
How Juicero's Story Set the Company Up for Humiliation - craneca0
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/juicero-lessons/523896/?single_page=true
======
xg15
I found that bullet boint list of Juicero's supposed added value the most
amazing part of it all:

* - The first closed loop food safety system that allows us to remotely disable Produce Packs if there is, for example, a spinach recall. [...]

\- Consistent pressing of our Produce Packs calibrated by flavor to deliver
the best combination of taste and nutrition every time.

\- Connected data so we can manage a very tight supply chain [...]*

So according to the CEO(!) the added value for end-users(!) is 1) DRM, 2)
bullshit and 3) tracking.

My hunch is that this mindset would explain a lot of the more baffling IoT
devices out there - but I haven't seen it stated so openly before.

~~~
Chris2048
No 2 might be something like; the Press doesn't over-extract juice by pressing
with _exactly_ with the right amount of pressure, ala espresso machines.

However, I doubt this is actually true - I've not heard of pressed juice over-
extraction before.

------
Animats
In 2004, the Coca Cola Company tried to launch "Dasani", in the UK. Dasani is
tap water run through a de-ionizing plant, after which flavoring is added.
They were laughed out of the business.[1] Not only did Coca Cola not try
again, they gave up on launching in France and Germany. Now that was a
humiliation.

An even worse failure was Odwalla's "Killer Juice". Odwalla made a big deal
about their juice being "natural" and not pasteurized. Then they had a
contamination problem. One person died, 66 sick, sales down 90% afterwards.
The company was eventually acquired by the Minute Maid unit of Coca Cola. All
product is now pasteurized.

[1]
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3809539.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3809539.stm)

~~~
midgetjones
The advertising for Dasani also proudly proclaimed that it was "full of
spunk", which has a very different meaning in the UK to the US.

~~~
Chris2048
There's a certain controversially-named energy drink brand that could adopt
that line :-)

~~~
Overtonwindow
Are you referring to the British made energy drink .... "pussy" ?

~~~
Chris2048
Yes, or it's asterix-ed reincarnations.

~~~
Overtonwindow
LOL I've yet to get my hands on this. The energy drink I mean... I feel like
you could sell the empty cans to some countries as souvenirs.

~~~
Chris2048
Absolutely can

------
niftich
This is perhaps a great example that proves that not all publicity is good
publicity.

While they flew under the radar, they weren't widely mocked, and they might
even have succeeded in building a following. After all, on face value, K-cups
are similarly ridiculous, where a pricey appliance is used to make a single
serving of product from an even pricier single-use packet, complete with DRM
where they were locking out unofficial cups.

And yet, Keurig has sold a lot of their brewers and officially-licensed cups,
and it turns out the single-serving model was an advantage rather than a
drawback.

It's undeniable that Juicero's own promoters can lay on the spiritual-tinged
marketing drivel thick, and they were swiftly slaughtered in the court of
public opinion with one slickly-produced viral video. Perhaps the lesson is,
even if your model is pure BS, don't do something that could be mocked in
three minutes, and used to entertain at your expense.

~~~
Nullabillity
A Keurig/Nespresso at least does some sort of brewing, which is arguably more
convenient than doing it yourself (though I don't own one myself).

Juicero was just a slower, less convenient, and more expensive way to open a
juice bottle.

~~~
moomin
I've heard it said by coffee enthusiasts (at least, those prepared to consider
Nespresso for thirty seconds) that Nespresso/Keurig are one of the best ways
to make coffee at home if you don't want it to be a hobby.

~~~
bipson
Oh no, I strongly doubt any coffee enthusiast would say such a thing.
Nespresso is simply not good coffee. It is just terribly convenient, well
marketed as being great, and OK if you don't know any better.

Once you had better coffee (e.g. any Jura machine can make better coffee), you
somehow don't want that stuff anymore... It is like junk food. You might be OK
with it, but it is simply not enjoyable.

