CEO of Silicon Valley's $400 Juicer Promises Refunds After Hand-Squeezing Demonstration (techcrunch.com) 146
Anthony Ha writes via TechCrunch: Jeff Dunn, the former Coca-Cola executive who became CEO of Juicero last year, has responded to a wave of coverage suggesting that the company's juice press isn't all that was promised -- and he's offering dissatisfied customers their money back. A Bloomberg report showed that Juicero's packs could be squeezed by hand, no expensive juicer required. Dunn's response? He doesn't deny that hand-squeezing is a very real possibility, but he does quibble about what you'll find inside, saying it's "nothing but fresh, raw, organic chopped produce" -- see, it's not juice yet because it hasn't been pressed. "What you will get with hand-squeezed hacks is a mediocre (and maybe very messy) experience that you won't want to repeat once, let alone every day," he argued. More importantly, he said, "The value of Juicero is more than a glass of cold-pressed juice. Much more." At the beginning of his post, Dunn said his goal was to "demonstrate the incredible value we know our connected system delivers." And if you're not convinced this is worth $400, well, there's another option for disillusioned Juicero buyers -- Dunn said the company's "Happiness Guarantee" (i.e. its return policy) has been extended to cover anyone who's ever purchased a Juicero Press. So for the next 30 days, anyone who's bought a Press should be able to return it for a full refund.
How can we give a fuck? (Score:1, Troll)
This article shouldn't be on this website.
Re:How can we give a fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a followup to the earlier article. It's relevant because it's coverage of an excellent example of the insanity in the VC world of anything that can claim to be "innovative" or "disruptive" technology even when it makes no damn sense.
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The problem is the products that are considered innovative and disruptive doesn't come from the company trying to make it, but from the users of it. Before it is proven at best a product can be a clever reinterpretation.
Re: How can we give a fuck? (Score:3)
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On the technology front, I can't quite figure out why exactly this device needs wifi. What purpose does it serve, if any? Is it just to enforce its own DRM?
Re: How can we give a fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
According to the article, it's so they can recall the packs. Here is the quote from the CEO:
"The first closed loop food safety system that allows us to remotely disable Produce Packs if there is, for example, a spinach recall. In these scenarios, we’re able to protect our consumers in real-time."
I don't know about you, but I have never been affected by a food "recall" and I don't know why they would anticipate such a need happening. I know there have been recalls of food (even the spinach in their example) but they are usually pretty narrow in scope and in my view shouldn't need a machine enforcing them. If you put bad spinach into your product, how about sending me an email, or calling me, or publicizing it through the media? Once I buy something I would like to do what I want with it, in most situations I no longer want the company involved. If I want to squeeze expired packets or packets from another manufacturer, that's my business.
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I have (been affected by a food recall).
It's a neat idea, but like you pointed out the same tech is capable of denying service to use other packs.
I admit, I like that the machine could cut me off if it was recalled, and if the vendor seriously never used it negatively that would be a selling point. Alas I am way to cynical to believe they wouldn't use it for nefarious deeds.
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Given that these only have a 5-7 day shelf life, presumably the manufacturer could just quickly notify you. At any rate, I can't help but imagine that this juicer wouldn't work at all if it had no internet connectivity, which would be just pathetic if so.
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I use my amazon dash wand (or whatever they call it) all of the time.
Running low on something, scan it, then at the end of the week put together a purchase.
I can see this being a great feature for the juicer (I believe it said it can read QR codes.
Like a juice, running low, scan it, when enough is scanned to make shipping worth it, place an order.
What I don't understand is the CEO requiring the machine to buy the packets, there must be money in the packets too, or it's a seriously flawed business model. Lik
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What I don't understand is the CEO requiring the machine to buy the packets, there must be money in the packets too, or it's a seriously flawed business model.
The juice packs are a huge profit center for them, as they are grossly overpriced. However, their investors have made it clear that they aren't interested in investing in a food company -- they want to invest in a tech company. It's the sales of the machines that are of interest to them, not the packs. So Juicero has to have some way to make sure that people will buy the machines.
