Why Juicero’s Press Is So Expensive(blog.bolt.io)
blog.bolt.io
Why Juicero’s Press Is So Expensive
https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensive-6add74594e50
380 comments
I am a mechanical engineer (a machine design engineer in fact) and this press looks like would happen if you hired 30 of 23-year-old me fresh out of college, gave them an effectively unlimited budget and said "make me the swankiest press you can imaging". Lots of clever ideas and fancy machined parts with no thought for cost savings or whether there's an easier way to do something.
15A 330V DC motor? To squish a bag of pulp?
The best things I've gotten career and skill wise from more senior engineers has been the feedback where they looked at a design and said "looks fancy, but what were you thinking?".
This machine looks like it needed some more grizzled manufacturing veterans to inject some sense into the design process.
15A 330V DC motor? To squish a bag of pulp?
The best things I've gotten career and skill wise from more senior engineers has been the feedback where they looked at a design and said "looks fancy, but what were you thinking?".
This machine looks like it needed some more grizzled manufacturing veterans to inject some sense into the design process.
I think you've also just well described so much of startup software development as well. Great ideas, a grand pool of undiluted computer science theory, nobody going "why do you need 120 servers to run a webpage?"
> Great ideas, a grand pool of undiluted computer science theory, nobody going "why do you need 120 servers to run a webpage?"
I actually untangled a mess like that (only it was some 200+ VMs on 20 fancy HP blades + SAN to serve 5000 users daily), don't even joke about it.
If you arrived with something the size of a semi-trailer to squeeze some juice people would likely ask you if you're all ok in the upper department but if you do the same in computer land they call you 'architect' and promote you. So much of that complexity is hidden and your average business owners have no clue what is required and what is overkill.
I actually untangled a mess like that (only it was some 200+ VMs on 20 fancy HP blades + SAN to serve 5000 users daily), don't even joke about it.
If you arrived with something the size of a semi-trailer to squeeze some juice people would likely ask you if you're all ok in the upper department but if you do the same in computer land they call you 'architect' and promote you. So much of that complexity is hidden and your average business owners have no clue what is required and what is overkill.
So why is it then that 23 year old engineers are building everything in SV? It certainly explains a lot about what I see happening there.
They have less to loose (already broke), are not accustomed to nice things (never experienced a real salary), and are enthralled by startup culture (so they'll accept shit equity and work all night).
There's also a bias in which ones we read about. Nobody puts the age of a 40 year old founder in a headline.
I think PG wrote an essay on why ycombinator started out primarily accepting new graduates, but I can't find it right now. Clearly he had a different take.
There's also a bias in which ones we read about. Nobody puts the age of a 40 year old founder in a headline.
I think PG wrote an essay on why ycombinator started out primarily accepting new graduates, but I can't find it right now. Clearly he had a different take.
Hiring ten 23 year olds and paying for 20 servers is cheaper than hiring five 40 year olds and paying for 3 servers.
It only becomes a problem when you need to stop burning money, because you can't easily reduce the hardware cost.
It only becomes a problem when you need to stop burning money, because you can't easily reduce the hardware cost.
Also have to take into account that hardware is ridiculously cheap nowadays. You can rent quite a lot of raw computing power with the salary of one engineer.
Not to mention one engineer can spin up and operate a big horizontally scaling cluster.
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23yo engineers are often also willing to bunk up with three friends in a two bedroom apartment, which makes living in SF/SV more feasible. Once you have a family (generally, older engineers) you generally dont want to be sharing an apartment, so your minimum salary requirements go up.
I love how everyone always words this like it's perfectly reasonable to expact a salary that has you living like a college student and unreasonable to ask for a salary that lets you live like an actual grownup who worked hard and took some risks to get expertise.
Do you guys actually feel that way or is the startupspeak getting to us?
Do you guys actually feel that way or is the startupspeak getting to us?
> I love how everyone always words this like it's perfectly reasonable to expact a salary that has you living like a college student and unreasonable to ask for a salary that lets you live like an actual grownup
If I interpret your parent post correctly, their opinion is than it's not at all reasonable to accept such low salaries.
It's just that there are apparently more than enough fools who do it anyway, until they learn that this is both unwise and unsustainable.
If I interpret your parent post correctly, their opinion is than it's not at all reasonable to accept such low salaries.
It's just that there are apparently more than enough fools who do it anyway, until they learn that this is both unwise and unsustainable.
This is exactly what the parent poster (me) was suggesting!
It just comes down to the math of living in a high cost/high compensation area. Your standard of living is highly dependant on the ratio of high economic productivity earners in your unit.
I know plenty of young engineers who are easily socking away 60 - 70% of their post tax income because they basically need a futon to sleep on and a macbook and don't really have many needs. After 5 years or so, they'll have half a million in the bank free and clear which is hard to do anywhere else in the country.
Now add it a spouse who works in non-profits or is a schoolteacher or any other job that's not tech. Now your expenses have risen 2x but your collective earnings has only risen 1.3x and now you're only saving 20% of your income.
Add in a kid and your expenses go up another 50% and your income rises not a jot and all of a sudden, you're in the hole and heading into debt.
Low cost/low compensation locations completely flip this equation around since there's no huge disparity in earnings and large families are less of a relative strain.
Neither is intrinsically better or worse than the other, they simply suit different lifestyles better.
I know plenty of young engineers who are easily socking away 60 - 70% of their post tax income because they basically need a futon to sleep on and a macbook and don't really have many needs. After 5 years or so, they'll have half a million in the bank free and clear which is hard to do anywhere else in the country.
Now add it a spouse who works in non-profits or is a schoolteacher or any other job that's not tech. Now your expenses have risen 2x but your collective earnings has only risen 1.3x and now you're only saving 20% of your income.
Add in a kid and your expenses go up another 50% and your income rises not a jot and all of a sudden, you're in the hole and heading into debt.
Low cost/low compensation locations completely flip this equation around since there's no huge disparity in earnings and large families are less of a relative strain.
Neither is intrinsically better or worse than the other, they simply suit different lifestyles better.
Salary shouldn't be dependent on (desired) living conditions, but on experience and value added. Likewise, living conditions shouldn't depend on salary - as in, you should be able to afford a decent apartment on minimum income anywhere in the country.
> you should be able to afford a decent apartment on minimum income anywhere in the country.
I think most people would love to live in a world where that's true but it's pretty far from where we are.
> Salary shouldn't be dependent on (desired) living conditions, but on experience and value added
That's leaving out half of the equation: value added sets the upper bound for what a company can afford to pay you but they're going to negotiate down to make a profit. The seller has the same maximum cap but they're going to negotiate up and fixed costs are a key part of that – since in reality food, housing, education, etc. costs vary widely people who live somewhere like SF are going to factor that in because the alternative is moving somewhere less unbalanced.
I think most people would love to live in a world where that's true but it's pretty far from where we are.
> Salary shouldn't be dependent on (desired) living conditions, but on experience and value added
That's leaving out half of the equation: value added sets the upper bound for what a company can afford to pay you but they're going to negotiate down to make a profit. The seller has the same maximum cap but they're going to negotiate up and fixed costs are a key part of that – since in reality food, housing, education, etc. costs vary widely people who live somewhere like SF are going to factor that in because the alternative is moving somewhere less unbalanced.
Except in Juicero's case, the cause wasn't 23 year old engineers, but outsourcing to celebrity designers and engineering firms.
Because most of the time hardware is cheap and building it quickly but inefficiently is better for the business than hand-aligning your opcodes to use the fastest part of the drum memory.
The great sadness to me is that incentives in architecture almost encourage this... Hardware is cheap and good designers are few. So when guys like you can come in and squash down the complexity,, company thinks it won twice (first time for delivery.. Wow look how fast it is!; second time for efficiency)
I strongly suspect there was more at play there (huge kickback to one of the people ordering the hardware). And no, the customer didn't think they won twice, the first time almost killed them. For all those goodies it still did not perform. You really wonder how they managed to burn all those cycles.
I've worked professionally in both fields now, and luckily mechanical engineering seems to have a much less toxic attitude towards for older engineers. The amount of ways an experienced engineer will know not to do something is mind boggling and I am definitely still learning.
There's a truth about this in software too. It's just not recognized.
Yes, elec engs are essentially hobbyists until completing their second decade in industry. Then, watch out!
Most places I've been realize this, but a few, hint mainly sw shops, think 5 years exp suffices. And they suffer arching in pain. It hurts to watch.
Most places I've been realize this, but a few, hint mainly sw shops, think 5 years exp suffices. And they suffer arching in pain. It hurts to watch.
Not just startup development. The entire software industry, aside from a very select few, seems to me to be plagued with this sort of immaturity.
You can be immature going the other direction, too. "We need to squeeze every last cycle of performance out of this server before we buy another one."
Well, sometimes you do (when it's someone else's hardware, perhaps). But often, happiness is a middle ground.
Most hardware goes through phases, often planned far in advance: The expensive first version to get something out the door, then a series of cost reductions (bring many chips into a single custom chip, ditch unused features, get new vendors for subsystems) which improve profitability.
That juicer looks like it was designed to withstand a direct hit by a bunker buster. Nobody gave a damn about profit margins or ever making it cheaper, I think they just wanted to IPO or get bought.
Well, sometimes you do (when it's someone else's hardware, perhaps). But often, happiness is a middle ground.
Most hardware goes through phases, often planned far in advance: The expensive first version to get something out the door, then a series of cost reductions (bring many chips into a single custom chip, ditch unused features, get new vendors for subsystems) which improve profitability.
That juicer looks like it was designed to withstand a direct hit by a bunker buster. Nobody gave a damn about profit margins or ever making it cheaper, I think they just wanted to IPO or get bought.
Well sure immaturity exists in every axis. I've seen "performance zealots" seriously suggesting moving a perfectly functional internal flask based API into some obnoxious, bloated Java Spring something or other to squeeze performance out of it. The thing served approximately 1 (internal) user at a time at a rate of less than 1 request per minute on average and was a read-only API. Flask was just fine for the purpose.
I've also been guilty of this in my younger days, where I was very much "C++ all the things because performance." But that's kind of my point: it's immaturity at work, here.
I've also been guilty of this in my younger days, where I was very much "C++ all the things because performance." But that's kind of my point: it's immaturity at work, here.
Well, sure, that's because this industry has spent the last thirty years growing like gangbusters. Give it some time to settle down and you'll see the mix of newbies to veterans balance back out again.
Everywhere I look, engineers are over-engineering everything. I just don't get it.
There's a few reasons for that
* no one ever got hired for under-engineering
* a lot of people have died from under-engineering
* you never notice how much was engineered juuuuust right (tm). Because it was. Just. Right.
* no one ever got hired for under-engineering
* a lot of people have died from under-engineering
* you never notice how much was engineered juuuuust right (tm). Because it was. Just. Right.
There's a large social component, too: beyond simple resume-driven development engineers get social status by doing interesting technical challenges. You rarely see a project make the front page of HN, for example, because it has a really polished UI and great documentation.
Since that's what the community generally respects and focuses on, people seek out areas to add complexity – who wants to work on a boring “solved” problem? – and, especially younger engineers, often feel they have to do things the same way Google or Facebook does (it's web-scale!) even if they have 0.001% of the engineers and 0.000001% of the traffic. It's easy to miss that most people with similar problems have so much less volume that they aren't forced to do the really cool (i.e. expensive) engineering and, since they're using something stable, it's not considered interesting enough to talk about it.
Since that's what the community generally respects and focuses on, people seek out areas to add complexity – who wants to work on a boring “solved” problem? – and, especially younger engineers, often feel they have to do things the same way Google or Facebook does (it's web-scale!) even if they have 0.001% of the engineers and 0.000001% of the traffic. It's easy to miss that most people with similar problems have so much less volume that they aren't forced to do the really cool (i.e. expensive) engineering and, since they're using something stable, it's not considered interesting enough to talk about it.
