
A struggling Rust Belt city pinned its revival on a self-chilling beverage can - danso
https://www.propublica.org/article/youngstown-chill-can
======
_bxg1
Why are these "promises" not drawn up as contracts, so the city can sue when
they aren't met?

Edit:

> Under these so-called enterprise zone agreements, delinquent companies can
> face penalties, including repayment of taxes and the termination of
> incentives. But in Youngstown, they rarely do. Officials have canceled 25
> agreements over the past three decades, usually the result of the business
> closing, relocating or failing to move forward with a project. Records
> indicate that the city sought back taxes from an errant firm on just one
> occasion, although it’s unclear if authorities ever collected; city
> officials did not respond to questions on the matter. As a result, dozens of
> private businesses have profited from public subsidies in a city that can
> scarcely afford them.

Unclear what the reason is

Edit 2:

> Now, Youngstown’s approach to economic development is coming under greater
> scrutiny as the city’s former finance director and a prominent developer
> prepare to face trial on public corruption charges. At the heart of the case
> are allegations that officials steered taxpayer funds to favored projects in
> exchange for bribes.

Ah. Yep.

~~~
function_seven
They are. But then the city just ignores the "stick" half of the carrot/stick
framework. Or they "lose" the contract[0]. Or they lost the sophistication war
with the company's lawyers, and get loop-holed out of their penalties.

It's all very slimy or amateurish, depending on how charitable you want to be
towards the principals involved.

What strikes me the most from this article:

> _A consumer twists a knob at the bottom of a can and activates a cooling
> apparatus. In about 90 seconds, the beverage temperature drops about 30
> degrees._

That's it? 30°F? So if my can is at 90°F, and I'd like a cold one, I can wait
a minute and a half and get a lukewarm 60° beverage. I mean, that's kinda cool
maybe, but I can't imagine it's worth whatever this costs.

[0] " _In response to public records requests, Youngstown provided cost
projections for just 30 of the 94 agreements it granted since 1991, saying it
could not locate many of the early contracts._ "

~~~
kube-system
A 30 degree drop sounds completely reasonable of a use case. That takes a can
from room temp to an acceptable refrigerator temp.

~~~
function_seven
But these are sold for outdoor use, like at the beach, or hiking, etc. If my
can is room temperature, the I am very likely indoors already, with a
refrigerator nearby. I'm not going to spend money on single-use chiller cans
for typical day-to-day beverages. I'll just buy the normal ones and stick 'em
in the fridge.

Sure, there's some scenario where I might find myself in a temperate climate,
and want a cold drink, and don't have an ice chest or fridge nearby. But does
that happen often enough to make this technology viable? I just don't see it.

------
yardie
> Stretched for resources, officials took part of the money from Youngstown’s
> water and wastewater funds, which had been earmarked for sewer and water
> projects. They also approved massive tax breaks for the property. And they
> spent an additional $360,000 to purchase and demolish the homes of roughly a
> dozen residents who lived within the footprint of the future Chill-Can
> plant.

That's not going to come back to haunt them.

> More than three years later, Youngstown is still waiting.

I wonder what's the hold up?

> Infrastructure problems, such as aging utility lines, have delayed the
> project...

Ah, there it is!

If there is a better definition of stupid I'm not sure what it is. It's been a
consistent story of towns shorting the budget to cover tax breaks, usually at
the expense of the school budget, to entice companies to migrate there. Then
when they do they find out the workforce isn't educated enough for the tasks,
or the infrastructure is in terrible shape, or it's simply a scam.

~~~
lotsofpulp
It’s because they’re trying to paper over a problem that has no solution -
sufficient number of people who can generate sufficient economic activity
don’t want to live in Youngstown, OH.

They have to pay people to get them to live there, but they can’t simply write
them a check for obvious reasons, so this is the way it happens.

This is true of many, many cities with flat terrain, hot and humid summers,
and cold and salty winters.

~~~
yardie
I wonder at what point do they turn to the Sicilian town model: Towns with a
shrinking demographic sell city-owned homes for $1 as an incentive for new
residents.

~~~
interestica
The name 'Youngstown' has some built-in branding too!

------
Animats
There's also a self-heating can startup.[1]

Self-heating cans have tried many times. Either the reaction isn't energetic
enough, and most of the can volume powers the heating, or it's too energetic,
and there's a safety problem. Or, after dealing with those problems, the can
costs too much.

Starbucks has accustomed people to paying $5 for a coffee. So there's a self-
heating can of coffee in market test.[2] With enough hipster adjectives and
color choices, they think they can charge $5 per can.[2]

[1] [https://www.poweredbyheatgen.com/](https://www.poweredbyheatgen.com/)

[2] [https://www.fox29.com/news/la-colombe-develops-innovative-
se...](https://www.fox29.com/news/la-colombe-develops-innovative-self-heating-
coffee-cans)

~~~
indymike
I bought a coffee beverage in a self-heating can at Walmart... La Colombe I
think. It was pretty good and nice and hot. It was a couple of bucks I think.