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Well, that's stupid.
I'd think kurig for juice should be enough to attract investors.
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On the technology front, I can't quite figure out why exactly this device needs wifi. What purpose does it serve, if any? Is it just to enforce its own DRM?
Yes, it is. The other "benefits" they cite are just the things they hope will convince people otherwise. Last year, Doug Evans, the CEO of Juicero, said that the reason for internet connectivity is that they're learning from the experience of Keurig in terms of how to prevent third-party juice packs. Since the cost of the juice from the Juicero (ignoring the cost of the machine) is more than $4 per 8 oz, preventing cheaper alternatives is clearly essential to them.
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Since this very website published an article two days ago (https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/04/19/153208/silicon-valleys-400-juicer-may-be-feeling-the-squeeze, the link is actually in the original post), it shouldn't be unreasonable to follow up when the company in question tries to respond, no matter how you or I feel about this ridiculous product.
But if you want to be a high-six-digit-UID wiseacre, by all means, be that. I am happy to hear that Juicero responded to Bloombergs article and IMHO a pretty d
Re:How can we give a fuck? (Score:5, Interesting)
The original shouldn't have been here either. Unfortunately we've moved from technical articles to a dumping ground for tech blogs which are pretty much the lowest on the tech totem pole.
If you look at the article submissions its pretty clear that they should be considered spam as they are often submitted by the authors or site promoters e.g. MojoKid [slashdot.org], MirandaKatz [slashdot.org], BrianFagioli [slashdot.org], Trailrunner7 [slashdot.org], sciencehabit [slashdot.org], the_newsbeagle [slashdot.org], Esther Schindler [slashdot.org], wisebabo [slashdot.org], and a bunch of anonymous submissions.
I think there are two problems, not enough people are marking these as 'spam', and we as readers aren't submitting enough of the articles appropriate for the site.
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Hateful readers will abuse this. (Score:2)
I think there are two problems, not enough people are marking these as 'spam', and we as readers aren't submitting enough of the articles appropriate for the site.
The problem with this is that if you submit several articles that are marked as spam, slashdot will lock your account. Vicious readers use this effect to harass legitimate submitters.
This happened to me - I was locked out from having several legitimate articles marked as SPAM, but then Slashdot management reversed the lockout. Now I'm 'kinda jaded about submitting articles.
I have to wonder how many legitimate submitters have been locked out... and got disheartened or felt there was no way to appeal or were
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Hateful in what sense? I know there has been an unfortunate contingent of anti-science partisan nutters who have been trolling the site in recent years but other than that I'm not sure there is enough interaction for someone to have a personal dislike.
I've been moderating a lot of submissions and there are some where the summary is confusing to the point where it seems like spam yet the submitter appears to be a normal user. I give these the benefit of the doubt and not mark as spam (but maybe down vote) si
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IMHO a pretty decent reply
Interesting take. I thought the reply was equal parts hilarious and insulting. I wouldn't have thought that anyone could have considered it "decent".
Re:How can we give a fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
This article shouldn't be on this website.
Don't click it then.
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Oh fuck off.
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I'm sure there are not just one or two here who loss a few bucks on this or similar scams.
Another classy CEO (Score:1)
Re:Expensive bullshitmachine (Score:5, Informative)
I paid under $350 for a leading-brand horizontal masticating juicer and it cold-presses real raw vegetables that I buy from the store, no packs required.
It can even pure almond "milk" (juice) from raw almonds.
For convenience I use a potato slicer to prep most of the veggies. Quick, easy, fresh! No app or VC required.
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But can you turn on your juicer from your phone while you're in the driveway so that it's done when you open your front door? That's worth $400 to absurdly wealthy people.
Re: Expensive bullshitmachine (Score:1)
No it's not. Absurdly wealthy people have butlers and/or housekeepers to do that for them.
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But can you turn on your juicer from your phone while you're in the driveway so that it's done when you open your front door? That's worth $400 to absurdly wealthy people.
No it's not. Absurdly wealthy people have butlers and/or housekeepers to do that for them.