>> * no one ever got hired for under-engineering
I've bought plenty of low end products from China that I'm sure were intentionally designed as cheaply as possible with no regards to quality.
I've bought plenty of low end products from China that I'm sure were intentionally designed as cheaply as possible with no regards to quality.
That's not the same as under-engineering. They simply engineered for a different target. The engineering of the product is only part of the issue. The bigger issue is engineering the entire production system. They may well have optimized for maximum return on investment in the factory, not maximum quality for your headphones.
This fact underpins so much inanity fundamental to modern life nowadays D:
"An Engineer can do for a dime what any fool could do for a dollar."
One of my favorite instructors from college.
One of my favorite instructors from college.
How would you, given what you know now, do this better? Not saying you can't, just curious what your experience has taught you to do differently.
Just to be clear, I don't want to claim expertise I don't have: I'm only just a bit past that stage in my career and have had a lot to learn in the past few years.
Just a stream of consciousness set of notes from my reading of the article though:
* The design of the interior machined parts looks like a classic case of why machinists make fun of / mildly dislike engineers. "As long as I can make it in a 3D model we can make it out of metal, right?" They're beautiful, but if a part is going to be hidden from your end user, maybe think about how much manufacturing time those artistic rounded fillets are going to take up and design something that can be run on a 3 axis machine instead of a five axis machine.
* That injection molding. Wow. I'm kind of in two minds about that, because I can at least get behind the idea of spending time and money on the part of a machine your customers will be touching and seeing every day but good lord is it expensive, especially for low volume boutique products.
* The gear system. I'm surprised to see a set of spur gears in there vs a planetary gear set. Planetary gears are quiet and space efficient while also being able to transmit large loads. I'm surprised there actually wasn't a gearbox manufacturer from the cordless drill industry (another high input speed -> high output torque device) that they could tap to get a already designed and mass produced gear-train for much less money.
Just a stream of consciousness set of notes from my reading of the article though:
* The design of the interior machined parts looks like a classic case of why machinists make fun of / mildly dislike engineers. "As long as I can make it in a 3D model we can make it out of metal, right?" They're beautiful, but if a part is going to be hidden from your end user, maybe think about how much manufacturing time those artistic rounded fillets are going to take up and design something that can be run on a 3 axis machine instead of a five axis machine.
* That injection molding. Wow. I'm kind of in two minds about that, because I can at least get behind the idea of spending time and money on the part of a machine your customers will be touching and seeing every day but good lord is it expensive, especially for low volume boutique products.
* The gear system. I'm surprised to see a set of spur gears in there vs a planetary gear set. Planetary gears are quiet and space efficient while also being able to transmit large loads. I'm surprised there actually wasn't a gearbox manufacturer from the cordless drill industry (another high input speed -> high output torque device) that they could tap to get a already designed and mass produced gear-train for much less money.
That's about what I thought. That recessed fillet makes me think someone clicked "fillet" in Autodesk Inventor, not realizing what it does to the machining time. The machined parts seem to have machined features on all sides. I wonder how many setups that takes. If they'd designed it out of thick flat plates, the plates could be cut on a water jet or plasma cutter, or machined with one setup on a 3-axis mill.
I haven't done injection molding, but I know that making the molds is the expensive part. Once you've made the molds, making parts is cheap. If there was an overoptimistic market projection, the mold cost per part would seem low.
There's a fairly common arrangement for presses where a motor drives a worm gear which drives a ring gear with a threaded or ball screw hole. Here's a consumer-appliance grade version from China, used in an oil press, pasta extruder, or juicer.[1][2] $2 in quantity 500. The first thing to do in mechanical design is to find out what you can buy.
[1] https://honestmotor.en.alibaba.com/product/1971456634-222573... [2] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/220v-dc-worm-gear-mot...
I haven't done injection molding, but I know that making the molds is the expensive part. Once you've made the molds, making parts is cheap. If there was an overoptimistic market projection, the mold cost per part would seem low.
There's a fairly common arrangement for presses where a motor drives a worm gear which drives a ring gear with a threaded or ball screw hole. Here's a consumer-appliance grade version from China, used in an oil press, pasta extruder, or juicer.[1][2] $2 in quantity 500. The first thing to do in mechanical design is to find out what you can buy.
[1] https://honestmotor.en.alibaba.com/product/1971456634-222573... [2] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/220v-dc-worm-gear-mot...
Fancy molds with high tolerances require multiple iterations of making molds then destroying them. You can also find that parts are not able to be shot, usually before, but sometimes after making the mold. The texturing and cuts are expensive and difficult as well.
If they were going for Apple-level tolerances, they're walking into a minefield.
If they were going for Apple-level tolerances, they're walking into a minefield.
How about gear it further down behind a smaller motor for starters? It's not like you're about to start wood turning, there is already a gearbox in there, with the right ratio a much smaller motor likely would suffice.
That thing is so over-engineered it is almost as if it was a joke.
That thing is so over-engineered it is almost as if it was a joke.
> That thing is so over-engineered it is almost as if it was a joke.
Maybe different people use that term differently but I wouldn't call that 'over-engineered'. I'd just call it 'poorly engineered'. Mismatched components doing a poor job despite being far more expensive than necessary. If they'd put a well designed hydraulic press in there, I'd call it over-engineered. :)
Maybe different people use that term differently but I wouldn't call that 'over-engineered'. I'd just call it 'poorly engineered'. Mismatched components doing a poor job despite being far more expensive than necessary. If they'd put a well designed hydraulic press in there, I'd call it over-engineered. :)
I wonder if, with the right set of gears, someone could make a zero-emission, disaster-ready and eco-friendly version that says "please insert the pouch, step on the juicer and gently hop on it until the juice is ready."
Hey if any VC is listening I'm willing to sell this idea. Only asking $10M.
Hey if any VC is listening I'm willing to sell this idea. Only asking $10M.
Toddler powered FTW.
I suspect the majority of the power is already burned in the gears.
Two teslas is 40000 newtons. If we assume the press moves 5cm in 2.5 minutes:
40000 * (0.05/150) = 13 watts.
Two teslas is 40000 newtons. If we assume the press moves 5cm in 2.5 minutes:
40000 * (0.05/150) = 13 watts.
Apparently the press already takes ~2.5min to make a glass of juice. A smaller motor would probably take even longer
The competition (hand press, bottles) and so on are way ahead of them then.
Maybe we can out-do them and build a hydraulic version: "Now with 50 tons of pressure". I have a hydro pack lying around here somewhere with a really neat 3" puck piston. I'm sure that would do the job just fine and maybe even a little bit quicker.
Maybe we can out-do them and build a hydraulic version: "Now with 50 tons of pressure". I have a hydro pack lying around here somewhere with a really neat 3" puck piston. I'm sure that would do the job just fine and maybe even a little bit quicker.
With a 15A, 330V motor. That's almost 5KW, or 6.6 HP, for those of you who don't use SI units.
Which is more power than my lawn mower, which makes comparable outputs as what is inside those juice packets.
Ironically I literally can't view the page on my iPad.
There's somehow too much happening for this 2013 device to handle.
There's somehow too much happening for this 2013 device to handle.
I can't go past this comment without mentioning that I'm currently using a ThinkPad T43 while my i3 box is on indefinite loan to a friend... and despite being 11 years old the T43 loads the site just fine. The video's a bit much (youtube-dl for that) but yeah.
FWIW, easily 85-90% of what I try and open on my old Kindle (the super-basic version from a few years ago) makes the browser - and sometimes the whole UI - completely seize up. I'm guessing (based on how everything gets super sluggish) they didn't enable swapping - which does make total sense, but then the device only has 256MB(?) of RAM......
Now I'm curious what the iPad's virtual memory settings are like. And whether swap on Flash (of the caliber that goes in an iPad) is a good idea!
FWIW, easily 85-90% of what I try and open on my old Kindle (the super-basic version from a few years ago) makes the browser - and sometimes the whole UI - completely seize up. I'm guessing (based on how everything gets super sluggish) they didn't enable swapping - which does make total sense, but then the device only has 256MB(?) of RAM......
Now I'm curious what the iPad's virtual memory settings are like. And whether swap on Flash (of the caliber that goes in an iPad) is a good idea!
Fresh out of college? Aren't dropouts all the rage nowadays? By graduation, you're ooooold, and old people only have stale ideas.
Yeah. Young people are just smarter.
Oh gosh. This is when Mark Zuckerberg sounded just like a more stupid and ageist version of Donald Trump.
This is probably the explanation - I have certainly seen the sort of software equivalents that several other posters have written about - but I am wondering if it might have come from a military-industrial / cost-plus contracting style of development.
> but it seems like a roller would be able to provide a more efficient and focused method of squeezing than a press they're using now.
Or maybe, just maybe, a screw-driven piston, like many actual juicers have...
But let's be completely honest - the machine was always meant to be an expensive countertop device. It looks expensive, it weighs a lot, people will think you spent a lot of money on it even if they don't know how much it'll cost... This is exactly why the engineering staff was told "go nuts" on the hardware design - the more expensive and custom, the better. It does the job of looking like a high-end appliance exactly and precisely, and really nothing more.
This company always intended to make its money back selling overpriced juice packs like Keurig, banking on people with more money than common sense buying and using the hell out of these devices for the $14 juice packs. Selling the machines near cost or even as a loss leader was perfectly acceptable, as long as customers had to come back to them for more juice month over month. It just turns out consumers were smart enough to see through the not-so-clever ruse of buying a $400 counterweight to squeeze a package of pre-squeezed juice out of a bag and into a cup...
Or maybe, just maybe, a screw-driven piston, like many actual juicers have...
But let's be completely honest - the machine was always meant to be an expensive countertop device. It looks expensive, it weighs a lot, people will think you spent a lot of money on it even if they don't know how much it'll cost... This is exactly why the engineering staff was told "go nuts" on the hardware design - the more expensive and custom, the better. It does the job of looking like a high-end appliance exactly and precisely, and really nothing more.
This company always intended to make its money back selling overpriced juice packs like Keurig, banking on people with more money than common sense buying and using the hell out of these devices for the $14 juice packs. Selling the machines near cost or even as a loss leader was perfectly acceptable, as long as customers had to come back to them for more juice month over month. It just turns out consumers were smart enough to see through the not-so-clever ruse of buying a $400 counterweight to squeeze a package of pre-squeezed juice out of a bag and into a cup...
Keurig is not that bad. The system is out of patent so you can get off-brand brewers and cartridges that aren't quite as good in quality but are unlikely to cause a terrible mess in a hotel room.
Keurig is great at one thing: making the worst coffee this world has to offer. That aside, I though they went to DRM enabled cups in the last few years in an attempt to block the aftermarket cup makers.
...the worst coffee this world has to offer.
Having heard this from a number of coffee fans, I suspect you're not the market Keurig really targets. Rather I suspect we non-coffee-drinkers might be the primary buyers. We want something that will sit innocuously in the kitchen, looking good and doing nothing, on the off chance that we'll be expected to provide coffee for someone. We don't know how to buy coffee, we don't know how to prepare it, and we don't know how to clean up after preparing it. Also, we don't care to know any of those things. So, here's a something we made for you that came out of a fancy package. Now we're going to throw away this little plastic cup.
Having heard this from a number of coffee fans, I suspect you're not the market Keurig really targets. Rather I suspect we non-coffee-drinkers might be the primary buyers. We want something that will sit innocuously in the kitchen, looking good and doing nothing, on the off chance that we'll be expected to provide coffee for someone. We don't know how to buy coffee, we don't know how to prepare it, and we don't know how to clean up after preparing it. Also, we don't care to know any of those things. So, here's a something we made for you that came out of a fancy package. Now we're going to throw away this little plastic cup.
