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Juicero Is Shutting Down

fortune.com

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Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#251

Post by icebraining »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #40
nxsynonym wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yup pressing/blending fruits destroys any nutritional value. You're left with basically sugar water. Yes it's "natural sugar", but it's still not the healthy food people make it out to be.

yup pressing/blending fruits destroys any nutritional value That is utter nonsense. Yes, whole fruit is healthier than blended fruit or juice. No, that does not mean there is no nutritional value.

Why is whole better than blended? Assuming you blend everything that you'd otherwise eat, that is.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#252

Post by microcolonel »

hwillis wrote: post #188
microcolonel wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, it is shredded vegetation in a bag which is squeezed by an amazingly overengineered solid steel screw press with giant, beautiful one-piece plastic moldings on the back. It is also true that you can extract the vast majority of the fluid without the press just fine. It is not "chopped" into "smaller" pieces, but literally shredded.

Nope; check it out: https://vimeo.com/214030931 That's mostly carrot (+lemon and orange) but still it's very dry. See also AvE's video[1] where he opens a bag and its full of processed but still largely intact pomegranate. You can squeeze most of a first glass out by hand[2] but that's about it. To get the rest out a press really is necessary- but Juicero isn't just a press. It's massive machined aluminum billets and…

> Nope

I don't know about you, but that cleanly fits my definition of "shredded".

> edit: also this... enthusiastic gentleman, who is pretty enthusiastic about the contents of the bag[3]

Yeah, discountjuicers.com guy is a real hoot. Good info too.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#253

Post by NoPiece »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #239
smartician wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see a juice shop sprout at every corner of your yuppie neighborhood, and you read about the success of Keurig, who married the coffee machine with the consumer-level printer, which allows you to control which consumables go into your machine, and you think that this can somehow be translated to said fresh juice craze. So I don't think it's completely crazy. But a back-of-the-envelope calculation should have shown…

Juice is not addictive as caffeine, perhaps that’s why.

Maybe not enough for Juicero, but sugar is addictive. Their 'juices' had a lot of sugar (via fruit) in them.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081210090819.h...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/05/is-sugar-wor...

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#254

Post by briandear »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #238
johnhenry wrote: post #205

I simply do not understand the mindset of silicon valley investors. I used to think that perhaps they had some edge that helped them to get behind successful companies, but looking at this -- how much money they raised and from whom -- I think that there are just a bunch of people who have so much money that they can afford to risk throwing it away on something that will not likely succeed. Can someone watch the vide…

What I don’t understand is how they flopped after getting so much publicity? Was the price too high? Didn’t manage to turn PR against them? Was it designed to fail? I think the product is awesome in every possible way. The model worked for Nespresso (Kruger or smth in US), printers, dishwashers, Soylent, etc.

Soylent? No normal person I have ever met in my life has ever heard of the stuff. Slim Fast — everyone has heard of that, but Soylent? That’s an ultra niche product with little mass market appeal. Is it successful? Sure, but about as successful as a company that produces kits for growing orchids. The whole concept of Soylent is essentually Ensure for Hipsters. Even the name sounds like some kind of cyberpunk cliché.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#255

Post by Laforet »

JimDabell wrote: post #141
trendia wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how Bolt.io tore down a pair of Beats headphones and came to the opposite conclusion -- that they were a ripoff and that the components inside in no way justified the pricetag. But, take a look at the quality of the internals of Juicero vs. Beats headphones and realize that one of the companies is worth $1.5B while the other is shutting down.

That "Beats" teardown was with a counterfeit pair of headphones. Even so, I don't think a large difference between the BOM and the price the consumer pays is necessarily a ripoff. There's more to a product than simply how much it costs to manufacture.

