They had a lot of problems with mold in the past with the bottles. They don't mention that in the article - i guess they don't want to draw more attention to that disgusting issue. But the mold issue was probably an important factor in their bottle design as well.
Designing a Bottle
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Re: Designing a Bottle
#72Wouldn't a Boxed Soylent (sealed bladder in a box like boxed wine) be most efficient for shipping to consumer, and most efficient for consumption? If they are really trying to optimize every aspect, that seems like the solution (from my armchair!). My first thought when seeing the headline was "oh boy, Silicon Valley has been shopping something in a bottle for 1 year now, and now they're experts in bottle packaging i…
My take on the reasons that soylent didn't go with paper packaging (cartons or bag-in-box):
1. Paper packaging is much more fragile than plastic packaging. Boxes permanently dent, buckle when compressed, tear much more easily, etc, when enduring punishment that a plastic container will shrug off. Paper is also much less resistant to water damage. Paper-packaged products like milk cartons or juice boxes are usually transported in durable, rigid-walled crates, and would probably do much worse than the previous plastic bottle in a regular door-delivery use-case.
2. I've always found the relatively low rigidity of the whole assemblage to make sipping directly from a TetraPak sort-of-thing a little slippery and uneasy. The box can warp in all sorts of ways. Maybe I've just been burned by spilling milk on my shirt late at night trying to drink from the carton...
3. Bag-in-box specifically doesn't "scale down" to single servings that well. The experience of drinking out of a bladder within a larger box is less-than-ideal because the bladder can slosh around inside the container. Maybe if they aimed to sell bulk wet Soylent fluid, bag-in-box would be the way to go.
Re: Designing a Bottle
#73They had a lot of problems with mold in the past with the bottles. They don't mention that in the article - i guess they don't want to draw more attention to that disgusting issue. But the mold issue was probably an important factor in their bottle design as well.
Do you have a link to read more? Has it been solved? I sometimes buy these for road trips and I would like to avoid drinking mold.
Re: Designing a Bottle
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of plastic is this? Actually, I don't care; I wish disposable plastic in general would go away. Isn't part of their marketing greeness? But their model is keurig-for-calories? They _could_ refuse to do the plastic bottles and ship paper bags of powder...
A keurig type machine for soylent paper bags would be an interesting sight. Now I wonder how keurig even began convincing people to use their unconventional methods for coffee.
Fetishization of commodity. The marketing and packaging is designed to tick those "satisfying consumption" boxes in peoples brains.
Re: Designing a Bottle
#75Inacceptable! Unfortunately "designers" nowadays feel more like self-loving "artists" rather than problem-solving engineers - we need better education!
"Inventing a plastic bottle in 2017" - this could be joke, but the ignorance behind it makes me angry.
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782/tab-pdf
Re: Designing a Bottle
#76Wouldn't a Boxed Soylent (sealed bladder in a box like boxed wine) be most efficient for shipping to consumer, and most efficient for consumption? If they are really trying to optimize every aspect, that seems like the solution (from my armchair!). My first thought when seeing the headline was "oh boy, Silicon Valley has been shopping something in a bottle for 1 year now, and now they're experts in bottle packaging i…
Yeah I thought they'd just go with a tetra Pak and move on But it would t make a nice blog post of be as distinctive brandwise
Wouldn't tetra pak be even more space saving?
Re: Designing a Bottle
#77Same! Complete! Nutrition! More efficient! Please, it’s a bottle design. Is Soylent trying to create a following like Apple fans? At least Apple makes good products.
It needs one for such a niece product
Re: Designing a Bottle
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
The blog post cites visible damage from door delivery shipping as the major design issue that they were trying to solve. (Paper) cartons are much weaker and less resilient than plastic bottles. Think about the number of times you've seen dented or folded chicken soup cartons on supermarket shelves... I've certainly seen plenty of Safeway soup boxes to avoid because of obvious exterior damage. I don't think cartons wo…
I've never really seen milk cartons delivered towards schools or shops (think juices and milk) be damaged all that often, but I'm not watching their deliveries either! I just imagined it was a problem already solved for non-pressurized drinks.
Then you're blessed with good fortune! Unfortunately I remember getting my lunch milk carton already sticky and wet from other damaged cartons in the elementary school cafeteria many times. Only the inside was waxed, so once one carton sprung a leak, the rest would weaken from the leakage, and sometimes when you'd go to pick yours up, it would tear and spill. Yuck.
Re: Designing a Bottle
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I thought they'd just go with a tetra Pak and move on But it would t make a nice blog post of be as distinctive brandwise
Wouldn't tetra pak be even more space saving?
Yes, the footprint of a tetrapak would be completely square, no rounded corners wasting space.
It also makes for much more compact trash as you can fold and reseal them almost completely flat. Plastic bottles can be "compressed" but they still waste significant space
Re: Designing a Bottle
#80Why not just go with a square carton design? Now the whole rectangle is full and they're mostly recyclable (I think?). It would probably also normalize Soylent into something like milk.
They are selling a lifestyle and an experience more than potions of liquified nutrients. As such the packaging, the marketing, the blogs about it are very important (maybe even more important than what's in the bottle). It's a bit like people go and pay $5 for a cup of coffee in a coffee shop. They are buying the experience more than the coffee.
> ..$5 for a cup of coffee in a coffee shop. They are buying the experience more than the coffee.
Slightly OT but for me it's the reverse. If I go to a really good gourmet café then yes it may be expensive and yes, a component of the price is the experience (usually these cafés are nice places to hang out in) but most of it is the coffee itself. I cannot buy a coffee that good for less money in another place, hence I am willing to pay the price they are charging.