Seems like an expensive investment on the off-chance that you might have guests who really can't handle not having any coffee when they're visiting a non-coffee-drinking household. My solution is the small jar of instant coffee I periodically have to throw out because it's gone mouldy.
I swear I am not a coffee snob, but...
If all you have is instant, you're better off not offering anything. That stuff is generally terrible.
If all you have is instant, you're better off not offering anything. That stuff is generally terrible.
Speaking as such a guest, I look after my own needs in that regard. Expecting one's hosts to attend to one's vices is just tacky.
The issue I have is: when a host offers me coffee, what's the polite way to say "yes please, but not if it's instant"?
Ha, there's not. Instant is better (just) than no coffee, even though I wouldn't touch the stuff at home...
It's like if someone offers you a beer. Bud Light or a strong IPA may not be to your taste, but saying "what do you have" sounds greedy unless they've offered a choice. A free beer is still a free beer. You either turn down the offer or you are grateful for the free beer. There are no other options.
"What kind is it? I don't want to deprive you of a beer if I won't enjoy it." There, done.
I had a colleague who'd ask: "What kind of beer? Heineken? That's no beer."
After a couple of those, everybody knows your taste :D
After a couple of those, everybody knows your taste :D
So my wife and I use a French Press for coffee in the morning. I love a good cup of coffee and it really does not take that much time to make. Heck, I enjoy the process.
Now for espresso or the like, well that is a different story. We used to have an espresso machine but it was quite a pain (and took up space). For that the machines are great. We have the Nespresso machine with the milk attachment. Makes a pretty good cup. They provide mailing bags for you to send back the used cups? carts? (hum) for recycling.
Now for espresso or the like, well that is a different story. We used to have an espresso machine but it was quite a pain (and took up space). For that the machines are great. We have the Nespresso machine with the milk attachment. Makes a pretty good cup. They provide mailing bags for you to send back the used cups? carts? (hum) for recycling.
I've been using a tiny Krups Esprimo for over 10 years. One of the tubes popped off after a few years, but after taking the shell off and identifying the culprit, I just used a zip tie as a miniature hose clamp and have been going strong for a long time. The key with the hose was to clean the nozzle: it has a single port, so a clogged port is a single source of failure. But $90 for an 8-bar espresso machine is hard to beat. Not good for random joe, but fine for a hacker.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00007CWFE
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00007CWFE
The french press is just the ultimate coffee making device. It's simple, it gives you a lot of control (via the amount, the grind, the water temperature and soak time) and it makes glorious, glorious coffee.
Expresso machines are complex and bulky, and they generally aren't worth it unless you can spend $600+ (and that plus goes WAY up). Nespresso isn't bad at all (we have one here at work), but even better is a Lavazza machine, which takes cartridges like the Nespresso, but the resulting espresso is an order of magnitude better, in my opinion.
Expresso machines are complex and bulky, and they generally aren't worth it unless you can spend $600+ (and that plus goes WAY up). Nespresso isn't bad at all (we have one here at work), but even better is a Lavazza machine, which takes cartridges like the Nespresso, but the resulting espresso is an order of magnitude better, in my opinion.
Aeropress. Small, fun, easy to use and clean - and makes excellent coffee.
What about the good old Italian stove top espresso pot?
I'm a tea drinker myself, but have one around to serve decent espresso to people that want it.
I'm a tea drinker myself, but have one around to serve decent espresso to people that want it.
You can get Maxwell House instant coffee which is packaged in tea bags so making a cup of coffee is as easy as a cup of tea. And it's as good as Keurig coffee.
This is good advice!
A much better device for that use case is a percolator though. They sell them at IKEA for like $10. Using one is as simple as putting in water, putting in ground coffee, and sticking it on a stove. Makes much better coffee than a keurig and takes up less space to boot.
Unfortunately no-one sells ground coffee in small quantities. I don't know about Keurig, but those Nespresso capsules come in small packages and they have a long shelf life.
I'd rather have a cup of Nespresso coffee than a fresh brewed cup of stale ground coffee.
I'd rather have a cup of Nespresso coffee than a fresh brewed cup of stale ground coffee.
Unfortunately no-one sells ground coffee in small quantities.
Many larger food stores and most specialty coffee shops sell coffee beans by weight and will grind them for you. So you can easily by just a small amount at a time if you want.
Many larger food stores and most specialty coffee shops sell coffee beans by weight and will grind them for you. So you can easily by just a small amount at a time if you want.
That's fine advice for anyone who wants to know or do anything about coffee. As indicated above, that ain't me. I'm not going to a weird store to talk to someone who operates weird equipment to buy some weird stuff that I don't consume. The reason I'd consider buying a Keurig is that then I wouldn't have to do any of that.
I mainly use two different sized old school Mokka Express aluminum cans from Bialetti. Super cheap (got both for less than 20$) and very small/easy to handle and clean. Plus: the coffee tastes great. I grind my own coffee (cheap used 20yrs old grinder, 4$), but there are sealed ground coffee packs containing only 60 grams (2oz). Coffee is not as instant as with a Keurig/Nespresso though.
I've had the worst coffee this world has to offer. I got it at a truck stop somewhere off Interstate 40 in east Tennessee. Tasted like bile and acid, went through me like a dose of salts, and left desolation and sorrow in its wake. Had me in the bushes off the side of the road for the better part of an hour, and gave me a whole new respect for long-haul truckers - either they have the iron constitution to drink that shit and not mind it, or they keep in close enough touch that they've all warned each other off it. Either way, I'm impressed.
Keurigs do a perfectly fine job by comparison.
Keurigs do a perfectly fine job by comparison.
> the worst coffee this world has to offer
I guess you've never had coffee out of a rarely serviced machine in the break room of a millwrighting shop.
Keurig coffee is the smoothest brew ever compared to some of the terrible coffee I've gladly drank over the years.
I guess you've never had coffee out of a rarely serviced machine in the break room of a millwrighting shop.
Keurig coffee is the smoothest brew ever compared to some of the terrible coffee I've gladly drank over the years.
Keurig is great at one thing: making the worst coffee this
world has to offer
Yeah, if you want awful coffee, Keurig is here to service you! Otherwise, a simple hot pot can heat water and make you a good cup of drip coffee without grounds at a much lower price point, and it is compostable/yardwasteable, unlike those K-cups!
Guess people forget you can get pods that let you use your own coffee and it's reusable and you put the grounds in compost.
I've used those at past workplaces that had Keurig machines, while it works it is a mess to clean, and essentially requires a sink to clean. Comparatively, drip coffee grounds are self contained in a paper filter.
I've seen people use tiny paper filters in them. No idea if it's something you can buy though - I'm not really a coffee drinker.
All you're saying is true, but they still would have been much better off designing something that didn't cost them so much to produce. It would have looked, and weighed the same, but they would have made a lot more money.
The juice packs are $5-$8.
It's interesting that an alternative machine called JUISIR on Kickstarter/Indiegogo also uses a full surface press instead of rollers. (If multiple teams are avoiding rollers, there may be some non-obvious disadvantage with that configuration.)
Scroll down half way to see the gif animation of the mechanism: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1793272089/juisir-juici...
It would be interesting to see if their engineering choices resulted in a much less expensive machine to manufacturer.
Indiegogo page: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/juisir-zero-cleaning-maxi...
gif direct link: https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/015/010/304/9b81fed3f5e8827...
Scroll down half way to see the gif animation of the mechanism: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1793272089/juisir-juici...
It would be interesting to see if their engineering choices resulted in a much less expensive machine to manufacturer.
Indiegogo page: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/juisir-zero-cleaning-maxi...
gif direct link: https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/015/010/304/9b81fed3f5e8827...
> If multiple teams are avoiding rollers, there may be some non-obvious disadvantage with that configuration.
My suspicion, if I put my engineering hat on and give them the benefit of the doubt, is it's an optimization for later.
Right now, the purchased packs you can buy are effectively already juice. Later, you may want to make them less juicy so you can spend less time manufacturing the packs, but people will scream if you make them buy a new machine. So, your first machine out the chute needs to be way overengineered.
Nevertheless, this machine design screams junior engineers.
My suspicion, if I put my engineering hat on and give them the benefit of the doubt, is it's an optimization for later.
Right now, the purchased packs you can buy are effectively already juice. Later, you may want to make them less juicy so you can spend less time manufacturing the packs, but people will scream if you make them buy a new machine. So, your first machine out the chute needs to be way overengineered.
Nevertheless, this machine design screams junior engineers.
> (If multiple teams are avoiding rollers, there may be some non-obvious disadvantage with that configuration.)
It's just product differentiation. And remember, their target market are the kind of people who want to feel special by one-upping the other #rawvegan #fitspiration #healthnuts on social media.
It's just product differentiation. And remember, their target market are the kind of people who want to feel special by one-upping the other #rawvegan #fitspiration #healthnuts on social media.
Even Apple products might only have one or two custom-machine parts, and they're usually the enclosure, which the customer can see and maybe makes the prettiness matter to make the thing seem luxury. They don't have tons of internal separately machined components (it's all injection-molded, I think), and I'm sure they look for cost-cutting opportunities in internal components too (Tim Cook's background is in logistics, after all).
And the trick with their custom-machined enclosures is they're also the internal structure. That saves on remaining internal parts.
Did you ever take apart their plastic macbooks? They were packed to the gills, with 3x as many screws and parts as any Dell.
That's why the aluminium unibody design has been the standard now.
yep. saying this is well designed because they overcome all the hurdles with brute force is like showing how awesome is your webapp random-sort algo because you have one 24 core machine per user request. just look how expensive are all those servers! look! no cloud either! not even co-locating! isn't it awesome! (wasn't a question)!
saddest part is that we are getting cheap fly-by-night puffy pieces. HN used to only alow the expensive ones on wired to pass. This community is dying :(
saddest part is that we are getting cheap fly-by-night puffy pieces. HN used to only alow the expensive ones on wired to pass. This community is dying :(
Yeah, all it really needed to be is a modernized mangler: http://i.imgur.com/t3QRmgb.jpg
A roller is what I thought of while reading this too. It seems fairly obvious, but I would be surprised if there wasn't an even better design. Juicero's people must have thought of this and the superior alternatives in the very early stages and then decided to do it the way they did anyways.
I know nothing about Juicero, but it seems like there must be somebody who thought they were the second coming of Steve Jobs overriding both the engineers and accountants. That person's reality distortion field must have just popped rather loudly.
I know nothing about Juicero, but it seems like there must be somebody who thought they were the second coming of Steve Jobs overriding both the engineers and accountants. That person's reality distortion field must have just popped rather loudly.
A roller also needs something to press the contents towards it without grip for traction of it's own, so I imagine you need two separate mechanisms.
It would also be trivially easy to construct something that squeezes the juice packets between, say, two wooden cutting boards, that would apply uniform pressure over a large surface area in the same way that the juicero does. Then, what do you have left? A bunch of features that I doubt people really care about, such as automatic disabling of packs (seriously, just send me an email) and reorder reminders?
A $8 tortilla press can do the job as well or better than this over-engineered piece of junk.
A $15 pasta roller can probably come pretty close.
A $15 pasta roller can probably come pretty close.
I don't think a roller would work. The solids in the bag would settle to one side of the bag and form a clump. You would either need a ton of torque to drive the roller and smash the clump or a slip-roller.
If this discussion goes on for much longer there will be something even more complex than the device shown.
A double-roller system will probably have that problem, but twisting the bag in on itself and just torquing it will probably work, the bag's pressing against itself in a fairly uniform manner.
