
Why Juicero’s Press Is So Expensive - pccampbell
https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensive-6add74594e50
======
freehunter
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.

~~~
quasse
I am a mechanical engineer (a machine design engineer in fact) and this press
looks like would happen if you hired 30 of 23-year-old me fresh out of
college, gave them an effectively unlimited budget and said "make me the
swankiest press you can imaging". Lots of clever ideas and fancy machined
parts with no thought for cost savings or whether there's an easier way to do
something.

15A 330V DC motor? To squish a bag of pulp?

The best things I've gotten career and skill wise from more senior engineers
has been the feedback where they looked at a design and said "looks fancy, but
what were you thinking?".

This machine looks like it needed some more grizzled manufacturing veterans to
inject some sense into the design process.

~~~
falcolas
I think you've also just well described so much of startup software
development as well. Great ideas, a grand pool of undiluted computer science
theory, nobody going "why do you need 120 servers to run a webpage?"

~~~
jacquesm
> Great ideas, a grand pool of undiluted computer science theory, nobody going
> "why do you need 120 servers to run a webpage?"

I actually untangled a mess like that (only it was some 200+ VMs on 20 fancy
HP blades + SAN to serve 5000 users daily), don't even joke about it.

If you arrived with something the size of a semi-trailer to squeeze some juice
people would likely ask you if you're all ok in the upper department but if
you do the same in computer land they call you 'architect' and promote you. So
much of that complexity is hidden and your average business owners have no
clue what is required and what is overkill.

~~~
ams6110
So why is it then that 23 year old engineers are building everything in SV? It
certainly explains a lot about what I see happening there.

~~~
onion2k
Hiring ten 23 year olds and paying for 20 servers is cheaper than hiring five
40 year olds and paying for 3 servers.

It only becomes a problem when you need to stop burning money, because you
can't easily reduce the hardware cost.

~~~
repomies691
Also have to take into account that hardware is ridiculously cheap nowadays.
You can rent quite a lot of raw computing power with the salary of one
engineer.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Not to mention one engineer can spin up and operate a big horizontally scaling
cluster.

------
mohn
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
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.

~~~
blackguardx
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.

~~~
tacostakohashi
Right... also, during a tear-down, he'll occasionally leap to some conclusion
about how something was done, complain about it / praise it, and then
completely contradict himself a few minutes later (or in a text overlay) once
the facts emerge. Still, it's good entertainment.

------
guelo
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
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.

~~~
deegles
It tastes better, but is juice (of any kind) _actually_ good for you? I'm not
convinced.

~~~
senorjazz
Of course it is good for you _. Vegetable more so (I would imagine) but fruit
juice as well. Would it be better to eat the fruit and veg, sure. But is
having juice better than nothing. Yes. Is it better than some other liquid
refreshments. Yes.

Is it as good for you as some would have you believe, no. Do some over market
it as a cure all. Sure. That doesn't mean, it is bad for you_*

* to an extent __amount and fruit depending.

~~~
ams6110
It's probably better to avoid the fruit entirely. Modern fruit has been bred
to increase sugar content far above what was natural. If you can fine real
wild berries those are probably OK but they will taste sour if you're used to
supermarket fruit.

~~~
oasisbob
Have a source for that? Or even an example of a fruit where it's the case? It
certainly isn't true for apples - heirloom varieties often have higher sugar
content than modern apples. Modern apples taste sweeter than many heirloom
varieties due to lower acidity, not higher sugar content.

Many modern cultivated fruits don't contain nearly as much sugar as they could
because they're picked early, before their prime.

In the Northwest, Rubus armeniacus is an invasive species which has never been
heavily bred, and is one of the sweetest fruits you can find - especially in
late summer.

Grapes are one of the only fruits which have enough sugar to make wine with
unless you use chaptalization. (Though some berries like Blackberries get
close.)

