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Juicero May Be Feeling the Squeeze

bloomberg.com

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Re: Juicero May Be Feeling the Squeeze

#201

Post by patmcguire »

personjerry wrote: post #12
dpflan wrote: post #5

"Two investors in Juicero were surprised to learn the startup’s juice packs could be squeezed by hand without using its high-tech machine." This sounds almost comical...

I really hope a reference to that makes it to season 4 of HBO's Silicon Valley

They've mentioned in past interviews some things too ridiculous to include. This might be one.

> Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.”

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon-va...

Re: Juicero May Be Feeling the Squeeze

#202

Post by nisse72 »

kozak wrote: post #199
makomk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as far as I could tell this is more expensive, less convenient, and harder to obtain than juice bottles, takes up more space, and the consumables have about the same shelf life or shorter. Bizarre product. (Also, since it requires an internet connection to check if the juice packs are valid, if the internet goes down and you decide that's a good time to take a juice break...)

To be fair, that "internet goes down" aspect can be mitigated in software by pushing IDs of the packages that were ordered for your account to the machine as soon as they are known.

Why not simply encode the expiry date itself into the qr codes, then just decode that using software on the device. Even better, stamp a human readable date on the package like every other grocery product. Oh but then they couldn't track your usage and juicing habits! And you'd have to be able to read or something.

Re: Juicero May Be Feeling the Squeeze

#203

Post by shalmanese »

nkristoffersen wrote: post #141
narrator wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also buy a juicer. Takes a negligible effort to clean, and with all those grocery delivery services, the slogging vegetables around part is taken care of.

That doesn't work in an office environment. The "K" coffee makers are a dream in breakrooms everywhere.

Office break rooms solve this by having bottles of Odwalla and the like in the drinks fridge along with all the other drinks. Juicero is ostensibly fresher but, as the demonstration shows, it's really not and the quality is the same as any other cold pressed juice.

Re: Juicero May Be Feeling the Squeeze

#204

Post by jordache »

aresant wrote: post #46

"Reporters were able to wring 7.5 ounces of juice in a minute and a half. The machine yielded 8 ounces in about two minutes. . . The company sells produce packs for $5 to $8 . . ." - So the machine is 6%, give or take, more efficient than hand. If I'm serving two juices a day during weekdays for me and spouse at average cost of $6.5/unit that's $0.78/day, $3.90/week, say I do this 50 weeks a year so $195 in juice rec…

$100K/yr household means you can afford $8 per cup of juice at home?

Oh you mean a single person household. A bro living a one bedroom apt filled with useless gadgets type perhaps

Re: Juicero May Be Feeling the Squeeze

#205

Post by jordache »

shimon wrote: post #40
wyldfire wrote: post #10

> Juicero declined to comment. A person close to the company said Juicero is aware the packs can be squeezed by hand but that most people would prefer to use the machine because the process is more consistent and less messy. "We kinda didn't think about this much because the real money is in the packets anyways. This stuff is way better than ink cartridges."

True, but the proprietary tech in the machine was supposed to be a form of defensible advantage for this business. If the product value comes entirely from chopping and delivering vegetables in a bag, it wouldn't be hard for others to replicate.

proprietary? You mean marry a CRUD app with a mechanical device that presses a bit?

Re: Juicero May Be Feeling the Squeeze

#206

Post by manigandham »

dpflan wrote: post #138
Yetanfou wrote: post #135

I'll offer a brief glimpse into the future. Juicero, burnt by the ease at which consumers rob them of potential revenue poaches someone away from the likes of HP or Gillette. That someone comes up with the perfect solution: add a coded valve to the juice bags which only opens when it has been inserted in a licensed Juicero machine. The added advantage is that the machine can refuse to squeeze more juice out of a bag…

Indeed! And at the $400 price point you could purchase a superb blender or a good one and save $ (blender drawbacks may be the cleaning and grocery shopping when viewed as customer for Juicero who is contemplating switching) but it's far more versatile beyond the context of just consuming produce in liquid or near-liquid/smoothie form.

Juicero also wants people to wash out and mail back used juice packs so it's not really a savings either.

Re: Juicero May Be Feeling the Squeeze

#209

Post by Const-me »

dingo_bat wrote: post #208
Const-me wrote: post #192

Can't they replace online database with asymmetric cryptography in that QR code? This way a machine can validate manufacturing date even offline, i.e. more reliably.

But then how do they recall contaminated pouches?

Depends.

If it’s contaminated ‘coz expired, it’s doable. Many devices have accurate real-time clocks even offline, e.g. GPS. It’s easy to include the expiry date in that cryptographically-signed data. BTW, Kerberos protocol does similar things with their timestamps.

If however it’s contaminated just because the producer decided to recall a batch of their product, then yes, a centralized server is a good choice.

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