~~~
Karunamon
I remember buying a hot chocolate of that brand from Walmart. There was a
plastic/foil thing on the bottom of the can, you pressed it inwards, and the
can would heat up inside a minute or so. I remember taking one of those with
me when I had to work outdoors, it was quite nice.

Only saw them for a month or two. I wonder what happened?

~~~
Animats
Maybe Walmart isn't the right distribution chain for $5 cans of coffee.

------
adammunich
Yo, they have AI [https://chillcan.com/ai/](https://chillcan.com/ai/)

~~~
klmadfejno
Amazing

> The Joseph Company has plans in the very near future to implement many
> facets of Artificial Intelligence into a variety of business applicatins

typo

and then later

> Using the AI subset of Deep Learning, the Joseph Company will enable robotic
> arms capable of performing partially supervised learning to the pint of
> needing only minimal human interaction

Another typo... and sort of the exact opposite of what they promised the town
(jobs).

And then a font with horrific capital letters

~~~
mason55
Also...

> _By Matteo J. Joseph Director of Technical Operations and alumni of Stanford
> University School of Engineering Class of 2020_

So their "Director of Technical Operations" hasn't even graduated college yet?
Hopefully it's just a puffed up title and he's not actually in charge of
anything. Not that you need a college degree to be a good technical leader or
that young people can't be good leaders but I don't understand how he could
really be in charge of tech ops if he's been busy at Stanford.

~~~
HanayamaTriplet
Stanford is on quarters, so they could have graduated at the end of the winter
quarter in early April.

------
danso
ProPublica's president tweeted that this happens to be the 2nd self-chilling-
can story/scandal he's lawyered – the first being a 1986 WSJ investigation
into a "bogus company" promising a self-freezing can [0]. I've never even
heard of such a thing, and as a techie, I immediately think "Scam
Kickstarter/As sold on TV junk". But even reading today's story I don't
understand how Youngstown (pop. ~65,000) could do better due diligence with
today's Internet.

To be fair, a google search for "self chilling can" doesn't bring up stories
about the decades old scam. And there's no obvious fraud in the story – I
mean, the company apparently have an Irvine headquarters, which the city
lawyer visited when he was out there, as well as production prototypes. But
the novelty of the idea, and lack of actual market research (since they
haven't really mass produced it yet) makes this as crazy as $1M to slick but
ephemeral Indiegogo campaign.

And I guess I really have no idea how hard it is for Youngstown – suffering a
massive population and jobs downspiral for the past few decades – to attract
any big employer to the area, with any amount of incentive. It's not like they
can attract the likes of Foxconn (which incidentally, also has failed to live
up to promises in Wisconsin) or Amazon, especially with a budget too stretched
to offer more than a few million in tax breaks.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/dicktofel/status/1259788560917581829](https://twitter.com/dicktofel/status/1259788560917581829)

[https://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/01/business/sec-cites-
stock-...](https://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/01/business/sec-cites-stock-
fraud.html)

~~~
ClutchBand
Small towns and cities need to look at other means to survive than to try and
bring in some large employer or factory. Those can be boons, but banking on
industrialists or some keystone sort of solution is a sure way to fail.

I grew up a few minutes from Youngstown. These areas should focus more on
small businesses, agriculture and other things that make a lot of sense with
what is left there. Met with a ton of corruption at the local level, I don't
see much of anything happening without a real and renewed interest in
participation and accountability in our politics.

------
seph-reed
Looked it up a bit: [https://chillcan.com/](https://chillcan.com/)

From 10 seconds of research, it seems to use depressurization. Actually a sort
of cool idea... not sure why it didn't work out.

~~~
hinkley
Does Guinness still do the nitro in a can device? My recollection is that it
only reduced the temperature a few degrees below room temperature, which is
more or less the 'correct temperature' for Guinness anyway.

Soda, not so much.

~~~
res0nat0r
Yep, but I'm pretty sure that is just to get the nitro mouthfeel more than
anything temperature wise. The entire website looks absolutely terrible and
straight out of the 1990s. Whatever politicians allowed this were either in on
the take or should be booted for sheer incompetence.

Also isn't Youngstown the same city that had the big hubbub with Trump and GM,
and is still shutting down and being outsourced overseas?