------
Animats
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/)

~~~
unclesaamm
Not sure what the Portland Loo comparison is meant to suggest -- from what
I've read, they also cost ~130k, and at least in a few cases, much more:
[http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sdut-
portl...](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sdut-portland-
loos-sticker-shock-restroom-2014dec26-story.html)

------
TD-Linux
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
> 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
1.5a 330v would make more sense (or in this application, less nonsense).

------
ChuckMcM
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.

~~~
astrodust
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.

------
Nition
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."

~~~
henrikschroder
My biggest problem with the product is that the QR-scanner, the wifi, the app,
all of that has the single purpose of sometimes saying "no" when you press the
button to press a pack of juice. That's all it does.

If you remove all of that crap, you get an overengineered juice-press that
never says no, and always presses the packet you put into it.

Nothing is more infuriating than machines that randomly say no and refuse to
do the thing they're supposed to do. The consumer value of all of that crap is
negative.

"But the machine can alert you if the juice pack expired or was recalled"

Look, if you can't read the best-before date already printed on the pack, and
if you can't smell the juice and tell if it's funky or not, you are a useless
human being. I'm sorry, but you are.

~~~
Nition
IMO the even worse part is that you can only use their own packs at all. You
know the company is most likely going to be gone within five years and then
you're stuck.

The recall thing is so ridiculous though. The CEOs letter mentioned a
hypothetical "spinach recall" that you would want to know about. Never in my
life have I had to worry about my _vegetables_ getting recalled. Why on Earth
would I be looking to buy a product that can tell me about something that in
my experience never happens?

~~~
jsymolon
Actually, in the past few years there has been a number of packaged vegetable
recalls.

Last ones were for packaged spinach.

~~~
ansible
Yes, we've gotten a couple notices from Costco about recalls on frozen
vegetables.

------
bane
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.

------
toddmorey
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
They did use an elegant crank mechanism, but it was in the funding model.

------
IAmGraydon
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
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.

------
godmodus
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
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
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
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!

~~~
netsharc
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.

~~~
ennuihenry
It wasn't a kid though. The guy had some pedigree because he opened a chain of
juice bars back in the early 2000s. He's also been in contact with Jony Ive
and Bill Gates, so I'm sure his connections helped him.

------
daemin
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.

~~~
exergy
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
> 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.

------
Taniwha
A Note From the New CEO of Lobstero

[https://www.somethingawful.com/news/juicero-lobster-
pouch/](https://www.somethingawful.com/news/juicero-lobster-pouch/)

------
scandox
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
> 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.)

~~~
gwern
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
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.

~~~
planteen
I got quite a few as a nerdy middle school kid who frequented RadioShack. I
always thought I'd come up with something interesting you do with them too.
Never did...

------
archagon
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
No, that would be the selfie stick

[http://imgur.com/gallery/WJsAZ](http://imgur.com/gallery/WJsAZ)

~~~
Neliquat
Selfie sticks work wonderfully... for pointing out distracted and self-
absorbed people to the rest of us. And taking shaky selfies too!

------
gyrgtyn
Looks like they are getting a bunch of free press.

~~~
johansch
I lol'ed.

------
mianos
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.

~~~
astronautjones
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

------
dsmithatx
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
Sounds like the design of the Champion juicer, those things were great. Lasted
forever.

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

~~~
astrodust
It's like a museum of flaws and lessons about what not to do that will be
educational for other companies.

~~~
ironchief
Absolutely. In a Design for Manufacturing class, this extreme example will be
shown on day 1.

------
PaulHoule
$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.

------
pfooti
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?

------
xg15
(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
Except a maker could just source the parts alone cheaper, unless they bought
it used, and then there goes the incentive to the mfg.

------
kazinator
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)

------
cateye
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
> 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-v...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-valley-s-400-juicer-may-be-feeling-the-squeeze)

------
jacquesm
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.

