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The trouble is, I've always thought Juicero was a bank shot for digitized food in general. If that's the case, they needed to be serving consumers not businesse

The trouble is, I've always thought Juicero was a bank shot for digitized food in general. If that's the case, they needed to be serving consumers not businesses. The concept of food that's uniquely tagged and tracked from origin to consumption is pretty attractive - makes contamination a breeze to trace back, keeps you from cooking with rotten food since the machine knows to reject it, and it could automatically track what you've got in your kitchen to suggest recipes / restock for you. That's all been thought of before, the trouble is how on earth do you build that network? I suspect the reason Juicero got so much money is they were trying to build it first with high end luxury foods, and then expand down-market to eventually own the 'groceries of the future.' Personally, I think good ol Jeff Bezos is going to win this one too by first owning grocery delivery straight up, and then going 'oh by the way they're all trackable if you want, you should buy Amazon brand appliances to make use of the feature :)" because as others pointed out here, counter space is at a premium and nobody really wants appliances that don't work with all their ingredients. Anyway, that's what I tell myself to make this whole ludicrous story less sad.

cortesoft 9y ago
How would tracking the food from origin to consumption allow the machine to reject rotten food? Things going rotten are not that predictable, even if you know exactly when and where it was packaged.
- gerry_shaw 9y ago
  It would apply if the ingredients were contaminated when they were processed but wasn't detected until after they were sold.
- keerthiko 9y ago
  If it knows when and where for everything about an ingredient, it probably also knows the tagged expiry/best-before. It's easy to play it safe and just reject everything past expiry, even if it need not actually have gone bad. And consumers who prioritize contamination safety (not everyone believes expiry dates, but many do) can respect that. There are cases where something can go bad before its expiry date, due to improper storage, but storage conditions until food reaches given appliance could be tracked too to account for that.
  - samstave 9y ago
    There are low-tech versions of spoilage alert. oxygen sensitive stickers that change color if too much o2 detected inside the package.. However - there is one food label that I have always wanted on meats: slaughter date, freeze/pack date, sell date, cook date, eat date. So if I go to the store and there is meat in the freezer - when was that meat caught/slaughtered/packed/frozen. Am I eating something a year old? If you had that labeling - I would be willing to bet that healthier eating habits would ensue - not that the meat industry would prefer it though..
    - HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
      I eat year+ old beef all the time: I buy an entire year's supply at once and freeze it. Tastes fine. What I really would like is a "picked on" label on fruits & vegetables. A cucumber from my garden is fine 3 weeks after picking. One from the grocery store is barely edible a few days after purchase.
      - samstave 9y ago
        I didnt word that as clearly as I meant; I just think that each step in the processing of food should be transparent. Has frozen food sat in various places far longer than expected?
      - notalawyer 9y ago
        That's because the one in the store was picked three weeks ago in Mexico and shipped to you. Remember when certain foods were only available at a certain time during the year? Me neither.
  - FICO 9y ago
    Expiration dates are more for best taste rather than food safety. You're able to tell when fruits/veggies go rotten with your eyes, nose, and mouth.
  - repiret 9y ago
    But fresh fruit in particular doesn't rot at a uniform rate. You can pick two peaches from the same tree at the same time with the same appereant ripeness, store them in identical conditions, and have them go bad on different days.
GuiA 9y ago
What's "digitized food"? Does every single one of my strawberries come with a bar code on it? Or does everything come in Juicebro style pouches?
- jjawssd 9y ago
  Agafia is a hermit surviving in the Russian wilderness for 70 years. I recommend the RT report on her because they do not try to force a conclusion to the contact. She is afraid of barcodes even though she barely has any contact with other people. During the last world war humans were assigned serial numbers for efficient tracking and resource allocation and extermination. Agafia and her people ran away from several regimes that were set on extermination of her people because of their beliefs. All food she comes in contact with must have barcodes removed because to her, barcodes are a sign of the devil. She will not accept anything with barcodes on it. All aid packages must have barcodes removed from them before she will accept them. According to her the next logical step will be to microchip/barcode all humans and track their activities. Then humans will be treated like cattle and easily controllable assets. Sounds familiar?
  - samstave 9y ago