~~~
adammunich
A lot of folks in the rust belt are really desperate for work. Personally I
think it's a good place for electronics manufacturing, the people are hard
working and have high attention to detail, procedure and process.

~~~
bsder
The problem is rarely the workers.

There are two problems here. Infrastructure and local business owners.

Infrastructure can probably be overcome.

Most local business owners, on the other hand, can basically die in a fire and
nobody will mourn them. The problem is that local business owners don't really
believe in _deadlines_. So, those business cards you needed before flying to
the conference? Yeah, not done yet. That vehicle repair that needed to be
completed before the end of the week, yeah, not really. I can go on and on.

And then shitty winter weather just adds extra uncertainty to the mix.

So, you wind up outsourcing to non-local companies that actually hold their
deadlines. At that point, why are you located where you are?

~~~
hinkley
"This place is a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!"

I suspect that when you are too far off the shipping lanes it sort of sucks
the motivation out of you to be fast because anything you do will take either
n hours ± 3 days. Busting your ass to do n/2 hours ± 3 days barely
accomplishes anything. Best case you get it to 2 days because you can get an
order in to your supplier before the daily cutoff.

The only thing that does reduce the uncertainly dramatically is having a
relationship with other companies in the same space that allows you to borrow
inventory back and forth, but one freeloader or egotist in the mix can screw
that up.

Point is, I wonder if perhaps the ethos hasn't caught up with the expansion of
overnight and 2 day shipping. Or was the over/under a scapegoat and something
else is really to blame.

~~~
bsder
It's actually somewhat logical. Mostly it's lack of customer money.

The small town areas have gotten used to the fact that 99.99% of their clients
care more about shaving off $5 than getting something done on a deadline.

Well, you get what you incentivize.

The _problem_ is that when someone shows up on a deadline, the systems can't
adjust to accommodate.

For example, I have been in the situation where a dealership was going to hold
my car for a week for a mistake that they made simply because they were going
to wait for their normal parts shipment because it would cost an extra $20 to
get that shipment in tomorrow from the next biggest city. Well, that's ducky,
I have to be at the airport 48 hours from now, and it's a 90+ minute drive.
Uber isn't an option--so I'm renting a car. Well, I'm probably willing to pay
that $20, but the system can't accommodate it (not entirely true--it can--if
you're big and loud like I am--but I'll still waste several hours yelling to
pay them $20 instead of simply paying $20 immediately and getting back to
work).

If you get enough of these annoyances piling up, the friction is simply too
high. Car repair is sluggish--you need to own an extra car. Cell connections
are erratic--you need local cell boosters. Internet connectivity is poor--you
may be trenching a lot of fiber to connect to somewhere useful or carrying an
expensive, wimpy satellite plan simply to cover outages. etc.

Business are hard and the default is failure--you don't need extra friction on
top of it.

------
hhs
According to the website, in 2015, a case study was published:
[https://chillcan.com/harvard/](https://chillcan.com/harvard/)

It seems inaccessible now. Is there a way to read it?

~~~
thephyber
Internet Archive link[1]

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190927072318/https://chillcan....](https://web.archive.org/web/20190927072318/https://chillcan.com/harvard/)

~~~
firloop
That contains all of the info linked above, but not the actual HBS case study.

~~~
hhs
Indeed, the actual case study is here:
[https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49194](https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49194).

But it seems unavailable to purchase.

------
yodon
> “Whenever you mention self-cooling cans, people’s eyes raise to the ceiling
> and they say, ‘Oh Lord, not again,’” John Nutting, editorial director of
> Sayers Publishing Group Ltd.

My sentiments exactly

~~~
dathinab
A self-cooling can is a luxury product but canned drinks are not.

It either needs to be super cheap or you need to somehow sell it in the high
end luxury segment or else it's unlikely to make money. (I think).

~~~
dathinab
I just found out that there _is_ a way to produce them not to expensive, but
it's also not very effective wrt. cooling. Given that as far as I know people
in the US tend to drink their soda quite cold it still not likely to work.
(IMHO)

------
rambleraptor
These are the same kinds of communities are just being ravaged by brain drain.
Their brightest students And their college graduates are being driven out of
town from lack of opportunity.

Those are the people who businesses want to hire. Instead, Youngstown’s best
chances of a brighter future are moving to Columbus nearby or the coasts to
places that already have plenty of advantages.

Remote work could change this. But, these types of communities really need to
embrace white-collar workers and not keep praying for a blue-collar comeback.

~~~
bilbo0s
> _But, these types of communities really need to embrace white-collar workers
> and not keep praying for a blue-collar comeback._

Lot easier said than done. Famously, Racine Wi tried to get legions of white
collar workers. The result was similar to what we see outlined in this
article. Only instead of spending millions to get blue collar jobs, in
Wisconsin we spent hundreds of millions to billions to get white collar jobs.
End result was the same, basically, a predictable crash and burn.

Here's reality. These places are a tough sell. And until these places are
willing to accept the fact that they are a tough sell they will continue to be
easy pickings for slick corporate attorneys in dark suits.

~~~
germinalphrase
I’m still angry about that.

