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Juicero Is Shutting Down

fortune.com

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Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#91

Post by empath75 »

nickparker wrote: post #50
jpao79 wrote: post #19

I think they went about getting to market wrong. They should not have targeted end consumers with their equipment. They should have went after the convenience store market using the soda dispenser/automated latte/vending machine/icee making business model. Basically convince the store owner to have some refrigerated space dedicated to the pouches and then put the machine nearby for the customer to make their own juic…

The trouble is, I've always thought Juicero was a bank shot for digitized food in general. If that's the case, they needed to be serving consumers not businesses. The concept of food that's uniquely tagged and tracked from origin to consumption is pretty attractive - makes contamination a breeze to trace back, keeps you from cooking with rotten food since the machine knows to reject it, and it could automatically tra…

This is all textbook 'solution in search of a problem'

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#92

Post by rdl »

petra wrote: post #86

The thing i'm curious about: why did this raise $120M? And how much has already been spent, on what ???

Founding team were serial successes in an adjacent/directly-related industry. "Because they could" is probably the best explanation of why they did.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#93

Post by empath75 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #75
dv_dt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value does this add over stocking various drinks, in containers, in a refrigerated case with no machine? I've noticed that the digital multi-flavor soda dispensers create more customer bottlenecks compared the regular 4-6 nozzle dispensers. Having every customer figure out how to load a "juice pack" then operate the machine seems like it would have a similar inconveniencing effect.

> What value does this add over stocking various drinks, in containers, in a refrigerated case with no machine? You can market it as "fresh".

if it comes out of a bag, it's not fresh.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#94

Post by jerf »

campground wrote: post #27
fsckin wrote: post #14

AvE tore one of their machines down awhile back[0]. It's so over engineered, I was wondering how they'd ever make money back with their business model. [0] https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ

I always assumed that the revenue was going to come from selling the bags of fruit. The machine is easily and cheaply cloned, but a network for distributing prepackaged produce would be much harder to copy and provide the recurring revenue that really matters.

I've wondered if some of the problem here is how many people involved are so well off, the VCs especially, that they've forgotten what $40/week is to the vast bulk of people in the world, or even in the industrialized countries. That's on the order of 5% of the median total income and a great deal more than 5% of the median disposable income in the US. I wonder how many people just forgot how expensive that is and how small the market is for that level of extravagance.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#95

Post by [deleted] »

jpao79 wrote: post #19

I think they went about getting to market wrong. They should not have targeted end consumers with their equipment. They should have went after the convenience store market using the soda dispenser/automated latte/vending machine/icee making business model. Basically convince the store owner to have some refrigerated space dedicated to the pouches and then put the machine nearby for the customer to make their own juic…

[deleted]

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#96

Post by napolux »

Come on. Juicero was pure Silicon Valley craziness.

It’s strange they didn’t fail from the very beginning.

Tried it in a bar in San Francisco: slow as fuck, avg juice.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#97

Post by pavel_lishin »

empath75 wrote: post #93
pavel_lishin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What value does this add over stocking various drinks, in containers, in a refrigerated case with no machine? You can market it as "fresh".

if it comes out of a bag, it's not fresh.

Of course not, but you can still market it that way.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#98

Post by bllguo »

amelius wrote: post #87
bllguo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting concept... Tracking what you have to suggest recipes or restock - that's the feature that seems most appealing. But I don't think you need a network like you describe to accomplish that. You could have a "smart" fridge or some other device that can catalog your food for you thru imaging and scans. Hell, you could just input a list you type up yourself. Like you say, Amazon could easily do this. They alrea…

> Hell, you could just input a list you type up yourself. If you put that much effort into it, then you can just as well remember what you need to buy when.

Well the difference would be that the food gets delivered to you based on what you specify in the list..

But obviously that wasn't the main point. Using computer vision you can automate it.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#100

Post by dv_dt »

chx wrote: post #83
jpao79 wrote: post #19

I think they went about getting to market wrong. They should not have targeted end consumers with their equipment. They should have went after the convenience store market using the soda dispenser/automated latte/vending machine/icee making business model. Basically convince the store owner to have some refrigerated space dedicated to the pouches and then put the machine nearby for the customer to make their own juic…

In Europe, some grocery chains have orange press machines so you can make yourself some really fresh orange juice.

These make more sense to me. I've seen them in various places in the US too. The big difference is that they take in straight oranges from a bin...
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