    Hmm... Whats this entirely detailed sensor that has ALL my access/identity/sentiment/social data on it - where I am required to pay a monthly fee for, and life in modern society will basically stop if I dont have one? The one where I am expected to follow and celebrate every release of one with far more tracking/identifying/documenting features -- and then spend more money on upgrading my tracker? You know - the one where governments and police departments have equipment to fool the device to connecting to just them so they know exactly where I am? That next logical step of Agafia sounds ludicrous!
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - jjawssd 9y ago
    Why am I being down-voted?
aoenht2nte8 9y ago
> The concept of food that's uniquely tagged and tracked from origin to consumption is pretty attractive - makes contamination a breeze to trace back, keeps you from cooking with rotten food since the machine knows to reject it, and it could automatically track what you've got in your kitchen to suggest recipes / restock for you. What makes you think people want those things? I certainly don't, and I've never heard anyone mention wanting any of those things. I have heard people mention that they hate appliances like the coffee makers that only work with the expensive patented coffee pods from their manufacturer. (And printers, etc.) I don't want any appliance that the manufacturer can shut down or refuse to run remotely. (See the recent story about the guy who paid off his car, but it was disabled remotely because he didn't pay the "remove the disabler" fee.) In ~35 years of cooking, I don't recall ever using ingredients that went bad. I'm sure I probably did once or twice, but it didn't leave a bad enough impression on me to even remember, let alone want this sort of device that's tethered to the network and manufacturer, with all the problems that brings.
- flyinghamster 9y ago
  Let's call it what it is: the Internet of Rent-Seeking. As far as I'm concerned, I want my appliances to NOT be networked.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    We should probably split hairs here. I would love for all of my appliances to be networked -- just not on the public internet. - Preheat the oven as I'm driving home - Alert me when my laundry/dishes are done - Alert me if my air filter needs replaced. - Manage my AC/Heating for maximum energy efficiency. - Real time energy usage monitoring. - Turn on/off lights when I arrive/leave.
    - jasonlaramburu 9y ago
      Assuming you have a dynamic ip this won't be possible without a cloud service.
bllguo 9y ago
Interesting concept... Tracking what you have to suggest recipes or restock - that's the feature that seems most appealing. But I don't think you need a network like you describe to accomplish that. You could have a "smart" fridge or some other device that can catalog your food for you thru imaging and scans. Hell, you could just input a list you type up yourself. Like you say, Amazon could easily do this. They already have a part of it with their dash buttons and smart home devices. They have another part now with Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. The other benefits you mention are marginal at best, in my opinion. I would never pay a premium for tagged and tracked food like that. Edit: Funny, there's a post on overengineering on the front page!
- amelius 9y ago
  > Hell, you could just input a list you type up yourself. If you put that much effort into it, then you can just as well remember what you need to buy when.
  - bllguo 9y ago
    Well the difference would be that the food gets delivered to you based on what you specify in the list.. But obviously that wasn't the main point. Using computer vision you can automate it.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    I write down a shopping list because otherwise I forget things. It would be hard to make something more convenient than a pen and paper though. And in the store crossing things off the nigh indestructible scrap of worthless paper is better than fiddling with a device.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Adding items to a shopping list is actually one of the relatively few things I end up using my Amazon Echo for. It's easier to add and I don't forget my phone when I go to the store (or end up going when I didn't plan to). I'm not a huge Echo fan overall but I do find it good for that.
petra 9y ago
I think the future of food is different - it's about restaurant quality meals, for cheap, large selection, with zero effort. maybe via online ordering, maybe Whole-foods/Walmart. And you may need some fancy oven like combi-oven or solid-state microwave. And even if we're talking cuts of meat, i think technology like MATS(microwave assisted thermal sterilization) may give you high quality meat that doesn't spoil for very long, so that won't be an issue. And as for suggesting recipes based on fridge content or restocking (are those such big problems for consumers?) - there are probably other ways to solve that , like AI + camera, no need to reshuffle the whole supply chain.
- semi-extrinsic 9y ago
  > restaurant quality meals, for cheap, large selection, with zero effort If this were ever to happen - and what I know of food chemistry makes me strongly skeptical - you would definitely see it in actual restaurants way before you get it at home. Because for a restaurant, if you can effectively replace a human costing >$40k/yr with a change in supply chain and a fancy machine, you can easily afford to pay $40k for the machine alone. A consumer would never afford that. (Same goes for fully autonomous cars.) As for the "reducing food waste" concept - no store actually wants to achieve this. Think about it - actively trying to get people to buy less of what you sell is pretty bad for business.
