A $700 Juicer for the Kitchen That Caught Silicon Valley’s Eye

Throwing away a plastic container after every serving is what chi is all about, those other products simply don't have it!

And like K-Cups, Juicero has already created a system to lock out generic veggie bags past their patent with the barcode scan to check freshness.

The $700 might be worth it if you were able to use your own reusable veggie squash bag, in addition to their premixes. But, it seems like the smart machines themselves might be sold at-cost if they've built out a distribution network for expensive pouches.

>> How is this not just Keurig-ing the process of tossing veggies from the local into your blender

Not contrarian at all. From TFA:

"Finally, there are the environmental questions about the single-serve model pioneered by coffee companies such as Keurig and Nespresso, which creates a throwaway container with each serving. Every glass of Juicero juice needs its own pack, which gets shipped from Los Angeles to the customer, although Mr. Evans said he was developing a compostable pack."

I had a similar impression when reading this article. It sounded dystopian to me -- a way to extract money from people with little sense, while not providing much benefit, and offsetting whatever benefit is provided with an oddly high-waste product. I'm sure there are people who see this as a positive value proposition, but it seems to me that it's worse than every alternative -- less convenient and more expensive than pre-bottled juice (even the probiotic stuff that tastes like yard waste), considerably more wasteful than frozen concentrate, lower-quality output than throwing veggies from your local stand into a blender. "Chi" and "life force" are poor substitutes.

Getting a good pressing machine to use at home is a couple to few hundred dollars. Plus it's time consuming to buy the veggies, cut them yourself, get out the presser and assemble the pieces, feed the veggies into the presser, wait for it to press, then clean all the pressing pieces and put it back away. The entire process minus shopping for veggies is probably 10-15 minutes.

It's the mechanism by which advertising becomes a tremendously negative signal to me: if you can afford to spend that much money pushing your product, you're extracting a large price premium over your costs and my value.

It's only occasionally wrong.

Everyone writes off juice as having "a ton of sugar", and yeah, if you make it with only fruit it will. If you use vegetables, the thing that is hardest to eat a lot of, then you are fine.

$700 is alot, although any high quality juicer is going to be in the range of 300-500+. A hydraulic press juicer is going to be the best you can get, extracting everything out of the fruit and vegetables without building up heat.

The cost of the bags are at about $5-$8(I see $5 and $6 on their website so far). Which isn't really that bad. There is zero cleanup, chopping, and planning . I juiced daily for about 2-3 months straight for breakfast, and it takes up a lot of time and money. It was about 30-45 minutes to chop and prepare everything, then sit and run it through the juicer, then disassemble the juicer to clean everything.

The costs for all vegetables added an extra $30-$40 a week to my grocery bill. But I ate the same juice every day as that is what I could prepare for. It was a struggle to make sure everything was still good, and I was throwing away food weekly because it goes bad (sizes of packaged produce varied so it was tough to plan). I wasn't buying organic vegetables, so I saved a bunch of money there.

Honestly for the time savings and the hassle free way to consume, I think the product can work. This would be a great addition to many companies break rooms, and far healthier than any of the other options they provide. I have no idea whether then can make back all the money that's been invested, but we shall see.

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