I wonder if you could get uniform pressure by putting the juice bag itself in some fluid, then pressurizing that? I mean obviously you could, but I don't know if you could get 15 bar or whatever they are going for using something relatively inexpensive.
(OTOH, it would be annoying if it exploded)
(OTOH, it would be annoying if it exploded)
I think the main reason for the QR code is to discourage third-party juice packs.
Well that might be part of it, but the reason is because the juice had no preservatives so they will go bad. Honestly it would be a product failure if people were getting sick for using the bags after they've gone rotten
If only there were some simple way of indicating a date by which a food should be used. Maybe they could make it human-readable.
I highly doubt you can apply that much pressure without wooden boards breaking or warping.
You would still likely need a large motor and drive even with a roller-type design. Gravity will cause the solids to settle at the bottom of the juice bag. The roller would presumably need to contend with this.
I came here to bring up the roller idea myself. They could make a quick cheap mechanical version and low price point. They might actually be able to deal in volume and recover from their first attempt.
So how do you keep the pulp in while letting the juice out, and not having the business end of the plastic package violently explode like a tube of toothpaste in a vise?
[deleted]
This was great reading, I really enjoy this style of content: someone with expertise tearing down electrical and mechanical equipment and commenting on which parts are well done or poorly done.
I'll definitely be on the lookout for other write ups from Ben Einstein. To anyone wanting more content like this, I also recommend the "Bored of Lame Tool Reviews?" (BOLTR) series of videos from YouTuber AvE:
https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil
I'll definitely be on the lookout for other write ups from Ben Einstein. To anyone wanting more content like this, I also recommend the "Bored of Lame Tool Reviews?" (BOLTR) series of videos from YouTuber AvE:
https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil
You might like the EEVblog teardown videos. There is indeed something strangely compelling about a knowledgeable person providing an unbiased running commentary on somebody else's work.
Also, if you enjoy teardowns of cheap Chinese crap, big Clive's got your back:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA
What I've learned watching his channel: Don't skimp on your USB chargers, get Anker or IKEA ones (seriously, the IKEA charger was amazingly well-designed).
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA
What I've learned watching his channel: Don't skimp on your USB chargers, get Anker or IKEA ones (seriously, the IKEA charger was amazingly well-designed).
Absolutely! I think my introduction to Big Clive's channel was a review of one of those electrode heater deathtraps for rapidly boiling water. I need to check out more of his stuff.
As an electrical engineer, I find EEVblog to be pretty salty. He complains (like huge rants) about pretty minor things. I prefer MikesElectricStuff. His criticisms are usually more valid and he is sure to praise ingenuity when he sees it.
Right... also, during a tear-down, he'll occasionally leap to some conclusion about how something was done, complain about it / praise it, and then completely contradict himself a few minutes later (or in a text overlay) once the facts emerge. Still, it's good entertainment.
Totally agreed. His rants are usually fairly superficial as well, and he tends to get a lot wrong. It's fine to get stuff wrong, and it's fine to rant, but doing both at the same time is tacky.
I think it's because he had a lot of success with his early rants, which were generally pretty on-point. As time went on they get more and more salty and inaccurate as he ran out of good ideas.
TheSignalPath is a great EE channel as well.
I think it's because he had a lot of success with his early rants, which were generally pretty on-point. As time went on they get more and more salty and inaccurate as he ran out of good ideas.
TheSignalPath is a great EE channel as well.
As a firmware engineer, I second the MikesElectricStuff recommendation. More depth, cooler stuff. His voice is also much less annoying...
Thanks for the recommendation, I look forward to checking out MikesElectricStuff.
I have seen a lot of EEVblog videos, but only a small fraction of his output, prolific guy. I definitely agree, too much grousing at times. Though he did seem to be appropriately outraged in the first one I watched (#822, about a terrible medical tablet PC):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o8MDCIlOEk
I have seen a lot of EEVblog videos, but only a small fraction of his output, prolific guy. I definitely agree, too much grousing at times. Though he did seem to be appropriately outraged in the first one I watched (#822, about a terrible medical tablet PC):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o8MDCIlOEk
[deleted]
I just watched that man thread a potato into a potato. He's full of the dad jokes -- really entertaining. Not sure I can handle more than one in a row!
Thanks for that.
Thanks for that.
That was the first of his videos that I saw, too! I think it's a good introduction, but I'd say it's one of the least serious out of all of them. I suppose it's an acquired taste -- I had some difficulty convincing my dad to check out the channel, but recently he told me he was enjoying "that Canadian 'keep your dick in a vise' guy".
We would often sit down as a family and watch The Red Green Show during my middle school years. With its TV run now long over, I'm glad that there's another Canadian continuing in the grand tradition of workshop shenanigans.
We would often sit down as a family and watch The Red Green Show during my middle school years. With its TV run now long over, I'm glad that there's another Canadian continuing in the grand tradition of workshop shenanigans.
So am I! Canada's changing. Maybe it's just nostalgia now -- the folksy jokes and all. Still, I've got a soft spot.
If thats your flavour of comedy, I have to recommend Letterkenny. If you haven't heard of it, it's a show on CraveTV based on the part of the country I hail from.
(I know I'm digressing from the main thread... but a small sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KLSbCtinXs)
If thats your flavour of comedy, I have to recommend Letterkenny. If you haven't heard of it, it's a show on CraveTV based on the part of the country I hail from.
(I know I'm digressing from the main thread... but a small sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KLSbCtinXs)
Red Green is archived on YouTube!
https://www.youtube.com/user/RedGreenTV
https://www.youtube.com/user/RedGreenTV
That video gets about 100x funnier if you watch it at half speed.
The potato bolt is AvE at his most intolerably Canadian. He tones down the persona quite a bit in the more technical videos.
Either way I'll be sure to check out some more. I got to practice a bit of machining at a former job. It's satisfying to see something come into such perfect, useful shape -- it's almost animal.
Part of the problem is that the cold-pressed juice fad is not really rational to begin with. Somehow customers are convinced that the method of juice extraction is extremely important to the juice's health benefits, to the point that it's worth spending 3x comparable juices. It's great marketing on the verge of fraud. In order to capitalize on the fad the startup probably thought they needed a really fancy, distinctive press since the press has become of mythical importance in the customers' mind. And since cold-pressed customers have already proven to be cost insensitive they figured price is no object, so let engineering go wild!
Gramophone records. Audiophile speaker cables. Many (if not most) branded luxury goods ($2145 IKEA shopping bag, anyone?) [1][2].
These products are not made to be functional, any functionality they have is secondary to their prime purpose: to be used as props in a ritual. What ritual they serve varies, from the mundane 'I can afford to spend a lot of money on non-essential goods' affluence signalling (most branded luxury goods fit in this category) to something resembling the Japanese tea ceremony in the sense that they turn a common event into a highly ritualised happening (I'd fit gramophone records in here). Some are just ways for unscrupulous actors to extract the maximum amount of money from an easily duped audience ($21.000 for a 3m short speaker cable [3], anyone? Don't forget to buy that $11.000 mains cable [4] while you're at it, you would not want your $144,481.80 turntable [5] to be without it).
Cold pressed juice itself is probably partly ceremonial, partly affluence signalling. Where overpriced, waste-generating Rube Goldberg juice delivery devices with vendor lock-in fit in I'll leave for you to decide.
[1] http://www.barneys.com/product/balenciaga-arena-extra-large-... [2] http://www.ikea.com/se/sv/catalog/products/17228340/ [3] http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2008/11/most-expensive-speaker-c... [4] http://www.analogueseduction.net/nordost-mains-cables/ndvali... [5] http://www.analogueseduction.net/clearaudio-turntables/clear...
These products are not made to be functional, any functionality they have is secondary to their prime purpose: to be used as props in a ritual. What ritual they serve varies, from the mundane 'I can afford to spend a lot of money on non-essential goods' affluence signalling (most branded luxury goods fit in this category) to something resembling the Japanese tea ceremony in the sense that they turn a common event into a highly ritualised happening (I'd fit gramophone records in here). Some are just ways for unscrupulous actors to extract the maximum amount of money from an easily duped audience ($21.000 for a 3m short speaker cable [3], anyone? Don't forget to buy that $11.000 mains cable [4] while you're at it, you would not want your $144,481.80 turntable [5] to be without it).
Cold pressed juice itself is probably partly ceremonial, partly affluence signalling. Where overpriced, waste-generating Rube Goldberg juice delivery devices with vendor lock-in fit in I'll leave for you to decide.
[1] http://www.barneys.com/product/balenciaga-arena-extra-large-... [2] http://www.ikea.com/se/sv/catalog/products/17228340/ [3] http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2008/11/most-expensive-speaker-c... [4] http://www.analogueseduction.net/nordost-mains-cables/ndvali... [5] http://www.analogueseduction.net/clearaudio-turntables/clear...
I'm sooo not in the market, and even at 1/10th the price I'd find it expensive, but still: it's not fair to call that Balenciaga bag an "IKEA shopping bag".
It's made in Italy, from actual leather, with fabric lining, a zip pocket and keyring lanyard.
That's a lot of features that are all way nicer than what FRAKTA brings, of course. It's obviously still a luxury product, but leather isn't cheap like polypropylene.
It's made in Italy, from actual leather, with fabric lining, a zip pocket and keyring lanyard.
That's a lot of features that are all way nicer than what FRAKTA brings, of course. It's obviously still a luxury product, but leather isn't cheap like polypropylene.
Nothing to do with the leather - everyone has nice leather now, even Chinese no-brand brands you get for $80 on Amazon. "Balenciaga" means almost all the price is in the name - not only is it designer, but there's a hierarchy of designers in which it's far from the bottom; to pick another name off the top, this'll make anyone with a Coach bag turn green, even if it's a lot closer to the top of that line than this is to this. Also, blue leather's tough to pull off in general, and you have to be both confident and daring to even try it. So it makes you the one to beat stylewise, and makes that hard to do, both at the same time.
Ever feel like maybe you're in the wrong line of work? The market's tiny, but at eleven grand a throw, the profit margin's got to be nosebleed-worthy.
I wonder if I can make something like this work as a sideline? I mean it's snake oil, it just has to look fancy and have a story around it, and hell, that can't be too hard.
I wonder if I can make something like this work as a sideline? I mean it's snake oil, it just has to look fancy and have a story around it, and hell, that can't be too hard.
To me, cold pressed orange juice I buy tastes 3X better than any other orange juice I've tried at the store. To me, that's worth 3X more. Some people value taste more than others, to each his own.
I believe the parent was describing the unsubstantiated belief that press-type juicers are somehow superior to the centrifugal-type juicers you can buy for tens of dollars at big box stores.
I agree with you about fresh squeezed OJ, but I don't believe for a second that it matters if the orange is squeezed in a press or twisted in a rotary. (different kind of juicer, but you get the point).
I agree with you about fresh squeezed OJ, but I don't believe for a second that it matters if the orange is squeezed in a press or twisted in a rotary. (different kind of juicer, but you get the point).
Fresh-squeezed juice tastes better because you don't have to do all the things that need to be done to make juice safe to ship long distances. The idea that this super-expensive way of getting juice "damages the nutrients less" is a bunch of ridiculous hokum, and I'm betting if you got fresh orange juice that wasn't cold-pressed you wouldn't notice a 3X difference between it and cold-pressed.
Fresh-squeezed juice is not actually fresh. It's still made from a concentrate.
H-how? How are the oranges I squeeze by hand concentrate..?
I mean the premium ones you are seeing in supermarket (Tropicana, Minute Maid, et al), especially orange ones.
Unless you actually saw it being squeezed, I wouldn't consider it "freshly squeezed". This is also the first time I've seen anybody, outside of advertisement, describe Minute Maid as "premium" orange juice.