This is more likely aimed at moderately well-off people who buy drivel like this *because* they like to kid themselves that they're wealthy, and are most likely in serious debt as a result.
Reminds me of a BBC programme a few years back that looked at "nice" middle-class people with fairly well-paying jobs that were still up to their eyeballs in debt because they couldn't stop frittering their money away on inessential expensive nonsense. I watched this thinking "you're earning *how much* and you're still
Funny thing - that's most of us. We're the 2% (Score:2)
The funny thing about that is those people is that most of us on Slashdot are "those people", scaled down. $35,000 puts you in the top 2% of income - we're the richest people in the world. Yet many of us squander it, making silly purchases *daily* like spending $6.50 on a cup of coffee, when coffee at the grocery store is 25 cents.
There are a couple of Slashdot regulars who are wealthy (have a lot) with incomes below $100,000, but not many.
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But can you turn on your juicer from your phone while you're in the driveway so that it's done when you open your front door? That's worth $400 to absurdly wealthy people.
Assuming you manually loaded a pack earlier, so it could sit there, un-refrigerated all day, ready to deliver that room-temperature drink at that command - yum.
(Having pre-chopped fruit and/or veggies in single-serving plastic packs delivered in chilled containers to you door seems pretty wasteful, btw.)
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If I wanted to, yeah, I have a $6 wifi microcontroller on a breadboard next to me. Not sure what the relay costs, but not much. Thirty cents for a transistor to drive the relay, though that is overkill.
The harder part than turning it on from the driveway would be feeding the vegetables in from there.
But if I juiced it in the morning and put the juice in the fridge, then when I'm arriving in the driveway I can not use an app, and still walk into the kitchen and drink my juice right away without waiting. If I
Re: Expensive bullshitmachine (Score:1)
I paid nothing up front for my horizontal masticator, although it does need regular maintenance and twice daily cleaning.
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You actually physically go to a brick and mortar store to buy raw ingredients? What is this 2016? Why aren't you getting internet ordered pre packed juice packs to go with your pre processed meal replacement slop like the rest of us!
And let me preempt you, why would anyone this day and age have a lawn!
Note for the impaired: The above is sarcastic.
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I can buy a giant 40lb bag of "juicing carrots" for $8 at the big grocery store, or a 30lb bag for $9 at the neighborhood store. It is pretty good compared to over $3 for 12oz of pasteurized juice.
If I really really wanted to, I could use place an order online for a local bicycle courier to purchase and deliver the items. But that would be embarrassing.
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You only read the first two lines I posted didn't you.
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Don't derp all over yourself because I didn't let you write my comment for me.
Re:Expensive bullshitmachine (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news, VCs can be fucking stupid.
Or they think that consumers are fucking stupid, which is a pretty safe bet. The tricky thing is to find a way in which people will be predictably stupid which nobody has thought of exploiting before.
This thing is pretty much in the right ballpark; it's an attempt to exploit a cultural weakness: people want to add things to their lives that have the same effect as taking things out of their lives -- e.g. they want to eat something that will make them lose weight. Among the few things that actually fits that bill are vegetables. But if you're drinking vegetable juice you aren't eating vegetables any longer; you're eating pre-digested vegetable concentrate.
Trying to get the benefits of vegetables by reducing them to a convenient candy slurry you can slurp down quickly is futile, because many of the key benefits of vegetables that people are pursing are entailed in the fact that they take time to eat and are difficult to digest. But this does't make selling that proposition to consumers a bad idea. Setting consumer off on a futile quest can be profitable, which is why the cosmetic industry doesn't just pitch looking good -- it tells women they need to pursue eternal youth.
The trick is to package futility so it's convenient and price it/pitch it so that it is either an impulse buy or an object of intense longing. That's not easy. Keurig got all the parameters right, starting with the story they tell you about how your life will be different with their product. You get up in the morning in a caffeine-withdrawal fog, you pop the pod into the machine and your coffee comes out. Then you toss the pod in the trash. What they are selling is the will-o-the-wisp of convenience, and they've managed to sell it at a staggering markup. The truth is that it's just as easy to make that cup of coffee with an Aeropress, especially if you have an electric tea kettle, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper.