  - petra 9y ago
    Using frozen food, many french restaurants already do that for some stuff to an extent there was law on that matter, and there's a french/european consumer chain, picard, for gourmet frozen food. But it's expensive. but maybe prices will go down ?
  - alexanderstears 9y ago
    >As for the "reducing food waste" concept - no store actually wants to achieve this. Think about it - actively trying to get people to buy less of what you sell is pretty bad for business. Which is why it's ripe for disruption. The consumer could be better off, a company that isn't in the space already could be better off, they're the people who need to make it happen.
empath75 9y ago
This is all textbook 'solution in search of a problem'
maxerickson 9y ago
Most packaged food has a serial number on it for tracking purposes. Going from that to sticking it in a scanner to get permission to eat it probably doesn't add a lot of utility.
frobozz 9y ago
> keeps you from cooking with rotten food If only we had some kind of olfactory or optical equipment stuck on the front of our faces that could help determine the rottenness or mouldiness of food. Failing that, perhaps producers of packaged food could use some kind of common standard system to inform consumers of the date by which the food should be used by, or before which it might be at its best.
- na85 9y ago
  Your point is valid, but recently here in Canada there was a recall on contaminated flour. Can't remember if it was anthrax or E Coli. Your eyes/nose won't pick up bacteria in the flour.
  - FICO 9y ago
    Sure, food recalls happen all the time. However, they are selling as a subscription service- they know what packets they shipped you. If there's a recall they should email you, snail mail you, and automatically issue you a refund on your credit card. WiFi is beyond overkill.
    - saalweachter 9y ago
      I'll say this -- and I'm in the "this is a stupid fucking product" camp -- but I think sending updates to your appliances to keep you from using bad food is actually the right way to go. I barely read half my mail, snail or electronic. The chances I'm going to see and read and act on a "your food is bad!!!" email (assuming it doesn't get eaten by some filter) before I eat the food in question is low, low low. Some device getting the message and physically stopping me is really the only way to be sure.
      - spaceribs 9y ago
        "Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry." Kidding aside, this is too simple of a problem to solve. Serious contamination isn't a part of 1st world daily life, because we have excellent news and regulations (so far). Rotten food is easy to detect, and even some of the stuff we consider rotten would probably not make us sick. It's all a shiny coat of wax on a non-problem, just like bottled water and gingivitis.
knieveltech 9y ago
That moment when someone unironically recommends full-life-cycle logistics tracking for foodstuffs as a solution to simply checking the expiration date or examining raw ingredients before preparing...
SeoxyS 9y ago
A lot of my trust in Amazon eroded after the whole co-mingling fake-eclipse-glasses fiasco. If I can't trust Amazon to tell me accurately where the stuff I buy on their website is coming from… how can I trust them in the retail grocery world where there's so much more middlemen and variables in play?
- azinman2 9y ago
  Because they're different businesses run different ways? And the grocery store ultimately is governed by the FDA and a totally different set of regulations and expectations?
Nelson69 9y ago
If you use a loyalty card at a Kroger owned store, they'll tell you if something is flagged for contamination, it's an automated call system. There is already pretty reasonable tracking on the industry side of the food equation; some things are better than others. It's just not at the point of consumption. I'm kind of okay with this, I'd rather the industry as a whole do more things to prevent contamination period. Making a more friendly notification is nice, it could be a phone call, and email, a notification with some app; it's pretty rare and I want it more rare, not a friendlier notification, that's just me though. Now I think you could make that stuff better, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to hate on Juicero for that. Their entire play was just VC-Bingo though: they had a device, they had a subscription, they had "lock in" (device is only good with the subscription) they had internet attachment, it's a health and wellness type play, probably some other things I'm not thinking of. Anyone know if they had to subsidize the prices, that'd be the grand slam if they had to do that too. $30 a week for 5 packs of juice, that's $120 a month and you do the work and clean up the mess and you have to get different juice on the weekends. The bags aren't supposed to make that much mess but I think the psychology of it all is huge, a coffee maker doesn't make much mess either and you'll pay a gigantic premium at a coffee shop. How many months before you get a tip-top of the line cold press juicer that'll make juice out of any produce? With no subscription.
- rdlecler1 9y ago
  The idea itself isn't horrible. But investing $100m in a niche home appliance that hadn't yet been validated in the market was just dumb.

