'd eventually find something useful to do with it, but never did. I eventually gave it to Goodwill or something.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

Wow, that is amazing. I've seen less engineered products never make it to production. I would quibble about the custom power supply though, they are not as difficult as they were in the past. Much of the 'magic' of building good SMPS supplies has been encapsulated into very clever chips and certification bodies have seen enough of them now that the checklists are pretty straight forward. I don't get the outrage though.

djrogers 9y ago
> I don't get the outrage though. I'm. It sure it's outrage (for most) so much as a massive internet-wide SMH after Bloomberg reported that the $700 machine (now dropped in price) does nothing your bare hands can't do: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-valley-s-400-juicer-may-be-feeling-the-squeeze https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-v...
astrodust 9y ago
If it actually made juice then it would be an interesting product. Instead it squeezes packages with pulp and juice to force the juice out. That's not a juicer. That's an inefficient, over-engineered sieve.
fudged71 9y ago
They went mass market is the problem. If this were for seniors it would have been totally acceptable.

Nition 9y ago

Wow, this is an amazing teardown of the machine. Re the "apply force to the whole thing equally at once" problem mentioned at the end, I wonder if you could do something more like a roller on one side and a plate or another roller on the other, that rolls down from the top of the pack to the bottom. Also, as overwrought and unnecessary as the Juicero product is, I can't agree with the "it's useless because you can do it by hand" argument. I could probably hand wash my clothes as well as the washing machine does in the same amount of time, but it's hardly useless. While the Juicero is pressing your juice you can be making your lunch or something. Who knows why the CEO's response skipped straight past "having the machine do it saves you time" to "it can automatically lock you out if your pack expired."

Analemma_ 9y ago
The washing machine trades money for time, but the Bloomberg video showed that squeezing the juice pack is actually faster than using the machine.
- Nition 9y ago
  It was 1.5 minutes by hand vs. 2 minutes for the Juicero. But I'm not sure if you get my point. Even if I could hand wash my washing in 30 minutes and the washing machine took 45, I'd still use the washing machine because I don't have to be there washing it. I'm assuming of course that you don't have to stand at your Juicero and babysit it while it squeezes your juice.
  - imsofuture 9y ago
    But you could also pour juice out of a bottle, which is effectively free, and takes approximately 0 minutes. I don't care about a more efficient bag squeezing method, that there's a bag at all is a bizarre and useless distinction.
    - Nition 9y ago
      Well yeah, I'm only talking about the benefit for people who actually want what Juicero offers. I'm not sure if those people actually exist.

dsmithatx 9y ago

I bought a $300 juice 15 years ago and it's a simple design and can juice anything. It's basically a giant motor with a plastic assembly attached to the front to hold the food. If you are serious about juicing you can find cheaper products that don't require packets. This is a convenience item for people with a lot of money. There is no way this company will be worth $120MM unless they design a low cost model.

inimino 9y ago
Sounds like the design of the Champion juicer, those things were great. Lasted forever.

guelo 9y ago

Part of the problem is that the cold-pressed juice fad is not really rational to begin with. Somehow customers are convinced that the method of juice extraction is extremely important to the juice's health benefits, to the point that it's worth spending 3x comparable juices. It's great marketing on the verge of fraud. In order to capitalize on the fad the startup probably thought they needed a really fancy, distinctive press since the press has become of mythical importance in the customers' mind. And since cold-pressed customers have already proven to be cost insensitive they figured price is no object, so let engineering go wild!

nestlequ1k 9y ago
To me, cold pressed orange juice I buy tastes 3X better than any other orange juice I've tried at the store. To me, that's worth 3X more. Some people value taste more than others, to each his own.
- astrodust 9y ago
  Have you done a double-blind test with some top-brand non-frozen orange juices?
- deegles 9y ago
  It tastes better, but is juice (of any kind) actually good for you? I'm not convinced.
  - asciimo 9y ago
    Here's your article, good sir. "As Juicero gets publicly shamed, let us not forget that juice itself is a lie" https://qz.com/965505/juicero-turns-out-to-be-pointless-so-is-juice-itself/ https://qz.com/965505/juicero-turns-out-to-be-pointless-so-i...
    - senorjazz 9y ago
      The article does not say it is a lie. the article says some over exaggerate the benefits. It says the actual fruit is better. But also says juice (reasonable amounts) is good for you.