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That's not easy. Keurig got all the parameters right, starting with the story they tell you about how your life will be different with their product. You get up in the morning in a caffeine-withdrawal fog, you pop the pod into the machine and your coffee comes out. Then you toss the pod in the trash. What they are selling is the will-o-the-wisp of convenience, and they've managed to sell it at a staggering markup. The truth is that it's just as easy to make that cup of coffee with an Aeropress, especially if you have an electric tea kettle, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper.
You can easily use ground coffee and make it Neapolitan-style [ilsa-italy.it] or moka-style [bialettishop.com].
If you prefer the espresso, there are also al lot of electric coffee makers that use either ground coffee or ESE pods, like these [uk.com] or automatic grinding ones, like these [uk.com].
If you look at coffee advertising either you have the advents for ground coffees or for proprietary pods and machines. Some coffee makers that also sell ESE pods are advertising proprietary pods.
I have an ESE and ground coffee machine and a moka and I absolutely
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You forgot cowboy coffee too if simple is what you want. There's an art to cowboy coffee too which takes some fussing to perfect, but once you find what works for you there's nothing simpler.
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It really isn't as easy. I'm not saying using an Aeropress is hard. I own one myself and I think it's a great product. But if we use a car analogy an Aeropress is like a manual transmission, and a Keurig is like an automatic. It's not hard to see why people would be attracted to that ease - especially early in the morning before they've had coffee.
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Well, it's a matter of perception. Once you've mastered shifting a manual transmission it's not really any harder than an automatic, because the automatic is in your brain. Mindlessness gets a bum rap: the power of habit is that it makes things easy and the smart thing is to harness that power to make your life better. Now there's no reason to prefer a manual transmission over a modern automatic other than the pleasure of shifting if you enjoy such things, but there are plenty of reasons to prefer an Aer
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It's not hard to see why people would be attracted to that ease - especially early in the morning before they've had coffee.
I find it hard to see why people would be attracted enough for that ease to pay that much for it. The difference in effort between an Aeropress and a Keurig is pretty tiny.
Why would he care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why would he care? (Score:5, Insightful)
At $400, I suspect the profit is in both in this case.
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doubt it
tiny company and high overhead to manufacture a few units. someone has to pay for the factory and all the machinery to get manufacturing up and running
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Do you think it costs even $2 to pack some fruit into a pouch? That would be over $1400/year in profit.
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That sounds unrealistic to me. I think a more realistic assumption is that someone will spend $400 for the unit, use it a couple times, and realize that they've been had, and then stick it in the closet for a while until they finally give it away as a bonus gift for another sale during a garage sale.
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In this case they seem to be making quite a profit out of the $400 press too.
The real issue is that if the press is pointless then so are the packs. They add no value, because the extra 0.5oz your get with the press has no nutritional benefits and you can just use normal fruit and a normal hand press to get the same juice.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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In this case they seem to be making quite a profit out of the $400 press too.
I suppose the price point is due to the extra techology and infrastucure in minimal part, and because an high price makes them Veblen goods [wikipedia.org] where an high price increades the demand, because are luxury goods. If they sold the juicer at $40 I suppose nobody have talked about it.
The packs made of very inorganic plastic (Score:4, Insightful)
... which will take centuries to decompose in landfill. So much for the eco living BS.
Re:The packs made of very inorganic plastic (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, but you can recycle the packs! They'll even send you a *Free* mailing label to send them back once you fill a box with discarded bags. Of course, you need to cut the pack open and use your hands to remove the pulp remnants before you do that - literally scoop out the goo with your hands and throw it away.
And you've totally missed that this is a zero-cleanup device - it's perfect for when you don't have time to go through the messy process of cleaning a traditional juicer. (but, apparently, have time to go through the messy process of cutting open and cleaning out the bag)
Personally, I still can't get over the $1/oz pricetag on the juice packs that have a shelf life of a week.