And it is simply _idiotic_ generating that much trash each time for a fake-
crema coffee.

~~~
Chris2048
> Once you had better coffee, you somehow don't want that stuff anymore

Unless you don't have the time to grind, tamp, extract etc every morning for a
single cup, compared to the Nespresso which is good enough (or, at least
better than instant).

I have a proper Gaggia machine with heated head etc, but I don't care to fire
it up every morning - a Nespresso machine can pour while I do something else,
so takes less than a minute overall.

> generating that much trash

Other than the grounds, there is just the pod, which is aluminium and
recyclable - in fact, you get credit for returning them.

~~~
bipson
> there is just the pod, which is aluminium and recyclable - in fact, you get
> credit for returning them.

Which doesn't change much: recycling aluminium requires a lot of energy. The
pods are filled with grounds, so you need to wash them. Coffee grounds are
degradable and can be even used immediately without composting. The added
weight of packaging aggregates. A lot of people don't care about returning
them. We don't know if Nespresso recycles them or all of them.

Further, the price your paying per cup is an insult. You are getting mediocre
coffee while paying hipster levels.

Besides pure laziness and indifference regarding the good things in life, I
don't see any reason why drinking Nespresso by choice is ever a good idea.

~~~
Chris2048
You can cut out the grounds and let them dry as usual, but I get your point on
the aluminium - recycling alu is only eco compared to making new alu - it's
still energy intensive compared to not using any capsule at all.

> the price your paying per cup is an insult

What do you pay?

Besides, the _true_ innovation here is the standardisation of pod coffee, not
Nespressos specific supply chain.

> Besides pure laziness and indifference regarding the good things in life

too binary. the difference isn't worth the time every morning. If you want to
slander everyone that agrees with this value judgement as 'lazy', so be it.

------
HappyTypist
I lost this when I watched this 2 minute video on how to make juice:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i0UugILBJg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i0UugILBJg)

"Your Juicero needs to be connected to Wifi to make juice"

WTF?

~~~
kuschku
The bags have DRM, and it’s used to prevent you from _accidentally_ using bags
after they’ve gone bad, or _accidentally_ using third-party bags.

~~~
nannal
If it's the same DRM as kenco can you just take off the QR code, tape it over
the camera and then squeeze anything you want over wifi using your $400 wifi-
enabled squeezing machine.

I guess that would only work during the sell-by period of the bag, but there's
a chance their QR codes are forgeable.

~~~
kuschku
That’s why it needs internet: The QR code is a UUID queried via the API,
returning the bag’s info, best by date (after which the QR code will be
disabled), and so on. Each bag can only be registered with one juicer at a
time.

It’s a surprisingly well-engineered DRM system for such a shittily engineered
juicer.

In fact, the DRM system might be the only good part in this entire device,
from an engineering perspective.

------
quesnel
They should have used the effects of artificial scarcity and marketed the pulp
squeezer to offices, stores, airports, etc. There are plenty of YouTube
vloggers that can stumble upon one of the squeezers at a store or an airport.
Then they can sell it to consumers.

The best thing about this story is the Juicero's CEO saying that people that
squeeze their pulp bags are hackers [1]

 _So when I saw this week’s headlines about hacking and hand-squeezing Produce
Packs, I had a one overriding thought: ”We know hacking consumer products is
nothing new. [...]”_

and then people mocking the juice hackers as jackers on Twitter [2].

[1] [https://medium.com/@Juicero/a-note-from-juiceros-new-ceo-
cb2...](https://medium.com/@Juicero/a-note-from-juiceros-new-ceo-cb23a1462b03)
[2]
[https://twitter.com/XEECEEVEVO/status/855152667722526720](https://twitter.com/XEECEEVEVO/status/855152667722526720)

------
argonaut
Yes, it's all bogus marketing, but people mocking Juicero should be reminded
that bottled water and luxury fashion goods of any kind are all multi-hundred
billion dollar markets, not to mention any of the trillion (?) dollar
commodity prepared foods segments. Many of these industries differentiate
through intellectually-nonsensical lifestyle marketing.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
Well at least with water, there are actually countries where drinking water
straight from the tap may not be safe and bottled water is the norm. But the
water is much cheaper than what you generally find. And you don't need to be
connected to the internet.