huangc10 9y ago

> the massive force required to press the packs across the entire surface at once. The machine must apply equal pressure to ~64 square inches of surface area at once, meaning the drivetrain must be able to apply thousands of pounds of force to squish all that produce. What if the package was a cube (16 square inches for ex. with 4 inch height) This would roughly fit in the average human palm. Wouldn't we be able to easily more or less apply equal pressure on the packaging? Just a thought. I would consider buying these cube packs.

cateye 9y ago

Yes, definitely over-engineered and needlessly expensive for it's purpose. But at the same time, it feels like they have achieved such a great quality that the learning and experience to design and execute could be very valuable as an unintended consequence. So, maybe quality always wins in the long run nevertheless. Wouldn't you hire these guys and pay a premium, if you wanted to manufacture great hardware?

jansho 9y ago
> Wouldn't you hire these guys and pay a premium, if you wanted to manufacture great hardware? Well, according to another source* one investor said that he expected the machine to be a lot smaller and that it would mush large chunks of fruit and veg. When the startup demoed at early stage, there wasn't even a working prototype - which is fine but I think it's fair to say that there was a bit of misleading. Only way to justify how it managed to raise $120 million... *https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-valley-s-400-juicer-may-be-feeling-the-squeeze https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-v...
deleted 9y ago
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mohn 9y ago

This was great reading, I really enjoy this style of content: someone with expertise tearing down electrical and mechanical equipment and commenting on which parts are well done or poorly done. I'll definitely be on the lookout for other write ups from Ben Einstein. To anyone wanting more content like this, I also recommend the "Bored of Lame Tool Reviews?" (BOLTR) series of videos from YouTuber AvE: https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil

tacostakohashi 9y ago
You might like the EEVblog teardown videos. There is indeed something strangely compelling about a knowledgeable person providing an unbiased running commentary on somebody else's work.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  Also, if you enjoy teardowns of cheap Chinese crap, big Clive's got your back: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA What I've learned watching his channel: Don't skimp on your USB chargers, get Anker or IKEA ones (seriously, the IKEA charger was amazingly well-designed).
  - mohn 9y ago
    Absolutely! I think my introduction to Big Clive's channel was a review of one of those electrode heater deathtraps for rapidly boiling water. I need to check out more of his stuff.
- blackguardx 9y ago
  As an electrical engineer, I find EEVblog to be pretty salty. He complains (like huge rants) about pretty minor things. I prefer MikesElectricStuff. His criticisms are usually more valid and he is sure to praise ingenuity when he sees it.
  - 9y ago

godmodus 9y ago

Beauriful but over engineered for its niche and utterly useless. 700bucks for abag squeezer? Something went terribly wrong. It feels like they aimed to produce some advanced robotics and built the wrong product. Could turn this into a limb for amputees, makes more sense and actually good use of the resources.

Mendenhall 9y ago
I was not familiar with the product and after reading article I question if I am understanding this right. This press is only for their custom bag of pulp ?
- Karunamon 9y ago
  Correct. You can't use anything else with it. There's a QR code scanner where the bag sits, meaning the press won't even operate unless there's a bag with a recognized (and validated via internet connection) serial number.
  - noam87 9y ago
    This company has to be a front for something; there has to be more to this story... I refuse to believe this is real. $120 million raised!
    - CamperBob2 9y ago
      Only thing I can think of is that they've been granted some extremely broad patents on the general idea of IoT-based food processing.
    - netsharc 9y ago
      Some kid came up with an idea, his bro econ student joined in and drafted a sales pitch, the investment glut means there's too many people with too much money just sitting around in their bank accounts and they thought they could invest in this, because it "surely" will make money since it has analytics (big data) and IoT, and there you have it.

gyrgtyn 9y ago

Looks like they are getting a bunch of free press.

johansch 9y ago
I lol'ed.

carsongross 9y ago

"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations" --Orson Welles

nemo1618 9y ago
"The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit... the arbitrariness of the constraint only serves to obtain precision of execution." - Igor Stravinsky

archagon 9y ago

Incredible. Does this make Juicero the first mass-market example of chindōgu? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chindōgu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chindōgu

testtesttest3 9y ago
No, that would be the selfie stick http://imgur.com/gallery/WJsAZ http://imgur.com/gallery/WJsAZ
- Neliquat 9y ago
  Selfie sticks work wonderfully... for pointing out distracted and self-absorbed people to the rest of us. And taking shaky selfies too!

toddmorey 9y ago

They could have (and seems should have) created an elegant manual press, maybe with a crank mechanism of some kind. Would have arguably taken about the same amount of counter space and I still think that something beautiful yet manual would have played with the demo. Think pour over coffee crowd... a bit of easy manual work makes you feel like an artisan. Still would have packet subscription, still would have app potential for expiry notices and subscription management.

idlewords 9y ago
They did use an elegant crank mechanism, but it was in the funding model.
CameronBanga 9y ago
But can you add DRM to your juicer if you use a manual crank!