Over here some supermarkets have juicers pre-filled with oranges in their produce sections, you just put an empty bottle into it, push a button and you can watch live as it squeezes the oranges into your bottle.
Over here some supermarkets have juicers pre-filled with oranges in their produce sections, you just put an empty bottle into it, push a button and you can watch live as it squeezes the oranges into your bottle.
Don't know if they exist in the US, but I specifically look for juice bottles that say "NOT FROM CONCENTRATE". I can usually find a few even in smaller grocery stores.
I think what was meant by "fresh-squeezed" is the not from concentrate kind.
I certainly wouldn't describe juice from concentrate as "fresh-squeezed", because it's been squeezed, boiled to reduce its water content, frozen, packed, shipped, defrosted, rehydrated and packed again before I get to drink it.
I certainly wouldn't describe juice from concentrate as "fresh-squeezed", because it's been squeezed, boiled to reduce its water content, frozen, packed, shipped, defrosted, rehydrated and packed again before I get to drink it.
Have you done a double-blind test with some top-brand non-frozen orange juices?
It tastes better, but is juice (of any kind) actually good for you? I'm not convinced.
Here's your article, good sir. "As Juicero gets publicly shamed, let us not forget that juice itself is a lie" https://qz.com/965505/juicero-turns-out-to-be-pointless-so-i...
The article does not say it is a lie. the article says some over exaggerate the benefits. It says the actual fruit is better. But also says juice (reasonable amounts) is good for you.
Of course it is good for you. Vegetable more so (I would imagine) but fruit juice as well. Would it be better to eat the fruit and veg, sure. But is having juice better than nothing. Yes. Is it better than some other liquid refreshments. Yes.
Is it as good for you as some would have you believe, no. Do some over market it as a cure all. Sure. That doesn't mean, it is bad for you*
* to an extent amount and fruit depending.
Is it as good for you as some would have you believe, no. Do some over market it as a cure all. Sure. That doesn't mean, it is bad for you*
* to an extent amount and fruit depending.
No: all that fructose can definitely be bad for you.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fresh-juice-drinks-health...
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fresh-juice-drinks-health...
"good" and "bad" are comparisons, not quantifications. The correct question is something like: all else being equal, what is the difference in expected lifespan between a juice drinker and a juice abstainer?
I'm pretty sure that HN has consumed more of my lifespan than any diet could compensate for.
I'm pretty sure that HN has consumed more of my lifespan than any diet could compensate for.
It's probably better to avoid the fruit entirely. Modern fruit has been bred to increase sugar content far above what was natural. If you can fine real wild berries those are probably OK but they will taste sour if you're used to supermarket fruit.
Have a source for that? Or even an example of a fruit where it's the case? It certainly isn't true for apples - heirloom varieties often have higher sugar content than modern apples. Modern apples taste sweeter than many heirloom varieties due to lower acidity, not higher sugar content.
Many modern cultivated fruits don't contain nearly as much sugar as they could because they're picked early, before their prime.
In the Northwest, Rubus armeniacus is an invasive species which has never been heavily bred, and is one of the sweetest fruits you can find - especially in late summer.
Grapes are one of the only fruits which have enough sugar to make wine with unless you use chaptalization. (Though some berries like Blackberries get close.)
Many modern cultivated fruits don't contain nearly as much sugar as they could because they're picked early, before their prime.
In the Northwest, Rubus armeniacus is an invasive species which has never been heavily bred, and is one of the sweetest fruits you can find - especially in late summer.
Grapes are one of the only fruits which have enough sugar to make wine with unless you use chaptalization. (Though some berries like Blackberries get close.)
My big reason for eating fruit is more the micronutrients, since I treat multivitamins (and pills in general) with suspicion. That trite adage of "stuff your grandmother would recognise" has been enormously beneficial to me.
Would you say that modern fruits lack these micronutrients as well? Anecdotally, I cannot report any excessive shortages in my nutrition.
Would you say that modern fruits lack these micronutrients as well? Anecdotally, I cannot report any excessive shortages in my nutrition.
> Would it be better to eat the fruit and veg, sure. But is having juice better than nothing.
But in this system you already have the fruit and vegetables whole - because you put them into the juicer. Why spend the extra time, expense and fuss on juicing them, when you could just eat them in less time, less fuss, and without buying anything?
You've said it's better to eat them, and it's quicker, less fuss and cheaper, so why not?
But in this system you already have the fruit and vegetables whole - because you put them into the juicer. Why spend the extra time, expense and fuss on juicing them, when you could just eat them in less time, less fuss, and without buying anything?
You've said it's better to eat them, and it's quicker, less fuss and cheaper, so why not?
For me the main benefit is tasty consumption of vegetables that I would otherwise probably not eat in their raw state, or in the quantity I'd like e.g. a fave is carrot, apple, ginger, spinach and broccoli.
If you believe the numerous health claims that vegetables in their raw state are good for you, this is a much easier way to consume them. If you don't believe it, then yeah, you could spend the time to cook it up - you're not in the target demo...
Criticisms such at TFA linked to above, speak of sweetened smoothies, mostly fruit drinks (who would buy a cold press to squeeze oranges? what a strawman). While the arguments are valid, they typically miss the main use-cases of core cold-press-juicer demo.
If you believe the numerous health claims that vegetables in their raw state are good for you, this is a much easier way to consume them. If you don't believe it, then yeah, you could spend the time to cook it up - you're not in the target demo...
Criticisms such at TFA linked to above, speak of sweetened smoothies, mostly fruit drinks (who would buy a cold press to squeeze oranges? what a strawman). While the arguments are valid, they typically miss the main use-cases of core cold-press-juicer demo.
[deleted]
That's a cute piece of mechanism. I can see how they got into that overdesign. There must have been insistence that the pack must be crushed between two flat plates. Once you insist on that, it gets complicated.
I once got a chance to look closely at the mechanism of SF's JCDecaux overpriced automatic street toilets in SF. Those cost about $150K each. The mechanism is all Telemecanique industrial control components. If you built a washing machine that way, which you could, it would cost $5000-$10000.
Compare the Portland Loo.[1]
[1] http://theloo.biz/
I once got a chance to look closely at the mechanism of SF's JCDecaux overpriced automatic street toilets in SF. Those cost about $150K each. The mechanism is all Telemecanique industrial control components. If you built a washing machine that way, which you could, it would cost $5000-$10000.
Compare the Portland Loo.[1]
[1] http://theloo.biz/
Industrial control components, from what I can tell, are a way to slap together something that works really reliably, at rather high cost, but with lower development time and engineering costs.
So if it costs you $5-10k to build a washing machine with such components, that's not really a bad deal, because how much does it cost to engineer a modern washing machine? A lot more than that.
For these street toilets, the question is: how many toilets are there? If it isn't a large enough amount, the engineering cost to develop something with a lower per-unit cost won't be worth it.
So if it costs you $5-10k to build a washing machine with such components, that's not really a bad deal, because how much does it cost to engineer a modern washing machine? A lot more than that.
For these street toilets, the question is: how many toilets are there? If it isn't a large enough amount, the engineering cost to develop something with a lower per-unit cost won't be worth it.
Not sure what the Portland Loo comparison is meant to suggest -- from what I've read, they also cost ~130k, and at least in a few cases, much more: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sdut-portl...
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"There must have been insistence that the pack must be crushed between two flat plates."
Either it was intentional, or somebody didn't realize that you could do things much cheaper by pinching between rollers and applying a more limited force over a longer time. I would think the result is pretty much the same.
Either it was intentional, or somebody didn't realize that you could do things much cheaper by pinching between rollers and applying a more limited force over a longer time. I would think the result is pretty much the same.
Rollers I don't think work right if you're squeezing intact, whole vegetables. But of course, these Juicero packets don't have intact, whole vegetables in them at all (proven by the ability for people to squeeze them out by hand).
I imagine what happened is that they designed it with flat plates so that it could press whole vegetables. However this didn't work, because as you need to mill anything except soft fruit before they are pressed. They changed the composition of the produce packs so that it did work. However by doing this they'd made the packs so easy to press that a roller (or your bare hands) were sufficient. By this point they'd already designed this beautiful over-engineered solution with flat plates, so probably didn't even try using rollers at that point.
I think rollers would work. Common sugarcane juice machines easily crush a thick, hard (almost like wood) cane into dry paper-like sheets. They can easily crush vegetables, unless you try to put a whole pumpkin into it.
The two strangest parts of this are probably the door locking mechanism and the DC motor supply. The door locking was pretty well explained, but I was really surprised at the DC motor. From previous pictures I had assumed it was a 170VDC motor (using just a rectifier + filters for noise) but according to this it's actually a 330V active power correction boost converter. I guess that gets you 100-240V range support, but it seems horribly expensive for driving a motor. Even 170VDC permanent magnet motors are pretty uncommon - they fill an awkward middle ground where the motor is too big to reasonably use a low voltage DC one (due to power supply costs), but too small to use a universal AC motor directly off line power. The only tools AvE has reviewed of this design are the Kitchenaid mixer and Drill Doctor, for reference.
Also, I don't believe "330V 15A" for a second. Maybe 2A...
Also, I don't believe "330V 15A" for a second. Maybe 2A...
The 330V is for sure a misprint. It doesn't look like they have the insulation for a high voltage motor, so my guess would be 30/33V @15A. Reading the linked spec sheet confirms it's in the range. That would put it much closer to a cordless drill motor. (450W, not 5kW, which is obviously impossible on 120VAC/15A)
I actually think the insulation is adequate for a line voltage motor. You can also see that the brush holders were heavily modified (and kinda ugly) in the Juicero motor compared to the spec sheet [1], likely due to the higher voltage.
Though the most telling is that the only isolated supply is the 5V Meanwell, the whole bottom half is at line potential as evidenced by the lack of transformers and the optoisolators right below the Meanwell supply (for controlling the H-bridge below).
One thing that still seems to be missing is active PFC - it was implied by the article, but I don't see enough components for it. Maybe it's just a rectifier into 170V/330V, and the in the case of 330V they drive the motor at half the duty cycle.
One other question was "why not a series-wound motor?" It was pointed out to me that one potential reason is that a series-wound motor introduces 60/120hz hum and vibrations, and maybe they found the noise objectionable.
[1] http://en.jiaai.cn/products_detail/productId=65.html
Though the most telling is that the only isolated supply is the 5V Meanwell, the whole bottom half is at line potential as evidenced by the lack of transformers and the optoisolators right below the Meanwell supply (for controlling the H-bridge below).
One thing that still seems to be missing is active PFC - it was implied by the article, but I don't see enough components for it. Maybe it's just a rectifier into 170V/330V, and the in the case of 330V they drive the motor at half the duty cycle.
One other question was "why not a series-wound motor?" It was pointed out to me that one potential reason is that a series-wound motor introduces 60/120hz hum and vibrations, and maybe they found the noise objectionable.
[1] http://en.jiaai.cn/products_detail/productId=65.html
I think a series-wound motor would be cheaper than a custom high voltage DC motor. I'm not sure about the power output tradeoffs, though.
Wow, that is amazing. I've seen less engineered products never make it to production.
I would quibble about the custom power supply though, they are not as difficult as they were in the past. Much of the 'magic' of building good SMPS supplies has been encapsulated into very clever chips and certification bodies have seen enough of them now that the checklists are pretty straight forward.
I don't get the outrage though.
I would quibble about the custom power supply though, they are not as difficult as they were in the past. Much of the 'magic' of building good SMPS supplies has been encapsulated into very clever chips and certification bodies have seen enough of them now that the checklists are pretty straight forward.
I don't get the outrage though.
If it actually made juice then it would be an interesting product. Instead it squeezes packages with pulp and juice to force the juice out.