------
wolf550e
from [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-20/juice-
mac...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-20/juice-machines-and-
red-flags) :

Of course Juicero could probably make a nice living selling $8 juice packs
without bothering with a fancy machine. But then it wouldn't be a tech
company. One investor told Huet and Zaleski that "their venture firm wouldn’t
have met with Evans if he were hawking bags of juice that didn’t require high-
priced hardware." You can be a hardware company or a software company or a
platform company or a cloud company or an internet-of-things company, but you
can't be a food company.

------
Zelmor
It was a stupid, consumerist idea of a product. The investors deserve every
penny lost on this one. In no way or fashion would this product further
humanity. It only generates even more waste. Also, it's staple IoT madness
with vendor-lock.

------
a_imho
Paywalled, web link does not work for me, site hijacks back button.

~~~
_mikz
It just complains about Ad-blocker to me. Disabling it works.

~~~
Overtonwindow
Use Brave!

------
employee8000
I know a couple of people that work at Juicero and unlike 99% of you I've
actually tried the juices. To call it a scam is harsh. There are legitimate
concerns with supply chain, what foods can be mixed together because of
acidity and preservation, etc. I've tried a bunch of the juices, and I didn't
like many of them but I could see how people who were into the green juice
would find it appealing. The pomegranate was really delicious however but The
yield was really low. I don't think that's one you could just squeeze with
your hands. I think they should have done a blind taste test to see if the
press actually had any value over hand squeezing because some of the
ingredients would be harder to squeeze.

The price used to be higher for the press, I think it was $700-800 which I
thought was ridiculous. I even made the point that they could replace the
press with two books and someone standing on it. The wifi connectivity was
dumb and you really have to be dumb to think that was useful. The drm and
"checking" of the packets was a little more than an excuse to not squeeze
anything more than their own packets.

But the juice itself is definitely something that is superior if you're into
that juice. I heard a ton of celebrities love it, but you can't sustain a
business with just celebrities. As with most things like this, I doubt they
care as much about the press as the subscription to the juice packets.
Personally I think they should embrace this and come up with a line of juice
packets that are hand squeezable.

~~~
mathw
But they could have made a product which squeezes juice in precisely the same
way but let you fill up with your own choice of chopped vegetables. They could
have made a product which didn't have unnecessary WiFi connectivity and didn't
only work with proprietary sealed packets that cost $5 for a glass of juice,
when you can buy it ready made in bottles for the same price.

I'd think it was the printer ink model of revenue generation, but given that
they're charging so much for the "Press" in the first place it becomes
unacceptably offensive.

Plus you know all the wellness bloggers with enough money to advocate this
kind of thing will at some point find an issue with the pre-packed selection,
so if they want to court that market it's surely better to let them make their
own mixtures, then they can put as much of this week's fashionable superfood
berry in it as they want.

~~~
employee8000
Lol $5 per glass? More like $10. But if you went to some of the juice bars it
would cost $15. So the advantage would be having it in your own home with no
mess.

Don't mistake me for a champion of this product. I think largely it's an
unsustainable idea, but that doesn't mean the company is a scam. They are
doing honest work there and they do believe that green juices are healthier
for everyone. I think it's still too expensive and too specialized. They
initially only wanted to do green juices which tasted like mud or grass to me.
Only after they branched into fruits like pomegranate did I think the taste
was better.

The difference with the packets are that you don't need to do it yourself, buy
the ingredients every day, and make a mess. Also if you don't chop the veggies
in a precise and consistent size, I'm sure you could damage the press.

The packets are completely fresh with no preservatives so it's not something
that's easy to achieve on its own. There are issues with mixing different
foods together and how fresh they last due to acidity etc so you can't just
mix them together and expect them to last a week.

~~~
6nf
I'd like to do a pepsi challenge with a freshly squeezed juicero juice vs one
that was pre-squeezed before packaging (i.e. the juicing machine is pointless)