Animats 9y ago

That's a cute piece of mechanism. I can see how they got into that overdesign. There must have been insistence that the pack must be crushed between two flat plates. Once you insist on that, it gets complicated. I once got a chance to look closely at the mechanism of SF's JCDecaux overpriced automatic street toilets in SF. Those cost about $150K each. The mechanism is all Telemecanique industrial control components. If you built a washing machine that way, which you could, it would cost $5000-$10000. Compare the Portland Loo.[1] [1] http://theloo.biz/ http://theloo.biz/

arbuge 9y ago
"There must have been insistence that the pack must be crushed between two flat plates." Either it was intentional, or somebody didn't realize that you could do things much cheaper by pinching between rollers and applying a more limited force over a longer time. I would think the result is pretty much the same.
- Arizhel 9y ago
  Rollers I don't think work right if you're squeezing intact, whole vegetables. But of course, these Juicero packets don't have intact, whole vegetables in them at all (proven by the ability for people to squeeze them out by hand).
  - ascorbic 9y ago
    I imagine what happened is that they designed it with flat plates so that it could press whole vegetables. However this didn't work, because as you need to mill anything except soft fruit before they are pressed. They changed the composition of the produce packs so that it did work. However by doing this they'd made the packs so easy to press that a roller (or your bare hands) were sufficient. By this point they'd already designed this beautiful over-engineered solution with flat plates, so probably didn't even try using rollers at that point.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    I think rollers would work. Common sugarcane juice machines easily crush a thick, hard (almost like wood) cane into dry paper-like sheets. They can easily crush vegetables, unless you try to put a whole pumpkin into it.

gcb0 9y ago

I hate to point to conspiracy theories but the only reason someone might invest in this company is if they are investing money not in the product (because it is obviously a flop) but to gauge if consumers will eventually be dumb enough to allow abuse from appliances just like they allow from internet and mobile phone companies.

pfooti 9y ago

Given the breakdown, it seems like the juicero press could do a lot more than just pressing bags full of pre-chopped stuff. Do you think they engineered it to do more, but then ended up being unable to actually make premade bags that contained big enough chunks of fruit / veg to work?

phonon 9y ago

Sounds like they needed the inventor of the AeroPress to be involved.

maverick_iceman 9y ago

What a Rube Goldberg contraption.

issa 9y ago

I'm a little bit shocked by everyone's reaction to this. It is nothing new for people to spend more money than required to accomplish a task. First class plane tickets. Luxury cars. Mansions. Expensive restaurants. And a million other things.

stupidhn 9y ago
>I'm a little bit shocked by everyone's reaction to this. It is nothing new for people to spend more money than required to accomplish a task. First class plane tickets. Luxury cars. Mansions. Expensive restaurants. Yes, people buy those things. Will people buy this thing? Probably not. And they took a whack of VC to build it.
Steko 9y ago
> to accomplish a task People are outraged because it doesn't actually accomplish any task. A number of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ comments seem to miss that this doesn't actually make juice. You're paying for them to hide 8 oz of juice in $8 packets and then again to extract the juice with this contraption (assuming your internet is working). I suppose there's some entertainment value in "juice press theatre" but you could say the same thing about a gadget that lights your money on fire.
piaste 9y ago
A first class plane ticket is better than an economy class one. A luxury car is better than a cheap car. Those upgrades might cost too much for their value, but they are valuable. The Juicero is roundly mocked because, despite the cost, it is worse than a regular juicer in a whole lot of ways, and only better in a very few ones. To use your examples, it's mocked much in the same way an expensive restaurant is mocked when it offers crappy food under a veneer of pointless luxury.

2muchcoffeeman 9y ago

From a hardware perspective is this well designed? Forgot what you think of the product and whether it's excessive. I mean with that handy USB connector to flash the firmware, a $400 appliance that does one thing well is not that bad if you can do that one thing on whatever you want.