The counterfeit pair probably had a more reasonable frequency response than the genuine product it was trying to imitate, so much for Beat's famous distorted bass.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#256

Post by _jtrig »

Laforet wrote: post #247
_jtrig wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say that same about Soylent as it's simply a Pediasure/Ensure marketed towards hipster 20-somethings. People love drawing the conclusion that superior marketing/design equates to better products. Often times, if you can make a consumer happy with the experience, they don't care if they're overpaying for a terrible product. The problem with Juicero is that their user experience laid bare how futile and ridic…

>The problem with Juicero is that their user experience laid bare how futile and ridiculous their product was by having consumers manufacture the product themselves. Blue Apron and every other meal kit delivery business sits on the other end of the same road, yet they seem to be doing okay and without the same level of ridicule. I wonder whether Juicero could have avoided this outcome had they mailed their customers…

I agree Blue Apron is equally ridiculous and I totally agree that Juicero marketed to the wrong crowd.

Juicero was too visible in high-standard markets and thus became an easy target. Whereas Blue Apron flew under the critic radar (mostly in Facebook mom feeds) before gaining enough market share for consumers to shrug off ridicule

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#257

Post by icebraining »

zwetan wrote: post #182
jjuel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that sugar is good for you depending on the source? Sugar is terrible for you no matter what. If you have a juice with the juice of say 5 apples is not healthy. That is 5 servings of the sugar with almost 0 of the fiber. It is just as poisonous as a sugary soda or other sugary drink.

Your view on sugar is wrong and quite dangerous. First, human beings need sugar to survive, yep it's like water, without sugar you die, in particular your muscle and your brain. There are good and bad sugar, artificial sugar in food and drink sure are terrible for the health, but you also have natural sugar like fructose in fruits, lactose in milk, etc. those are good. You definitively can not say that apple juice is…

You should qualify what you mean by "artificial sugar" and why you believe those are "bad" and fructose is "good". Sucrose, the most commonly used table sugar and food addictive, is a mix of glucose and fructose, and occurs naturally in plants (like sugar cane).

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#258

Post by smsm42 »

briandear wrote: post #254
dzhiurgis wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don’t understand is how they flopped after getting so much publicity? Was the price too high? Didn’t manage to turn PR against them? Was it designed to fail? I think the product is awesome in every possible way. The model worked for Nespresso (Kruger or smth in US), printers, dishwashers, Soylent, etc.

Soylent? No normal person I have ever met in my life has ever heard of the stuff. Slim Fast — everyone has heard of that, but Soylent? That’s an ultra niche product with little mass market appeal. Is it successful? Sure, but about as successful as a company that produces kits for growing orchids. The whole concept of Soylent is essentually Ensure for Hipsters. Even the name sounds like some kind of cyberpunk cliché.

> Even the name sounds like some kind of cyberpunk cliché.

I'm pretty sure this is a deliberate reference to the specific thing. I'm not sure if I won't end up looking stupid for saying the obvious, but this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#259

Post by chrischen »

_jtrig wrote: post #242
yahna wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that a VC company failed, it's that the entire idea looks completely ridiculous from the start.

You could say that same about Soylent as it's simply a Pediasure/Ensure marketed towards hipster 20-somethings. People love drawing the conclusion that superior marketing/design equates to better products. Often times, if you can make a consumer happy with the experience, they don't care if they're overpaying for a terrible product. The problem with Juicero is that their user experience laid bare how futile and ridic…

Pediasure/Ensure show that the market that Soylent enters actually exists.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#260

Post by rhizome »

johnhenry wrote: post #205

I simply do not understand the mindset of silicon valley investors. I used to think that perhaps they had some edge that helped them to get behind successful companies, but looking at this -- how much money they raised and from whom -- I think that there are just a bunch of people who have so much money that they can afford to risk throwing it away on something that will not likely succeed. Can someone watch the vide…

Can someone watch the video in the article and explain what sort of mindset you have to be in and think that this is a good idea?

Hate to be glib, but I'm pretty sure it's all about e.g. Redfin and Vanguard, and that there's a sucker born every minute.

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