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Juicero Is Shutting Down

fortune.com

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Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#351

Post by _ph_ »

I am a big fan of kitchen gadgets - and there are a few really useful ones around, this product is just odd. Besides the price for the machine and the pods, I fail to see how it adds any value to the process.

If you want really fresh and nutritious drinks, get a high-power blender. Not only do they operate on any fresh fruit and vegetable, they keep all the fiber in the produced drink. So less sugar percentage (especially if you have lots of vegetables in the mix) and vs. eating the fruit directly, the high power mixing helps digesting all nutritients much better than just chewing can.

As a bonus, you can use it for many other cooking tasks (soups, sauces) but also you can do things like blending a good amount of ice with the fruit to get a cold and icy drink and my favorite is just to mis a scoop of natural yoghurt with frozen berries (add sugar, cream, a shot of bourbon to your taste) to instantly get a nice ice-cream like dessert.

(Disclaimer: there are a very few vegetables which should be eaten cooked only, so don't use those for a smoothie, others only in reasonable dosis, so some very basic reading is recommended)

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#352

Post by nailer »

jakobegger wrote: post #342
nikanj wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You gain the prestige of saying "you want a fresh-squeezed juice?" to your guests. Keurig grew HUGE in large part thanks to the appearance of higher class it brought to ordinary homes and offices. Instead of fooling with tools, you click a button on a sleek looking SV futuremachine, and presto. Humans are weird, and this is a very good marketing strategy.

I'm not familiar with Keurig, but I assume it is similar to Nespresso? Nespresso became extremely popular because: 1) The machines are very cheap (compared to other espresso makers) 2) They take a fraction of the time to prepare coffee (compared to other methods) 3) They are extremely easy to clean 4) Capsules have a long shelf life, you can get them in small quantities, so it doesn't matter if you drink 3 cups of co…

I thought nespresso had DRM to stop other coffee pods.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#353

Post by sirkneeland »

nailer wrote: post #352
jakobegger wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with Keurig, but I assume it is similar to Nespresso? Nespresso became extremely popular because: 1) The machines are very cheap (compared to other espresso makers) 2) They take a fraction of the time to prepare coffee (compared to other methods) 3) They are extremely easy to clean 4) Capsules have a long shelf life, you can get them in small quantities, so it doesn't matter if you drink 3 cups of co…

I thought nespresso had DRM to stop other coffee pods.

I think you're thinking of Keurig's K-cups (a different and of course wholly incompatible means of coffee capsule thingy)

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#354

Post by mnem »

nailer wrote: post #352
jakobegger wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with Keurig, but I assume it is similar to Nespresso? Nespresso became extremely popular because: 1) The machines are very cheap (compared to other espresso makers) 2) They take a fraction of the time to prepare coffee (compared to other methods) 3) They are extremely easy to clean 4) Capsules have a long shelf life, you can get them in small quantities, so it doesn't matter if you drink 3 cups of co…

I thought nespresso had DRM to stop other coffee pods.

No DRM as far as I can tell. You can make your own pods with simple kits which are basically just an empty capsule and some foil you stick on the top.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#355

Post by trapperkeeper74 »

dingo_bat wrote: post #312
gehwartzen wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing complicated about squeezing something out of a bag with with uniform pressure. The book press / screw press has existed since the first century AD. Here is a 'juicero' that you can fill with whatever chopped fruit you want and get the same/better results: https://www.amazon.com/Fruit-Press-Italian-Stainless-Brewcra...

Oh but does it have the food DRM that forces you to buy all your fruits from one company in overpriced bags?

LOL. That was the fail. They had a tiny market of a subset of rich people whom bought into inkjet/razorblade/K-cup crapola.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#356

Post by trapperkeeper74 »

teddyh wrote: post #82
gregmac wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sums this up well [1] (paraphrasing): > This is what you get with no constraints. Building something that lasts and doesn't break the bank is what's hard. This thing will last forever, but it's a machine to squeeze pre-masticated fruit in a plastic bag that costs $400. I've watched this before and just skipped through to find that bit, but I'm fairly certain he also mentions at one point how they're almost certain…

> I'm fairly certain he also mentions at one point how they're almost certainly selling the juicer itself at a loss Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ&t=15m07s and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ&t=33m42s

Skookum as frig, possibly.

He had a better idea though: pass the bag between one or two rollers.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#357

Post by trapperkeeper74 »

abpavel wrote: post #331
FICO wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean they are going to require you to ship the machine back to them. (I'm assuming there's tons of people who are going to miss that deadline anyway)

If it's Internet-connected, it might not squeeze without an approved API call from the vendor.

That would be some serious activation DRM for pressing juice, although it does defend their (failed) business model.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#358

Post by wut42 »

sannee wrote: post #129
jasonlaramburu wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you have a dynamic ip this won't be possible without a cloud service.

We have IPv6, everyone has practically infinite amount of public (and hopefully static, unless ISP did a major fuck up) IP addresses these days.

>ISP did a major fuck up

With Orange (French ISP) the IPv6 is dynamic. You have to pay a monthly fee to get a static.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#359

Post by dmix »

Grustaf wrote: post #347
jakobegger wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with Keurig, but I assume it is similar to Nespresso? Nespresso became extremely popular because: 1) The machines are very cheap (compared to other espresso makers) 2) They take a fraction of the time to prepare coffee (compared to other methods) 3) They are extremely easy to clean 4) Capsules have a long shelf life, you can get them in small quantities, so it doesn't matter if you drink 3 cups of co…

The fact that anyone can make a sort of decent cup of coffee with a nespresso is also important. Additionally, the taste benefit of nespresso over instant coffee or something similar is probably much higher than juicero over the best bottled juice.

Those coffee 'cup' machines automate a majority of the series steps and outputs a decent coffee... perfect for office environments or mornings before work where people don't have time to grind or babysit a drip machine.

The value is quite clear in the context of alternatives. Which is where I believe Juicero stumbles when one considers the various alternatives. Especially with the high cost and fast expiration dates.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#360

Post by lathiat »

dragonwriter wrote: post #277
marcosdumay wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- A capsule coffee machine is way cheaper than an expresso machine. - Expressos are minimally hard to make correctly, and those capsules are above even the quality of some coffee shops. - There is a big movement of gourmet coffee that favors high priced drinks with the correct marketing (not perfectly correlated with quality). None of those seem to apply to Juicero. They may have aimed at the last point, but I don't…

> A capsule coffee machine is way cheaper than an expresso machine. The cheaper capsule machines are about the same price as the cheaper non-capsule espresso machines. It's true that the high end of espresso machines goes well above the high end of capsule machines, but that doesn't seem particularly relevant.

The main price gap is between a capsule machine, and an entry level automatic coffee machine (where you dont have to clean up the mess after each coffee, just empty the grinds every few days). That's the same barrier juicero was going after in my view.

If you look on gumtree (like craigslist here in Australia) by far the most common appliance item by a very large margin are basic juicers. People like the idea, but in practice they go un-used because they're a pain to clean and people can't be bothered.

Best I could tell that was the same idea Juicero was after.

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