Taniwha 9y ago

A Note From the New CEO of Lobstero https://www.somethingawful.com/news/juicero-lobster-pouch/ https://www.somethingawful.com/news/juicero-lobster-pouch/

PaulHoule 9y ago

$400 for a juice machine is not crazy; if you spend that much on an ordinary juicer you can make gallons of carrot juice for a very low price. (It saves money, it doesn't cost money) You do have to clean up a mess, but if your time is that valuable you can hire a maid to do it for about that $5-$8 price point of the packs.

xg15 9y ago

(Half-)joking, but the irony is, with so many interest and high-quality parts, the press looks like it could be a desired object for makers. In particular, it contains: - two motors, one of them exceptionally strong - a durable drive train - a control board with flash memory, wifi, a camera and a USB plug for flashing without additional tools(!) - a durable aluminum frame Those parts look like they could be building blocks for some interesting hobby projects. Did they ever think about selling to makers?

Neliquat 9y ago
Except a maker could just source the parts alone cheaper, unless they bought it used, and then there goes the incentive to the mfg.

TD-Linux 9y ago

The two strangest parts of this are probably the door locking mechanism and the DC motor supply. The door locking was pretty well explained, but I was really surprised at the DC motor. From previous pictures I had assumed it was a 170VDC motor (using just a rectifier + filters for noise) but according to this it's actually a 330V active power correction boost converter. I guess that gets you 100-240V range support, but it seems horribly expensive for driving a motor. Even 170VDC permanent magnet motors are pretty uncommon - they fill an awkward middle ground where the motor is too big to reasonably use a low voltage DC one (due to power supply costs), but too small to use a universal AC motor directly off line power. The only tools AvE has reviewed of this design are the Kitchenaid mixer and Drill Doctor, for reference. Also, I don't believe "330V 15A" for a second. Maybe 2A...

Neliquat 9y ago
> 330v 15a Just do the math. You get about 13a tops on a 115v plug before any household circuit will trip. That is over twice that. Same with those '5hp' power tools.
- tgtweak 9y ago
  1.5a 330v would make more sense (or in this application, less nonsense).
- wiredfool 9y ago
  6 and a half horsepower.
blackguardx 9y ago
I think a series-wound motor would be cheaper than a custom high voltage DC motor. I'm not sure about the power output tradeoffs, though.
kjdndisneinj 9y ago
The 330V is for sure a misprint. It doesn't look like they have the insulation for a high voltage motor, so my guess would be 30/33V @15A. Reading the linked spec sheet confirms it's in the range. That would put it much closer to a cordless drill motor. (450W, not 5kW, which is obviously impossible on 120VAC/15A)

Neliquat 9y ago

Useless precision. The anathama of profit. I love some engeneering porn, but that is when form follows function, that is dubious here.

Steeeve 9y ago

I think there's a big gap between the target market for this device and the average consumer. A commercial cold press countertop juicer is usually a few thousand dollars. A consumer model is ~$3-400. Cold press juicers are supposed to retain nutrients a bit more, and produce more flavorful juice. (who knows if that is true) The Juicero is the pro-sumer k-cup version of a juicer. It's not aimed at people who are price conscious at all. Price conscious people could get something close-enough for sub $30. My guess is that the $700 juicer was designed to get a high-end reputation, with lower-end follow on products once they established the brand. At this point, they are ruined. It's collective common sense that this is a bad deal and the value of the brand is diminished dramatically. Their engineering decisions are questionable. If you are going for a high-end high quality unique product that will push people to spend double what the competitive product provides, it should be more appealing to look at. It's like they tried as hard as they could to make a cube-shaped plastic lined product as expensive as possible to manufacture. I'm all for sturdy commercial quality components, but not in something that looks like it was manufactured by nintendo. The Bloomberg article was in poor form. At least let a company get out of the gate and establish itself before tearing them apart. But that's the danger involved with investing big money in companies based on a business plan and not vetting that they are good decision makers. This all could have been avoided if their PR people were on top of things. You'd think they'd have top notch PR people in place for this market segment... another bad decision.

