Comment by Yetanfou | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Yetanfou | Hacker News Reader

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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 which has been in the machine for more than X days, all for your protection of course.

Next thing consumers take knives to the bags to circumvent the coded valves. Bags are reinforced. Consumers use better knives. Bags are made double-walled with some nasty tasting/coloured liquid in between the two walls, all for your protection.

Next step is Juicero goes bankrupt, consumers are left with useless machines which end up on flea markets or landfills.

Rinse.

Repeat.

Me? I just eat an apple, an orange or a banana. My daughter prefers to put them through the blender first and calls it a smoothie. Takes all of a few minutes and works with apples and oranges and bananas from any source.

You should consider applying for an operations role at Juicero - the double-walled solution was truly a nice touch.

On another note, Juicero doesn't care what you or your daughter do to make juice, because you were never meant to buy a Juicero. It's a safe bet that their strategy was to sell B2B to large corporations and into the high-end hospitality industry (hotels, cruise ships, colleges) rather than B2C. I'm sure they extrapolated some crazy TAM/SAM/SOM for the B2B amenities market based on Keurig's success and used it to score an easy $120m.

No, it's built as a home appliance. If it was for the food service industry, it would be heavy stainless steel and cleanable with boiling soapy water, like everything else in that industry. And it would be faster; 10 seconds, not 2 minutes. It wouldn't look like an overgrown iPad.

It's a self-serve appliance, aka not meant to be used in a kitchen or prep room, but to be left out in common areas for customers to buy/take a bag and make their own juice, no mess no cleanup, see Keurig

Keurig markets itself to both consumers and businesses.

others like Flavia dont market to consumers though (its actually a selling point of theirs, "our machines are expensive and hence wont be purchased by consumers, so dont have to worry about people stealing your supplies")

This is like a Keurig if Keurig squeezed coffee out of pods that were full of hot liquid coffee.

Useless machines have even started with Keurig.

"Owners Of Discontinued Keurig Rivo Having Trouble Buying Coffee Pods That Will Work"

https://consumerist.com/2017/02/27/owners-of-discontinued-ke...

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.

They are starting from the other side:

> The company sells produce packs for $5 to $8 but limits sales to owners of Juicero hardware. The products were only available in three states until Tuesday, when the company expanded to 17.

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.

> Takes a negligible effort to clean

Which one? Not trolling, but I've bought (and returned) 3 different juices in the 300 - 500$ range that were a pain to clean, dry and put away. Even the ones made in Korea that are "only 5 parts" are annoying. I've had soft shreds getting stuck in the ejection tube, and the only way to clean it is (that I've found out) by using an ear bud to push it out.

I have a Braun MP32, bought by my parents when I was born. The thing works fine. Parts are still available, as are the machines (2nd hand but who cares?).

http://www.dasprogramm.org/electrical/household/braun-multip...

http://www.ebay.de/bhp/braun-mp-32

If you like the have both the pulp and juice, a high quality blender like the Vitamix is better. In this case, you just fill the jar with water and run it for 30s to clean it.

Yeah I use a wooden chopstick to unclog my Kuvings.

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

Yeah, that's a valid point. In a breakroom there is a commons and unless there's someone who maintains the commons it will get dirty and the refirgerator will get filled with rotting crap. Keurig side steps that by not needing cleaning or messy supplies. Just add paper cups and you don't even need a dishwasher.

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.

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