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.
>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.
Reminds me of Chipotle. As they were switching to their organic supply chain, they ran a rather insulting, emotionally manipulative ad campaign [1] implicitly slandering any and all competing restaurants for not being organic. As with all organic food marketing, their product was presented as the only alternative to disgusting poison.
They even made it into a fucking phone game. [2]
And then this same supply chain was not properly quality controlled, and it poisoned a bunch of people. Empty Chipotle restaurants give me some measure of schadenfreude.
The Dasani contamination story is the icing on the cake: they took perfectly drinkable tapwater, deionised it, then added too much buffer to it, making it toxic. That takes some talent.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
Junk food is full of salt, sugar etc that is unhealthy, but gives you a temporary high.
The same is not true of a Nespresso pod coffee vs any other, so I can't see why it's "junk" coffee in the same way, other than as an object of derision.
Bah, just grinding some beans and using fresh milk gives you more enjoyable coffee for a lot less money AND it gives you the option to experiment with different kinds of beans and milk. (AND it makes you not dependent on a specific brand of coffee machine and cups (DRM basically).)
Seriously, this is something everyone can do for little investment of time (1 hour) to learn it.
Depends on the "coffee enthusiast". If you don't need the crema, an AeroPress and an electronic burr grinder are almost certainly the better choice. It's extremely convenient and the coffee tastes "full" without the bitter aftertaste.
it would be interesting to see the Venn diagram of coffee enthusiasts and nespresso drinkers. I'm picking that it would be like two widely spaced eyeballs, one sad and one happy.
How else would they gather the data required to "customize content for you that [they] think you might like, based on your usage patterns" and "provide aggregate usage information to [their] partners"?
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Nothing is really wrong per se with a $700 luxury juice product. And I'm sure the juice is fantastic. But a $700 juicer is like a $700 Swaine Adeney Brigg umbrella. The difference is that Swaine Adeney Brigg realizes that it's a niche vendor for a small market and doesn't raise $120 million to become The Next Big Thing.
A $700 juicer that you could use with your own ingredients would not be a problem (In fact I'm sure there are plenty of $700+ juicers on the market already[0]). A $700 juicer that can only use ingredients from one company (and only if they let you) and that gives you zero control over the content of the juice is a just dumb. If I was the sort of person that considered $700 reasonable for a juicer, I would absolutely also be the sort of person who would want to experiment with different juice ingredients and ratios.
[0]I know several people who own Vitamixes and only use them for juice/smoothies, and they cost more than $700.
"Personally I think they should embrace this and come up with a line of juice packets that are hand squeezable."
DING DING DING.
This was exactly my first reaction when this broke.
Companies also need to realize - You are guilty until proven otherwise. The internet masses may forget but they don't change their mind. So if you're going to say anything. Either apologize or run with the meme.
The founder made millions making and selling cold press juice bars on the east coast. This is just taking that idea and "bringing it to the masses". Calling it a scam is ignorant. I've heard of dumber ideas with less successful founders getting more money.
What functional differences are there between a squeezable packet and a bottle? Is there any reason these couldn't just be sold as juice bottles at Whole Foods?
If they didn't care about the press they'd not be charging $400 for it. There's not much added value here, it's a diced produce distribution system that tries to convince their customers it's a lifestyle thing.
* - 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.