CameronBanga 9y ago
Poor form? You could squeeze the bag and get almost an identical amount of juice. They should provide some sort of actual value to their customer. Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form? Should Unroll.me get some runway to test this revenue model before the NYT includes them in a story? Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed or fail on the market. But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't some "fake news" drive for clicks. It's an actual issue, which Juicero was apparently shocked by, and they should have to defend themselves.
- 9y ago

snackai 9y ago

Guys, cancer. It's still out there. Donate for research instead of wasting 400 Bucks on a fu*king juice press. No one can justify this useless piece of crap.

bane 9y ago

I wonder if the upcoming season of Silicon Valley will feature a startup called "Juicaneros" which features a technology that tests blood collected by pricking a single finger, and then squeezing all of the blood out of an arm through the new pricked hole by putting the arm into a 4-ton press.

lwander 9y ago

Oh this is interesting: > The two primary exterior plastic parts are huge, detailed injection molded parts with multiple slides and actions, large changes in wall thickness (which makes it very hard to mold without imperfections) Does anyone know why large changes in wall thickness makes molding these parts more difficult?

eweinhoffer 9y ago
Molding parts with uniform thickness is tricky enough - without great tooling design and the perfect temperature/pressure settings, you'll get hot spots, flow lines and all sorts of visual defects in your part. Varying thicknesses make achieving these "Apple-like" levels of perfection in the plastics even more difficult, thanks to the fact that the material will cool and change shape at different rates.
- lwander 9y ago
  Oh that's fascinating - thanks!

3xnis 9y ago

I thought this was silly until I read this point [1]: >No prep. No mess. No clean up. That's brilliant because people don't like cleaning. Cleaning regular juicers is annoying to the point that only few people use them regularly. There are enough people with money to spare that this can become a success. I haven't seen it mentioned, so let me spell it out: This is Nespresso for fruits. [1]: https://www.juicero.com/how-it-works/ https://www.juicero.com/how-it-works/

hammock 9y ago
You can buy juice at whole foods....
- henrikschroder 9y ago
  Exactly, if you want really fresh squeezed juice, there are plenty of options with about the same shelf life as these juice packs. There's zero value-add in this product compared to stocking up on a week's worth of fresh-squeezed juice. In fact, the nanny-scans of the QR-codes that make the machine occasionally go "NO" is of negative value to the consumer. Imagine buying a bottle of fresh juice, and on the third day you can't open the bottle any longer because it's past the expiry date. And imagine paying $400 for the "privilege" of this. Complete WTF.
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IAmGraydon 9y ago

I think the machine is fine and I don't feel like $400 is very much for a well built appliance. What kills me about this thing is the fact that they take so many steps to lock you in to their juice packs, which are priced so high that a regular user will have spent more on juice in the first month than the entire machine. Couple that with requiring a nanny QR scan to make sure you can't press "expired" packs as if we are unable to simply read an expiration date and it gets ridiculous. By the way, has anyone mentioned that the expiration on the packs is 8 days after the date of manufacture? Subtract shipping time and you literally have 4 days to use your packs before you shiny new machine says "gotta buy more!" What if I'm ok with a 9 day old pack? Too bad. I think that's what will kill the Juicero. It makes customers feel like they're being hustled.

ghaff 9y ago
The $400 is fine. I got a factory refurb model but Vitamixes are in that sort of range. However Vitamixes can just use random fruit and vegetables including prepared versions from the produce department and freezer section of the grocery store. I agree that it's the $400 + juice packs + nanny scans. Making smoothies isn't a big deal. And if you're willing to trade off a few $$ for a little prep effort savings there are tons of options--including ingredient subscription services.

mianos 9y ago

Using all those CNC milled parts is simply crazy. CNC is for prototypes, small runs, super specialised load characteristics or runs of parts that are practically impossible to make otherwise. This use does not tick any of those boxes.

TD-Linux 9y ago
I especially love the pusher. Lots of milled out pockets to save weight. They need to save weight because... ?
astronautjones 9y ago
the whole thing is crazy. this is a slap in the face of anyone who has taken an engineering course, let alone anyone who was able to grow up with common sense

dreamcompiler 9y ago

I blame modern VCs for this. VCs love continuing revenue streams and monopoly suppliers, and this crazy thing had both of those in spades. The funders must have been salivating so much about those factors that they never questioned how stupid the device ultimately was. There has to eventually come a tipping point where consumers just get sick of devices that require constant rent payments in order to continue functioning, with no choice in suppliers. Not to mention ridiculous amounts of packaging waste.

lucio 9y ago
Nespresso seems to be doing well. I bet they sold it as "Nespresso for juice".
- coredog64 9y ago
  What if they went one step further and hired part time drivers to deliver the juice packs: Uber for Nespresso for juice.
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jacquesm 9y ago

I don't think Juicero cares one way or another about your ability to side-step their juicer, as long as you buy the packs because that is where the money is. They'd probably give you the juicer for free if you signed up for a 3 years worth supply of juice packs.