That's not a juicer. That's an inefficient, over-engineered sieve.
That's not a juicer. That's an inefficient, over-engineered sieve.
> I don't get the outrage though.
I'm. It sure it's outrage (for most) so much as a massive internet-wide SMH after Bloomberg reported that the $700 machine (now dropped in price) does nothing your bare hands can't do: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-v...
I'm. It sure it's outrage (for most) so much as a massive internet-wide SMH after Bloomberg reported that the $700 machine (now dropped in price) does nothing your bare hands can't do: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-v...
They went mass market is the problem. If this were for seniors it would have been totally acceptable.
Wow, this is an amazing teardown of the machine. Re the "apply force to the whole thing equally at once" problem mentioned at the end, I wonder if you could do something more like a roller on one side and a plate or another roller on the other, that rolls down from the top of the pack to the bottom.
Also, as overwrought and unnecessary as the Juicero product is, I can't agree with the "it's useless because you can do it by hand" argument. I could probably hand wash my clothes as well as the washing machine does in the same amount of time, but it's hardly useless. While the Juicero is pressing your juice you can be making your lunch or something.
Who knows why the CEO's response skipped straight past "having the machine do it saves you time" to "it can automatically lock you out if your pack expired."
Also, as overwrought and unnecessary as the Juicero product is, I can't agree with the "it's useless because you can do it by hand" argument. I could probably hand wash my clothes as well as the washing machine does in the same amount of time, but it's hardly useless. While the Juicero is pressing your juice you can be making your lunch or something.
Who knows why the CEO's response skipped straight past "having the machine do it saves you time" to "it can automatically lock you out if your pack expired."
My biggest problem with the product is that the QR-scanner, the wifi, the app, all of that has the single purpose of sometimes saying "no" when you press the button to press a pack of juice. That's all it does.
If you remove all of that crap, you get an overengineered juice-press that never says no, and always presses the packet you put into it.
Nothing is more infuriating than machines that randomly say no and refuse to do the thing they're supposed to do. The consumer value of all of that crap is negative.
"But the machine can alert you if the juice pack expired or was recalled"
Look, if you can't read the best-before date already printed on the pack, and if you can't smell the juice and tell if it's funky or not, you are a useless human being. I'm sorry, but you are.
If you remove all of that crap, you get an overengineered juice-press that never says no, and always presses the packet you put into it.
Nothing is more infuriating than machines that randomly say no and refuse to do the thing they're supposed to do. The consumer value of all of that crap is negative.
"But the machine can alert you if the juice pack expired or was recalled"
Look, if you can't read the best-before date already printed on the pack, and if you can't smell the juice and tell if it's funky or not, you are a useless human being. I'm sorry, but you are.
IMO the even worse part is that you can only use their own packs at all. You know the company is most likely going to be gone within five years and then you're stuck.
The recall thing is so ridiculous though. The CEOs letter mentioned a hypothetical "spinach recall" that you would want to know about. Never in my life have I had to worry about my vegetables getting recalled. Why on Earth would I be looking to buy a product that can tell me about something that in my experience never happens?
The recall thing is so ridiculous though. The CEOs letter mentioned a hypothetical "spinach recall" that you would want to know about. Never in my life have I had to worry about my vegetables getting recalled. Why on Earth would I be looking to buy a product that can tell me about something that in my experience never happens?
And if your internet is down, or their service is down, or Amazon EC2 is down, no juice for you!
Why would anyone want that in their lives?
Why would anyone want that in their lives?
Vegetable recalls happen, check out https://consumerist.com/tag/recall/ but it doesn't justify the QR code, they already have your email address.
The washing machine trades money for time, but the Bloomberg video showed that squeezing the juice pack is actually faster than using the machine.
It was 1.5 minutes by hand vs. 2 minutes for the Juicero. But I'm not sure if you get my point. Even if I could hand wash my washing in 30 minutes and the washing machine took 45, I'd still use the washing machine because I don't have to be there washing it. I'm assuming of course that you don't have to stand at your Juicero and babysit it while it squeezes your juice.
But you could also pour juice out of a bottle, which is effectively free, and takes approximately 0 minutes.
I don't care about a more efficient bag squeezing method, that there's a bag at all is a bizarre and useless distinction.
I don't care about a more efficient bag squeezing method, that there's a bag at all is a bizarre and useless distinction.
Well yeah, I'm only talking about the benefit for people who actually want what Juicero offers. I'm not sure if those people actually exist.
> I could probably hand wash my clothes as well as the washing machine does in the same amount of time
No. It takes you about five minutes to load and unload the washing machine, try to do the washing yourself in the same amount of time.
> While the Juicero is pressing your juice you can be making your lunch or something.
In 120 seconds?
No. It takes you about five minutes to load and unload the washing machine, try to do the washing yourself in the same amount of time.
> While the Juicero is pressing your juice you can be making your lunch or something.
In 120 seconds?
Isn't that like saying "It takes about 5 seconds to start the juicero - try squeezing it by hand in the same amount of time"?
Only if you have a really good case for using the remaining 115 seconds (as opposed to the hour or so, plus serious physical effort, needed to wash your clothes).
Yeah, I agree there is a lot less time saved in this case, both in a relative (percent time saved vs doing by hand) and absolute (actual time saved) sense. I also feel though that the Juicero is squarely aimed at a market of people who think they have no time at all for anything.
The washing machine analogy would have been appropriate if washing machines would refuse to start unless you use the same brand detergent and clothes.
I wonder if the upcoming season of Silicon Valley will feature a startup called "Juicaneros" which features a technology that tests blood collected by pricking a single finger, and then squeezing all of the blood out of an arm through the new pricked hole by putting the arm into a 4-ton press.
They could have (and seems should have) created an elegant manual press, maybe with a crank mechanism of some kind. Would have arguably taken about the same amount of counter space and I still think that something beautiful yet manual would have played with the demo. Think pour over coffee crowd... a bit of easy manual work makes you feel like an artisan. Still would have packet subscription, still would have app potential for expiry notices and subscription management.
They did use an elegant crank mechanism, but it was in the funding model.
But can you add DRM to your juicer if you use a manual crank!
I think the machine is fine and I don't feel like $400 is very much for a well built appliance. What kills me about this thing is the fact that they take so many steps to lock you in to their juice packs, which are priced so high that a regular user will have spent more on juice in the first month than the entire machine. Couple that with requiring a nanny QR scan to make sure you can't press "expired" packs as if we are unable to simply read an expiration date and it gets ridiculous. By the way, has anyone mentioned that the expiration on the packs is 8 days after the date of manufacture? Subtract shipping time and you literally have 4 days to use your packs before you shiny new machine says "gotta buy more!" What if I'm ok with a 9 day old pack? Too bad. I think that's what will kill the Juicero. It makes customers feel like they're being hustled.
The $400 is fine. I got a factory refurb model but Vitamixes are in that sort of range. However Vitamixes can just use random fruit and vegetables including prepared versions from the produce department and freezer section of the grocery store.
I agree that it's the $400 + juice packs + nanny scans. Making smoothies isn't a big deal. And if you're willing to trade off a few $$ for a little prep effort savings there are tons of options--including ingredient subscription services.
I agree that it's the $400 + juice packs + nanny scans. Making smoothies isn't a big deal. And if you're willing to trade off a few $$ for a little prep effort savings there are tons of options--including ingredient subscription services.
Beauriful but over engineered for its niche and utterly useless.
700bucks for abag squeezer? Something went terribly wrong.
It feels like they aimed to produce some advanced robotics and built the wrong product. Could turn this into a limb for amputees, makes more sense and actually good use of the resources.
700bucks for abag squeezer? Something went terribly wrong.
It feels like they aimed to produce some advanced robotics and built the wrong product. Could turn this into a limb for amputees, makes more sense and actually good use of the resources.
>700bucks for abag squeezer? Something went terribly wrong.
700 bucks for an Internet of Things bag-squeezer with analytics data generated from your consumption and easy re-use of containers.
I've seen at least three or four other start-ups that could be called "Juicero for X". The interesting question is: for what sorts of products do the economics really work out? I don't want to imply everything on this template will fail, even if Juicero... can't be expected to make a healthy profit.
700 bucks for an Internet of Things bag-squeezer with analytics data generated from your consumption and easy re-use of containers.
I've seen at least three or four other start-ups that could be called "Juicero for X". The interesting question is: for what sorts of products do the economics really work out? I don't want to imply everything on this template will fail, even if Juicero... can't be expected to make a healthy profit.
I was not familiar with the product and after reading article I question if I am understanding this right. This press is only for their custom bag of pulp ?
https://www.juicero.com/the-packs/
Yep. Can get them as a subscription, each one has a QR code so that the juicer knows it is juicing an OEM pack, and is farmer GMO blah blah blah.
Yep. Can get them as a subscription, each one has a QR code so that the juicer knows it is juicing an OEM pack, and is farmer GMO blah blah blah.
> [...] each one has a QR code so that the juicer knows it is juicing an OEM pack, and is farmer GMO blah blah blah
Which has zero value for most people.
Which has zero value for most people.
Correct. You can't use anything else with it. There's a QR code scanner where the bag sits, meaning the press won't even operate unless there's a bag with a recognized (and validated via internet connection) serial number.
This company has to be a front for something; there has to be more to this story... I refuse to believe this is real. $120 million raised!
Some kid came up with an idea, his bro econ student joined in and drafted a sales pitch, the investment glut means there's too many people with too much money just sitting around in their bank accounts and they thought they could invest in this, because it "surely" will make money since it has analytics (big data) and IoT, and there you have it.
It wasn't a kid though. The guy had some pedigree because he opened a chain of juice bars back in the early 2000s. He's also been in contact with Jony Ive and Bill Gates, so I'm sure his connections helped him.
Only thing I can think of is that they've been granted some extremely broad patents on the general idea of IoT-based food processing.
How easy would it be to just cut out the top of the bag with the QR code and stick it there? Then the machine would squeeze anything inside it within the limited shelf life of that bag.
Jokingly I can even see 'the mafia' using it to crush someone's hand in the device. Though that makes me wonder if the machine does provide enough force to do that, and what kind of damage it could do... Anyone can know or figure it out?
Jokingly I can even see 'the mafia' using it to crush someone's hand in the device. Though that makes me wonder if the machine does provide enough force to do that, and what kind of damage it could do... Anyone can know or figure it out?
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I'm wondering now what these machines might be good for as parts. After this company goes belly-up, surely these machines can be had for pennies on Ebay. What can we do with them?
You can squeeze DRMed bags.
They have that absurdly over-specced ARM processor, with convenient USB terminals on the PCB for flashing it. I'm sure you could make them useful.
Calling an STM32F407 absurdly over-specced is hyperbole. It's just a 6$ micro controller, not a smartphone class SoC like a Snapdragon.
They probably need it to do the QR code scanning and IoT DRM thingies.
It is certaily over-engineered. All the stuff mentioned can probably be done using an 8bit Atmega.
Salvaged for a robotics project?
> 700bucks for abag squeezer? Something went terribly wrong.
It's far too early to tell.
Yes it is expensive but remember there are plenty of wealthy people (hint: early adopters) in this world willing to pay for convenience. If you can show me a cheaper bag squeezer that looks equally good in my kitchen and is as convenient then that would be something. But right now there isn't one.
It reminds me very much of Nutribullets or Thermomixes which were both overpriced in the beginning until competitors came in to the market.
It's far too early to tell.
Yes it is expensive but remember there are plenty of wealthy people (hint: early adopters) in this world willing to pay for convenience. If you can show me a cheaper bag squeezer that looks equally good in my kitchen and is as convenient then that would be something. But right now there isn't one.