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Why would he care if people used a machine or their hands to squeeze a $6+ per 8 oz serving juice pack? It's razors and blades - the profit is in the packs.
From what I understand, they only sell the juice packs to people who own the juicer. Because stupidity, I guess.
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Skip the juice packs also (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Skip the juice packs also (Score:5, Funny)
I drank so much juicero juice I no longer have sharp white things in my mouth, you insensitive clod!
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And it was so expensive you can't afford dentures!
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What? have you not noticed the new trend? Once upon a time it was about getting fast food, to shovel the food into your mouth as quickly as possible. None of that waiting time stuff. Now it's moving towards having food ready for intravenous consumption.
Chewing? That's so old fashioned. Why get vitamins and minerals from fruit, veg and meat when you can buy pills and drink nutritional slurries?
In fact, if the food came pre-digested so people don't have to waste time with all that eating and digesting wou
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No, it wasn't. But the company they just filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against is: https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
The funny thing is that the kickstarter juicer is clearly the superior product -- it's less expensive and lets you put your own mix of produce in the bag that it squeezes.
By hand? (Score:1)
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Waring blenders (the silver one you see in bars) work better and last longer - and are about 1/3 the price.
I have had both.
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Waring blenders (the silver one you see in bars) work better and last longer - and are about 1/3 the price.
I have had both.
While Waring makes some good products and start at around 200 vs 400 for a vitaMix, I find they are really 2 different products. If yo want to blend drinks a good Waring will do the job for less. However, I use my VitaMix for many other things, including grinding coffee beans, making soup, chopping vegetables, etc.; all things a blender will not do. It's best to match the device to its use.
vocabulary (Score:2, Interesting)
It's like "Locally-sourced Niman Ranch charcoal-seared pork chop". A load of enhancement words that just try to make you think something more than it is. It's a fucki
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When have you had juice that is not "cold-pressed"?
Today. Go look up how apple juice is made at industrial scale.
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How about the CEO eliminates the word "cold-pressed" juice from any public discussion, since it's pretty much meaningless and one of the menu-enhancing words to make people think something is more elaborate or valuable than it is? When have you had juice that is not "cold-pressed"? It's all fucking "cold-pressed". So stop saying that. It's like "Locally-sourced Niman Ranch charcoal-seared pork chop". A load of enhancement words that just try to make you think something more than it is. It's a fucking pork chop. It's fucking juice.
That's the beauty of marketing - every word has no meaning except in the person hearing them.
Once again a handjob brings down a ceo... (Score:5, Funny)
what the world needs (Score:2)
Still Not Worth It (Score:2)
I find his backpedaling to be funny.
"What you will get with hand-squeezed hacks is a mediocre (and maybe very messy) experience that you won't want to repeat once, let alone every day"
Here's the funny part: you squeeze or press the (mostly liquid) contents through an opening that is small enough to fit in your mouth. If it's too messy to squeeze, you could very easily just suck it out through the package neck, or by inserting a 1 cent straw.
But I still wouldn't buy even the pouches, as they are 10 times the cost of buying and preparing fresh, Organic fruits and vegetables myself. And they don't even have much of a time saving factor, either, as prepa
TJ Miller (Score:2)
I don't know why, but every time I see the word 'Juciero' I read it as 'Aviato' in TJ Miller's voice.
I MUST HAVE ONE (Score:2)
We are available (Score:1)
So everybody here is going "WTF? R U KIDDING ME?!?"
We should make ourselves available to VCs in everywhere. For a small fee, say $100,000, we could tell you what a dumbass idea something is and save you hundreds of millions of dollars!
instead of kickstarter, we'll call it shootdowner.com... hey the domain name is even available!
if you buy it, I expect a finders fee.
Here's the thing.. (Score:1)
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Even buying "fresh" from the store and not washing it and refrigerating it does not help to keep it more than a couple of days (say 3 or 4 at most in my case, YMMV).
You must throw away lots of food
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Oh, I suppose packets of veggies wouldn't last as long.
Carry on.
P.S. I boil the veggies in water before I toss them in the heap, cool the boiled water and use it on the plants (if you want).