cortesoft 9y ago

How would tracking the food from origin to consumption allow the machine to reject rotten food? Things going rotten are not that predictable, even if you know exactly when and where it was packaged.

gerry_shaw 9y ago
It would apply if the ingredients were contaminated when they were processed but wasn't detected until after they were sold.
keerthiko 9y ago
If it knows when and where for everything about an ingredient, it probably also knows the tagged expiry/best-before. It's easy to play it safe and just reject everything past expiry, even if it need not actually have gone bad. And consumers who prioritize contamination safety (not everyone believes expiry dates, but many do) can respect that. There are cases where something can go bad before its expiry date, due to improper storage, but storage conditions until food reaches given appliance could be tracked too to account for that.
- samstave 9y ago
  There are low-tech versions of spoilage alert. oxygen sensitive stickers that change color if too much o2 detected inside the package.. However - there is one food label that I have always wanted on meats: slaughter date, freeze/pack date, sell date, cook date, eat date. So if I go to the store and there is meat in the freezer - when was that meat caught/slaughtered/packed/frozen. Am I eating something a year old? If you had that labeling - I would be willing to bet that healthier eating habits would ensue - not that the meat industry would prefer it though..
  - HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
    I eat year+ old beef all the time: I buy an entire year's supply at once and freeze it. Tastes fine. What I really would like is a "picked on" label on fruits & vegetables. A cucumber from my garden is fine 3 weeks after picking. One from the grocery store is barely edible a few days after purchase.
    - samstave 9y ago
      I didnt word that as clearly as I meant; I just think that each step in the processing of food should be transparent. Has frozen food sat in various places far longer than expected?
    - notalawyer 9y ago
      That's because the one in the store was picked three weeks ago in Mexico and shipped to you. Remember when certain foods were only available at a certain time during the year? Me neither.
- FICO 9y ago
  Expiration dates are more for best taste rather than food safety. You're able to tell when fruits/veggies go rotten with your eyes, nose, and mouth.
- repiret 9y ago
  But fresh fruit in particular doesn't rot at a uniform rate. You can pick two peaches from the same tree at the same time with the same appereant ripeness, store them in identical conditions, and have them go bad on different days.

GuiA 9y ago

What's "digitized food"? Does every single one of my strawberries come with a bar code on it? Or does everything come in Juicebro style pouches?

jjawssd 9y ago
Agafia is a hermit surviving in the Russian wilderness for 70 years. I recommend the RT report on her because they do not try to force a conclusion to the contact. She is afraid of barcodes even though she barely has any contact with other people. During the last world war humans were assigned serial numbers for efficient tracking and resource allocation and extermination. Agafia and her people ran away from several regimes that were set on extermination of her people because of their beliefs. All food she comes in contact with must have barcodes removed because to her, barcodes are a sign of the devil. She will not accept anything with barcodes on it. All aid packages must have barcodes removed from them before she will accept them. According to her the next logical step will be to microchip/barcode all humans and track their activities. Then humans will be treated like cattle and easily controllable assets. Sounds familiar?
- samstave 9y ago
  Hmm... Whats this entirely detailed sensor that has ALL my access/identity/sentiment/social data on it - where I am required to pay a monthly fee for, and life in modern society will basically stop if I dont have one? The one where I am expected to follow and celebrate every release of one with far more tracking/identifying/documenting features -- and then spend more money on upgrading my tracker? You know - the one where governments and police departments have equipment to fool the device to connecting to just them so they know exactly where I am? That next logical step of Agafia sounds ludicrous!
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- jjawssd 9y ago
  Why am I being down-voted?