It reminds me very much of Nutribullets or Thermomixes which were both overpriced in the beginning until competitors came in to the market.
My hand mate
I have to say I do find it disheartening that everything is aiming for a subscription model. Software, food, etc. I know that it is a very profitable business model but it does make me wonder if I really want to live in a world where everything is by subscription.
These subscription models, or even machines that require only a certain type of consumable, are effectively leases. Sure you may buy a piece of hardware, but it is only useful for as long as you buy and use the required consumable.
I am comfortable in renting a place to live - especially since I have moved about every 2-3 years in recent memory - and I am comfortable paying a subscription fee for some software and services. But I am not that comfortable when I have to subscribe to food or clothing for example.
These subscription models, or even machines that require only a certain type of consumable, are effectively leases. Sure you may buy a piece of hardware, but it is only useful for as long as you buy and use the required consumable.
I am comfortable in renting a place to live - especially since I have moved about every 2-3 years in recent memory - and I am comfortable paying a subscription fee for some software and services. But I am not that comfortable when I have to subscribe to food or clothing for example.
Completely agree with you. What I particularly despise is the absurd lack of discussion on the amount of packaging waste. Why doesn't that make these piece of shit things non-starters?
Excuse the vitriol, but it absolutely makes my blood boil, the fucking Keurigs, these idiot juicers, Blue Apron, and that one company that even delivers a box of clothes each month? WTF?! I buy clothes every two years, and even I could do better.
Also, even if they offered to collect the packaging, and recycle/reuse it, it's a needless complication to an issue that shouldn't exist to begin with.
Why isn't a low-tech, low-carbon footprint life celebrated more? A french press/moka pot coffee, a mixer to make your juice (because, you know, you take the time to peel the motherfucking fruit beforehand), and cooking your own god damned food on a frying pan.
Excuse the vitriol, but it absolutely makes my blood boil, the fucking Keurigs, these idiot juicers, Blue Apron, and that one company that even delivers a box of clothes each month? WTF?! I buy clothes every two years, and even I could do better.
Also, even if they offered to collect the packaging, and recycle/reuse it, it's a needless complication to an issue that shouldn't exist to begin with.
Why isn't a low-tech, low-carbon footprint life celebrated more? A french press/moka pot coffee, a mixer to make your juice (because, you know, you take the time to peel the motherfucking fruit beforehand), and cooking your own god damned food on a frying pan.
> Why isn't a low-tech, low-carbon footprint life celebrated more? A french press/moka pot coffee, a mixer to make your juice (because, you know, you take the time to peel the motherfucking fruit beforehand), and cooking your own god damned food on a frying pan.
Reading your comment was deliciously cathartic, and now I know that moka pots are a thing. If I get a coffee habit again I'll have to look into trying one.
Reading your comment was deliciously cathartic, and now I know that moka pots are a thing. If I get a coffee habit again I'll have to look into trying one.
Food is already a 'subscription'. We sign up with protein, fat, and carb service providers (e.g. chicken, if I may) and we pay for their services on a daily basis. Sometimes we kill the underperforming providers and eat them too.
A Note From the New CEO of Lobstero
https://www.somethingawful.com/news/juicero-lobster-pouch/
https://www.somethingawful.com/news/juicero-lobster-pouch/
This could become a collectible piece of hardware. A sort of beautiful tech historical folly. Might be worth the actual price over a 50 to 60 year timeline.
> This could become a collectible piece of hardware. A sort of beautiful tech historical folly. Might be worth the actual price over a 50 to 60 year timeline.
Remember CueCat? (Actually I was a young kid back then, but I'd really like to have one. I like cats.)
Remember CueCat? (Actually I was a young kid back then, but I'd really like to have one. I like cats.)
A discouraging idea - checking eBay, brandnew Cuecats are like $10. I think that's well below their original selling price, even after all these years of inflation.
Actually, no, that's infinitely higher than their original selling price, literally. They were given away for free at Radio Shack. I used to have one; I spent a few minutes playing with it, then stashed it away thinking I'd eventually find something useful to do with it, but never did. I eventually gave it to Goodwill or something.
I got quite a few as a nerdy middle school kid who frequented RadioShack. I always thought I'd come up with something interesting you do with them too. Never did...
Oh, my bad. I could've sworn they were originally sold for at least $10 but checking WP, they apparently were given away right from the start.
No but that is cool looking. My former business partner had a tangentially related idea. He wanted a mouse that copy-pasted across different computers.
There's a ton of them on eBay right now, many of them pre-modified to remove the DRM.
Still have mine on the shelf in the office.
Except it won't work. Historical antiques are usually interesting because they still work after decades (if care is taken).
Incredible. Does this make Juicero the first mass-market example of chindōgu?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chindōgu
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chindōgu
No, that would be the selfie stick
http://imgur.com/gallery/WJsAZ
http://imgur.com/gallery/WJsAZ
Selfie sticks work wonderfully... for pointing out distracted and self-absorbed people to the rest of us. And taking shaky selfies too!
Using all those CNC milled parts is simply crazy. CNC is for prototypes, small runs, super specialised load characteristics or runs of parts that are practically impossible to make otherwise. This use does not tick any of those boxes.
the whole thing is crazy. this is a slap in the face of anyone who has taken an engineering course, let alone anyone who was able to grow up with common sense
I especially love the pusher. Lots of milled out pockets to save weight. They need to save weight because... ?
I bought a $300 juice 15 years ago and it's a simple design and can juice anything. It's basically a giant motor with a plastic assembly attached to the front to hold the food.
If you are serious about juicing you can find cheaper products that don't require packets. This is a convenience item for people with a lot of money. There is no way this company will be worth $120MM unless they design a low cost model.
If you are serious about juicing you can find cheaper products that don't require packets. This is a convenience item for people with a lot of money. There is no way this company will be worth $120MM unless they design a low cost model.
Sounds like the design of the Champion juicer, those things were great. Lasted forever.
Out of all the Juicero outrage, this is the best. You can still admire something for all its flaws.
$400 for a juice machine is not crazy; if you spend that much on an ordinary juicer you can make gallons of carrot juice for a very low price. (It saves money, it doesn't cost money)
You do have to clean up a mess, but if your time is that valuable you can hire a maid to do it for about that $5-$8 price point of the packs.
You do have to clean up a mess, but if your time is that valuable you can hire a maid to do it for about that $5-$8 price point of the packs.
Given the breakdown, it seems like the juicero press could do a lot more than just pressing bags full of pre-chopped stuff. Do you think they engineered it to do more, but then ended up being unable to actually make premade bags that contained big enough chunks of fruit / veg to work?
(Half-)joking, but the irony is, with so many interest and high-quality parts, the press looks like it could be a desired object for makers. In particular, it contains:
- two motors, one of them exceptionally strong - a durable drive train - a control board with flash memory, wifi, a camera and a USB plug for flashing without additional tools(!) - a durable aluminum frame
Those parts look like they could be building blocks for some interesting hobby projects. Did they ever think about selling to makers?
- two motors, one of them exceptionally strong - a durable drive train - a control board with flash memory, wifi, a camera and a USB plug for flashing without additional tools(!) - a durable aluminum frame
Those parts look like they could be building blocks for some interesting hobby projects. Did they ever think about selling to makers?
Except a maker could just source the parts alone cheaper, unless they bought it used, and then there goes the incentive to the mfg.
This reminds me of the King's Toaster, an ancient allegory about overengineering a food appliance:
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html
Yes, definitely over-engineered and needlessly expensive for it's purpose.
But at the same time, it feels like they have achieved such a great quality that the learning and experience to design and execute could be very valuable as an unintended consequence.
So, maybe quality always wins in the long run nevertheless. Wouldn't you hire these guys and pay a premium, if you wanted to manufacture great hardware?
But at the same time, it feels like they have achieved such a great quality that the learning and experience to design and execute could be very valuable as an unintended consequence.
So, maybe quality always wins in the long run nevertheless. Wouldn't you hire these guys and pay a premium, if you wanted to manufacture great hardware?
> Wouldn't you hire these guys and pay a premium, if you wanted to manufacture great hardware?
Well, according to another source* one investor said that he expected the machine to be a lot smaller and that it would mush large chunks of fruit and veg. When the startup demoed at early stage, there wasn't even a working prototype - which is fine but I think it's fair to say that there was a bit of misleading. Only way to justify how it managed to raise $120 million...
*https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-v...
Well, according to another source* one investor said that he expected the machine to be a lot smaller and that it would mush large chunks of fruit and veg. When the startup demoed at early stage, there wasn't even a working prototype - which is fine but I think it's fair to say that there was a bit of misleading. Only way to justify how it managed to raise $120 million...
*https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-v...
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I don't think Juicero cares one way or another about your ability to side-step their juicer, as long as you buy the packs because that is where the money is. They'd probably give you the juicer for free if you signed up for a 3 years worth supply of juice packs.
I blame modern VCs for this. VCs love continuing revenue streams and monopoly suppliers, and this crazy thing had both of those in spades. The funders must have been salivating so much about those factors that they never questioned how stupid the device ultimately was. There has to eventually come a tipping point where consumers just get sick of devices that require constant rent payments in order to continue functioning, with no choice in suppliers. Not to mention ridiculous amounts of packaging waste.
> the massive force required to press the packs across the entire surface at once. The machine must apply equal pressure to ~64 square inches of surface area at once, meaning the drivetrain must be able to apply thousands of pounds of force to squish all that produce.
What if the package was a cube (16 square inches for ex. with 4 inch height) This would roughly fit in the average human palm. Wouldn't we be able to easily more or less apply equal pressure on the packaging? Just a thought.
I would consider buying these cube packs.
What if the package was a cube (16 square inches for ex. with 4 inch height) This would roughly fit in the average human palm. Wouldn't we be able to easily more or less apply equal pressure on the packaging? Just a thought.
I would consider buying these cube packs.
I thought this was silly until I read this point [1]:
>No prep. No mess. No clean up.
That's brilliant because people don't like cleaning. Cleaning regular juicers is annoying to the point that only few people use them regularly. There are enough people with money to spare that this can become a success. I haven't seen it mentioned, so let me spell it out: This is Nespresso for fruits.
[1]: https://www.juicero.com/how-it-works/
>No prep. No mess. No clean up.
That's brilliant because people don't like cleaning. Cleaning regular juicers is annoying to the point that only few people use them regularly. There are enough people with money to spare that this can become a success. I haven't seen it mentioned, so let me spell it out: This is Nespresso for fruits.
[1]: https://www.juicero.com/how-it-works/
You can buy juice at whole foods....
Exactly, if you want really fresh squeezed juice, there are plenty of options with about the same shelf life as these juice packs. There's zero value-add in this product compared to stocking up on a week's worth of fresh-squeezed juice.
In fact, the nanny-scans of the QR-codes that make the machine occasionally go "NO" is of negative value to the consumer.
Imagine buying a bottle of fresh juice, and on the third day you can't open the bottle any longer because it's past the expiry date. And imagine paying $400 for the "privilege" of this. Complete WTF.
In fact, the nanny-scans of the QR-codes that make the machine occasionally go "NO" is of negative value to the consumer.
Imagine buying a bottle of fresh juice, and on the third day you can't open the bottle any longer because it's past the expiry date. And imagine paying $400 for the "privilege" of this. Complete WTF.
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I think this is a good example of why the Keurig method of hardware sales[1] works so well. People would be okay with buying marked-up juice pouches because that's the real product. The juicer is just a means to an end.
[1] https://blog.bolt.io/keurig-accidentally-created-the-perfect...
[1] https://blog.bolt.io/keurig-accidentally-created-the-perfect...
I think there's a big gap between the target market for this device and the average consumer.