------
dreamcompiler
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
Nespresso seems to be doing well. I bet they sold it as "Nespresso for juice".

~~~
coredog64
What if they went one step further and hired part time drivers to deliver the
juice packs: Uber for Nespresso for juice.

------
huangc10
> 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.

------
3xnis
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
You can buy juice at whole foods....

~~~
henrikschroder
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.

------
PascLeRasc
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...](https://blog.bolt.io/keurig-accidentally-created-the-perfect-
business-model-for-hardware-startups-18e9c3b4e796)

------
Steeeve
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
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.

~~~
Steeeve
> 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.

I can squeeze a honeydew by hand and get plenty of juice. Pomegranate not so
much. Kale, not at all. Celery? Maybe a little, but a few drips compared to
what a juice press would give me is not at all in the same ball park. Do any
of the juice packs contain hard to squeeze fruits or vegetables? The exercise
is left to the reader, who can't do their own research without a $750 spend.
Poor form.

> Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form?

I don't know which Uber article that you are referring to, but Uber is in the
midst of a sea of bad press and is plenty flush to buy the help of a quality
PR firm to see them through it.

Unroll.me - if you go after them, you should talk about how Mozilla uses data
along with chrome, facebook, the television networks, netflix, etc. It's lazy
to villify a single firm when there's an industry full of questionable
practices.

> 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

Not every product produces value. In the world of IT, software in general, and
most certainly "cloud services", value should absolutely be questioned more.
But it's certainly hard to be a consumer watchdog while at the same time doing
the same thing. Especially when your biggest source of revenue is a series of
other companies doing the same thing.

> But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't
> some "fake news" drive for clicks.

Are you sure about that? The video looks to me like it was created with the
intent of going viral.

------
lwander
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
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
Oh that's fascinating - thanks!

------
grappler
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
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
Yeah, I would wait for a judgement from somebody like Wirecutter or Consumer
Reports on whether such a product is likely to hold up.

------
cJ0th
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.

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

------
2muchcoffeeman
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.

------
issa
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.

~~~
Steko
> 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.

------
carsongross
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations"

\--Orson Welles

~~~
nemo1618
"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

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

------
lips
I bet this was really fun to work on.

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

------
gcb0
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.

------
maverick_iceman
What a Rube Goldberg contraption.

------
maxxxxx
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.

~~~
nameless912
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.

~~~
hibikir
Their market is people that don't cook all that often, and want to cook
relatively fancy things. It's people that cook so rarely that they throw away
half of the groceries they buy, because they don't cook enough, and the dishes
they make don't make sense together, from a home economics perspective.

I do my best to cook traditional Northern Spanish food for myself (well, as
close as I can given the available ingredients). There's very little food
waste, precisely because so many recipes either use long lived ingredients, or
just reuse them. Some are built using another dish's leftovers as an
ingredient. This makes it very easy to just have an idea of the stock we need
for certain kinds of ingredients, and make a high percentage of the shopping
list just an exercise of comparing what we have with our ideal stock.

This only works, however, because we aren't really looking at dishes
individually, and we cook almost every meal. Someone that cooks once a week,
and isn't thinking about efficiency, in either ingredients or time spent
preparing, will end up spending a whole lot more and eat less. Unfortunately,
there's no money in teaching people how to understand a kitchen like this, and
how to add recipes that will both add variety while minimizing waste.

~~~
fancy_pants
This is an interesting idea, especially for someone like me who cooks nearly
every meal but still watches rarely-used ingredients die a slow fridge death.
Are there any books you would recommend specifically for this kind of reusable
cooking plan?

------
snackai
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.

------
droithomme
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.

~~~
fooey
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"

~~~
astrodust
Many juicers have two stages: Shredding and juice separation via pressing or
centrifugal force.

The centrifuge approach works surprisingly well, the pulp that comes out of a
good one is quite dry, all the juice is gone. It yields a lot more juice out
of a carrot than you'd expect.

This "press" simply does the last step in juicing. The hard work of shredding
is already done.