aoenht2nte8 9y ago

> The concept of food that's uniquely tagged and tracked from origin to consumption is pretty attractive - makes contamination a breeze to trace back, keeps you from cooking with rotten food since the machine knows to reject it, and it could automatically track what you've got in your kitchen to suggest recipes / restock for you. What makes you think people want those things? I certainly don't, and I've never heard anyone mention wanting any of those things. I have heard people mention that they hate appliances like the coffee makers that only work with the expensive patented coffee pods from their manufacturer. (And printers, etc.) I don't want any appliance that the manufacturer can shut down or refuse to run remotely. (See the recent story about the guy who paid off his car, but it was disabled remotely because he didn't pay the "remove the disabler" fee.) In ~35 years of cooking, I don't recall ever using ingredients that went bad. I'm sure I probably did once or twice, but it didn't leave a bad enough impression on me to even remember, let alone want this sort of device that's tethered to the network and manufacturer, with all the problems that brings.

flyinghamster 9y ago
Let's call it what it is: the Internet of Rent-Seeking. As far as I'm concerned, I want my appliances to NOT be networked.
- Spivak 9y ago
  We should probably split hairs here. I would love for all of my appliances to be networked -- just not on the public internet. - Preheat the oven as I'm driving home - Alert me when my laundry/dishes are done - Alert me if my air filter needs replaced. - Manage my AC/Heating for maximum energy efficiency. - Real time energy usage monitoring. - Turn on/off lights when I arrive/leave.
  - jasonlaramburu 9y ago
    Assuming you have a dynamic ip this won't be possible without a cloud service.

bllguo 9y ago

Interesting concept... Tracking what you have to suggest recipes or restock - that's the feature that seems most appealing. But I don't think you need a network like you describe to accomplish that. You could have a "smart" fridge or some other device that can catalog your food for you thru imaging and scans. Hell, you could just input a list you type up yourself. Like you say, Amazon could easily do this. They already have a part of it with their dash buttons and smart home devices. They have another part now with Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. The other benefits you mention are marginal at best, in my opinion. I would never pay a premium for tagged and tracked food like that. Edit: Funny, there's a post on overengineering on the front page!

amelius 9y ago
> Hell, you could just input a list you type up yourself. If you put that much effort into it, then you can just as well remember what you need to buy when.
- bllguo 9y ago
  Well the difference would be that the food gets delivered to you based on what you specify in the list.. But obviously that wasn't the main point. Using computer vision you can automate it.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  I write down a shopping list because otherwise I forget things. It would be hard to make something more convenient than a pen and paper though. And in the store crossing things off the nigh indestructible scrap of worthless paper is better than fiddling with a device.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Adding items to a shopping list is actually one of the relatively few things I end up using my Amazon Echo for. It's easier to add and I don't forget my phone when I go to the store (or end up going when I didn't plan to). I'm not a huge Echo fan overall but I do find it good for that.

petra 9y ago

I think the future of food is different - it's about restaurant quality meals, for cheap, large selection, with zero effort. maybe via online ordering, maybe Whole-foods/Walmart. And you may need some fancy oven like combi-oven or solid-state microwave. And even if we're talking cuts of meat, i think technology like MATS(microwave assisted thermal sterilization) may give you high quality meat that doesn't spoil for very long, so that won't be an issue. And as for suggesting recipes based on fridge content or restocking (are those such big problems for consumers?) - there are probably other ways to solve that , like AI + camera, no need to reshuffle the whole supply chain.

semi-extrinsic 9y ago
> restaurant quality meals, for cheap, large selection, with zero effort If this were ever to happen - and what I know of food chemistry makes me strongly skeptical - you would definitely see it in actual restaurants way before you get it at home. Because for a restaurant, if you can effectively replace a human costing >$40k/yr with a change in supply chain and a fancy machine, you can easily afford to pay $40k for the machine alone. A consumer would never afford that. (Same goes for fully autonomous cars.) As for the "reducing food waste" concept - no store actually wants to achieve this. Think about it - actively trying to get people to buy less of what you sell is pretty bad for business.
- petra 9y ago
  Using frozen food, many french restaurants already do that for some stuff to an extent there was law on that matter, and there's a french/european consumer chain, picard, for gourmet frozen food. But it's expensive. but maybe prices will go down ?
- alexanderstears 9y ago
  >As for the "reducing food waste" concept - no store actually wants to achieve this. Think about it - actively trying to get people to buy less of what you sell is pretty bad for business. Which is why it's ripe for disruption. The consumer could be better off, a company that isn't in the space already could be better off, they're the people who need to make it happen.