PascLeRasc 9y ago

I think this is a good example of why the Keurig method of hardware sales[1] works so well. People would be okay with buying marked-up juice pouches because that's the real product. The juicer is just a means to an end. [1] https://blog.bolt.io/keurig-accidentally-created-the-perfect-business-model-for-hardware-startups-18e9c3b4e796 https://blog.bolt.io/keurig-accidentally-created-the-perfect...

justinzollars 9y ago

Misallocated Capital. Maybe I'm bitter because my startup wasn't funded, but I feel like we can and must do better than this.

kazinator 9y ago

This reminds me of the King's Toaster, an ancient allegory about overengineering a food appliance: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html

lips 9y ago

I bet this was really fun to work on.

phoenixProgram 9y ago

the people who decided to take calories off the market, increase their price, and sell them back to consumers are effectively driving up the cost of calories. if you let rich people create a calorie cartel, they will. let me repeat that: if you let them, rich people will literally create a calorie cartel and starve you to death. let me repeat that: rich people are willing to FORCE you to live in fear and trade their dead trees with ink blots for calories that you NEED TO LIVE. they will go all the way to genocide. look at the great famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) rich people went all the way to genocide. people who had all the wealth of the world demanded starvation and death from the most miserable people on planet earth. we are talking about evil people who are using starvation as a siege weapons against innocent civilians. this is literally french revolution level evil. this is the kind of evil decent human beings purge from the earth because they are sick of seeing utter filth. people are sick of seeing this filth.

daemin 9y ago

I have to say I do find it disheartening that everything is aiming for a subscription model. Software, food, etc. I know that it is a very profitable business model but it does make me wonder if I really want to live in a world where everything is by subscription. These subscription models, or even machines that require only a certain type of consumable, are effectively leases. Sure you may buy a piece of hardware, but it is only useful for as long as you buy and use the required consumable. I am comfortable in renting a place to live - especially since I have moved about every 2-3 years in recent memory - and I am comfortable paying a subscription fee for some software and services. But I am not that comfortable when I have to subscribe to food or clothing for example.

rodionos 9y ago
Food is already a 'subscription'. We sign up with protein, fat, and carb service providers (e.g. chicken, if I may) and we pay for their services on a daily basis. Sometimes we kill the underperforming providers and eat them too.
exergy 9y ago
Completely agree with you. What I particularly despise is the absurd lack of discussion on the amount of packaging waste. Why doesn't that make these piece of shit things non-starters? Excuse the vitriol, but it absolutely makes my blood boil, the fucking Keurigs, these idiot juicers, Blue Apron, and that one company that even delivers a box of clothes each month? WTF?! I buy clothes every two years, and even I could do better. Also, even if they offered to collect the packaging, and recycle/reuse it, it's a needless complication to an issue that shouldn't exist to begin with. Why isn't a low-tech, low-carbon footprint life celebrated more? A french press/moka pot coffee, a mixer to make your juice (because, you know, you take the time to peel the motherfucking fruit beforehand), and cooking your own god damned food on a frying pan.
- twoquestions 9y ago
  > Why isn't a low-tech, low-carbon footprint life celebrated more? A french press/moka pot coffee, a mixer to make your juice (because, you know, you take the time to peel the motherfucking fruit beforehand), and cooking your own god damned food on a frying pan. Reading your comment was deliciously cathartic, and now I know that moka pots are a thing. If I get a coffee habit again I'll have to look into trying one.

grappler 9y ago

A machine with that level of quality has a lot of appeal for me. Something generally useful like a blender or stand mixer, that might be kept visible on the counter and used often, I could see dropping $400 or even $700 on. But this thing doesn't appear “generally useful” based on what I've seen about this story. It seems to want to lock you into using food from a particular vendor. How much less appealing would my stand mixer have been as a purchase if it were outfitted with a QR reader looking to make sure that the KitchenAid™ cookie dough I was giving it was fresh? That would be a deal breaker.

_nedR 9y ago
Also, I am not really sure about the "quality" aspect. All that complexity, all those moving parts, high power components next to low power components - seems a lot could wrong down the road. Ofc they seem to be well built so the components could last a while.
- grappler 9y ago
  Yeah, I would wait for a judgement from somebody like Wirecutter or Consumer Reports on whether such a product is likely to hold up.