empath75 9y ago

This is all textbook 'solution in search of a problem'

maxerickson 9y ago

Most packaged food has a serial number on it for tracking purposes. Going from that to sticking it in a scanner to get permission to eat it probably doesn't add a lot of utility.

frobozz 9y ago

> keeps you from cooking with rotten food If only we had some kind of olfactory or optical equipment stuck on the front of our faces that could help determine the rottenness or mouldiness of food. Failing that, perhaps producers of packaged food could use some kind of common standard system to inform consumers of the date by which the food should be used by, or before which it might be at its best.

na85 9y ago
Your point is valid, but recently here in Canada there was a recall on contaminated flour. Can't remember if it was anthrax or E Coli. Your eyes/nose won't pick up bacteria in the flour.
- FICO 9y ago
  Sure, food recalls happen all the time. However, they are selling as a subscription service- they know what packets they shipped you. If there's a recall they should email you, snail mail you, and automatically issue you a refund on your credit card. WiFi is beyond overkill.
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    I'll say this -- and I'm in the "this is a stupid fucking product" camp -- but I think sending updates to your appliances to keep you from using bad food is actually the right way to go. I barely read half my mail, snail or electronic. The chances I'm going to see and read and act on a "your food is bad!!!" email (assuming it doesn't get eaten by some filter) before I eat the food in question is low, low low. Some device getting the message and physically stopping me is really the only way to be sure.
    - spaceribs 9y ago
      "Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry." Kidding aside, this is too simple of a problem to solve. Serious contamination isn't a part of 1st world daily life, because we have excellent news and regulations (so far). Rotten food is easy to detect, and even some of the stuff we consider rotten would probably not make us sick. It's all a shiny coat of wax on a non-problem, just like bottled water and gingivitis.

knieveltech 9y ago

That moment when someone unironically recommends full-life-cycle logistics tracking for foodstuffs as a solution to simply checking the expiration date or examining raw ingredients before preparing...

SeoxyS 9y ago

A lot of my trust in Amazon eroded after the whole co-mingling fake-eclipse-glasses fiasco. If I can't trust Amazon to tell me accurately where the stuff I buy on their website is coming from… how can I trust them in the retail grocery world where there's so much more middlemen and variables in play?

azinman2 9y ago
Because they're different businesses run different ways? And the grocery store ultimately is governed by the FDA and a totally different set of regulations and expectations?

Nelson69 9y ago

If you use a loyalty card at a Kroger owned store, they'll tell you if something is flagged for contamination, it's an automated call system. There is already pretty reasonable tracking on the industry side of the food equation; some things are better than others. It's just not at the point of consumption. I'm kind of okay with this, I'd rather the industry as a whole do more things to prevent contamination period. Making a more friendly notification is nice, it could be a phone call, and email, a notification with some app; it's pretty rare and I want it more rare, not a friendlier notification, that's just me though. Now I think you could make that stuff better, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to hate on Juicero for that. Their entire play was just VC-Bingo though: they had a device, they had a subscription, they had "lock in" (device is only good with the subscription) they had internet attachment, it's a health and wellness type play, probably some other things I'm not thinking of. Anyone know if they had to subsidize the prices, that'd be the grand slam if they had to do that too. $30 a week for 5 packs of juice, that's $120 a month and you do the work and clean up the mess and you have to get different juice on the weekends. The bags aren't supposed to make that much mess but I think the psychology of it all is huge, a coffee maker doesn't make much mess either and you'll pay a gigantic premium at a coffee shop. How many months before you get a tip-top of the line cold press juicer that'll make juice out of any produce? With no subscription.

rdlecler1 9y ago
The idea itself isn't horrible. But investing $100m in a niche home appliance that hadn't yet been validated in the market was just dumb.