A commercial cold press countertop juicer is usually a few thousand dollars. A consumer model is ~$3-400. Cold press juicers are supposed to retain nutrients a bit more, and produce more flavorful juice. (who knows if that is true)
The Juicero is the pro-sumer k-cup version of a juicer. It's not aimed at people who are price conscious at all. Price conscious people could get something close-enough for sub $30. My guess is that the $700 juicer was designed to get a high-end reputation, with lower-end follow on products once they established the brand.
At this point, they are ruined. It's collective common sense that this is a bad deal and the value of the brand is diminished dramatically.
Their engineering decisions are questionable. If you are going for a high-end high quality unique product that will push people to spend double what the competitive product provides, it should be more appealing to look at. It's like they tried as hard as they could to make a cube-shaped plastic lined product as expensive as possible to manufacture. I'm all for sturdy commercial quality components, but not in something that looks like it was manufactured by nintendo.
The Bloomberg article was in poor form. At least let a company get out of the gate and establish itself before tearing them apart. But that's the danger involved with investing big money in companies based on a business plan and not vetting that they are good decision makers. This all could have been avoided if their PR people were on top of things. You'd think they'd have top notch PR people in place for this market segment... another bad decision.
A commercial cold press countertop juicer is usually a few thousand dollars. A consumer model is ~$3-400. Cold press juicers are supposed to retain nutrients a bit more, and produce more flavorful juice. (who knows if that is true)
The Juicero is the pro-sumer k-cup version of a juicer. It's not aimed at people who are price conscious at all. Price conscious people could get something close-enough for sub $30. My guess is that the $700 juicer was designed to get a high-end reputation, with lower-end follow on products once they established the brand.
At this point, they are ruined. It's collective common sense that this is a bad deal and the value of the brand is diminished dramatically.
Their engineering decisions are questionable. If you are going for a high-end high quality unique product that will push people to spend double what the competitive product provides, it should be more appealing to look at. It's like they tried as hard as they could to make a cube-shaped plastic lined product as expensive as possible to manufacture. I'm all for sturdy commercial quality components, but not in something that looks like it was manufactured by nintendo.
The Bloomberg article was in poor form. At least let a company get out of the gate and establish itself before tearing them apart. But that's the danger involved with investing big money in companies based on a business plan and not vetting that they are good decision makers. This all could have been avoided if their PR people were on top of things. You'd think they'd have top notch PR people in place for this market segment... another bad decision.
Poor form? You could squeeze the bag and get almost an identical amount of juice. They should provide some sort of actual value to their customer.
Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form? Should Unroll.me get some runway to test this revenue model before the NYT includes them in a story?
Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed or fail on the market. But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't some "fake news" drive for clicks. It's an actual issue, which Juicero was apparently shocked by, and they should have to defend themselves.
Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form? Should Unroll.me get some runway to test this revenue model before the NYT includes them in a story?
Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed or fail on the market. But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't some "fake news" drive for clicks. It's an actual issue, which Juicero was apparently shocked by, and they should have to defend themselves.
> Poor form? You could squeeze the bag and get almost an identical amount of juice. They should provide some sort of actual value to their customer.
I can squeeze a honeydew by hand and get plenty of juice. Pomegranate not so much. Kale, not at all. Celery? Maybe a little, but a few drips compared to what a juice press would give me is not at all in the same ball park. Do any of the juice packs contain hard to squeeze fruits or vegetables? The exercise is left to the reader, who can't do their own research without a $750 spend. Poor form.
> Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form?
I don't know which Uber article that you are referring to, but Uber is in the midst of a sea of bad press and is plenty flush to buy the help of a quality PR firm to see them through it.
Unroll.me - if you go after them, you should talk about how Mozilla uses data along with chrome, facebook, the television networks, netflix, etc. It's lazy to villify a single firm when there's an industry full of questionable practices.
> Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed or fail on the market
Not every product produces value. In the world of IT, software in general, and most certainly "cloud services", value should absolutely be questioned more. But it's certainly hard to be a consumer watchdog while at the same time doing the same thing. Especially when your biggest source of revenue is a series of other companies doing the same thing.
> But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't some "fake news" drive for clicks.
Are you sure about that? The video looks to me like it was created with the intent of going viral.
I can squeeze a honeydew by hand and get plenty of juice. Pomegranate not so much. Kale, not at all. Celery? Maybe a little, but a few drips compared to what a juice press would give me is not at all in the same ball park. Do any of the juice packs contain hard to squeeze fruits or vegetables? The exercise is left to the reader, who can't do their own research without a $750 spend. Poor form.
> Was the NYT article on Uber and Unroll.me poor form?
I don't know which Uber article that you are referring to, but Uber is in the midst of a sea of bad press and is plenty flush to buy the help of a quality PR firm to see them through it.
Unroll.me - if you go after them, you should talk about how Mozilla uses data along with chrome, facebook, the television networks, netflix, etc. It's lazy to villify a single firm when there's an industry full of questionable practices.
> Why don't we just require that businesses provide some sort of actual value? If they're producing value, they can prove it, and the product will succeed or fail on the market
Not every product produces value. In the world of IT, software in general, and most certainly "cloud services", value should absolutely be questioned more. But it's certainly hard to be a consumer watchdog while at the same time doing the same thing. Especially when your biggest source of revenue is a series of other companies doing the same thing.
> But being able to get the same amount of juice by squeezing the bag isn't some "fake news" drive for clicks.
Are you sure about that? The video looks to me like it was created with the intent of going viral.
The lesson you take out of juicegate is that they didn't spend enough money on PR?
From an entrepreneurial standpoint, yes.
If you have $120M in venture funding, somebody should have stopped and asked the questions - how do we protect the brand? And what are the dangers to this brand?
That's a pretty enormous miss.
If you have $120M in venture funding, somebody should have stopped and asked the questions - how do we protect the brand? And what are the dangers to this brand?
That's a pretty enormous miss.
I don't think there was a lot of stopping and asking questions happening at Juicebro. Laying it on the backs of the PR people isn't fair to them—they're not sorcerers. The failure here was at the check writing stage.
Oh this is interesting:
> The two primary exterior plastic parts are huge, detailed injection molded parts with multiple slides and actions, large changes in wall thickness (which makes it very hard to mold without imperfections)
Does anyone know why large changes in wall thickness makes molding these parts more difficult?
> The two primary exterior plastic parts are huge, detailed injection molded parts with multiple slides and actions, large changes in wall thickness (which makes it very hard to mold without imperfections)
Does anyone know why large changes in wall thickness makes molding these parts more difficult?
Molding parts with uniform thickness is tricky enough - without great tooling design and the perfect temperature/pressure settings, you'll get hot spots, flow lines and all sorts of visual defects in your part. Varying thicknesses make achieving these "Apple-like" levels of perfection in the plastics even more difficult, thanks to the fact that the material will cool and change shape at different rates.
Oh that's fascinating - thanks!
A machine with that level of quality has a lot of appeal for me. Something generally useful like a blender or stand mixer, that might be kept visible on the counter and used often, I could see dropping $400 or even $700 on.
But this thing doesn't appear “generally useful” based on what I've seen about this story. It seems to want to lock you into using food from a particular vendor.
How much less appealing would my stand mixer have been as a purchase if it were outfitted with a QR reader looking to make sure that the KitchenAid™ cookie dough I was giving it was fresh? That would be a deal breaker.
But this thing doesn't appear “generally useful” based on what I've seen about this story. It seems to want to lock you into using food from a particular vendor.
How much less appealing would my stand mixer have been as a purchase if it were outfitted with a QR reader looking to make sure that the KitchenAid™ cookie dough I was giving it was fresh? That would be a deal breaker.
Also, I am not really sure about the "quality" aspect. All that complexity, all those moving parts, high power components next to low power components - seems a lot could wrong down the road. Ofc they seem to be well built so the components could last a while.
Yeah, I would wait for a judgement from somebody like Wirecutter or Consumer Reports on whether such a product is likely to hold up.
After reading about the details in this wonderful article I am starting to believe they intended from the beginning to create a piece of postmodern art.
Misallocated Capital. Maybe I'm bitter because my startup wasn't funded, but I feel like we can and must do better than this.
From a hardware perspective is this well designed?
Forgot what you think of the product and whether it's excessive.
I mean with that handy USB connector to flash the firmware, a $400 appliance that does one thing well is not that bad if you can do that one thing on whatever you want.
Forgot what you think of the product and whether it's excessive.
I mean with that handy USB connector to flash the firmware, a $400 appliance that does one thing well is not that bad if you can do that one thing on whatever you want.
I'm a little bit shocked by everyone's reaction to this. It is nothing new for people to spend more money than required to accomplish a task. First class plane tickets. Luxury cars. Mansions. Expensive restaurants. And a million other things.
> to accomplish a task
People are outraged because it doesn't actually accomplish any task. A number of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ comments seem to miss that this doesn't actually make juice. You're paying for them to hide 8 oz of juice in $8 packets and then again to extract the juice with this contraption (assuming your internet is working). I suppose there's some entertainment value in "juice press theatre" but you could say the same thing about a gadget that lights your money on fire.
People are outraged because it doesn't actually accomplish any task. A number of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ comments seem to miss that this doesn't actually make juice. You're paying for them to hide 8 oz of juice in $8 packets and then again to extract the juice with this contraption (assuming your internet is working). I suppose there's some entertainment value in "juice press theatre" but you could say the same thing about a gadget that lights your money on fire.
A first class plane ticket is better than an economy class one. A luxury car is better than a cheap car. Those upgrades might cost too much for their value, but they are valuable.
The Juicero is roundly mocked because, despite the cost, it is worse than a regular juicer in a whole lot of ways, and only better in a very few ones.
To use your examples, it's mocked much in the same way an expensive restaurant is mocked when it offers crappy food under a veneer of pointless luxury.
The Juicero is roundly mocked because, despite the cost, it is worse than a regular juicer in a whole lot of ways, and only better in a very few ones.
To use your examples, it's mocked much in the same way an expensive restaurant is mocked when it offers crappy food under a veneer of pointless luxury.
>I'm a little bit shocked by everyone's reaction to this. It is nothing new for people to spend more money than required to accomplish a task. First class plane tickets. Luxury cars. Mansions. Expensive restaurants.
Yes, people buy those things. Will people buy this thing? Probably not. And they took a whack of VC to build it.
Yes, people buy those things. Will people buy this thing? Probably not. And they took a whack of VC to build it.
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations"
--Orson Welles
--Orson Welles
"The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit... the arbitrariness of the constraint only serves to obtain precision of execution."
- Igor Stravinsky
- Igor Stravinsky
Sounds like they needed the inventor of the AeroPress to be involved.
I bet this was really fun to work on.
Useless precision. The anathama of profit. I love some engeneering porn, but that is when form follows function, that is dubious here.
I hate to point to conspiracy theories but the only reason someone might invest in this company is if they are investing money not in the product (because it is obviously a flop) but to gauge if consumers will eventually be dumb enough to allow abuse from appliances just like they allow from internet and mobile phone companies.
What a Rube Goldberg contraption.
I hope they will fail miserably together with Keurig, Blue Apron and anybody else who makes simple food preparation into something that produces piles of trash for no good reason other than costing ten times as much. This is totally the wrong direction.
Seriously though. Blue Apron made me seethe with anger the first time I saw an ad for it. If you can afford Blue Apron, you can afford to buy 3x as much food and have control over your ingredient choice by just going to your goddamn supermarket. Yeah, recipes are great. Yeah, tutorial videos are great. But that's what the internet is supposed to be for. You don't need some hipster wannabe "chef" assembling boxes of ingredients 200 miles away to decide what you're eating tonight, do you? That box will come with 10 little vacuum sealed plastic pouches, a bunch of packing material, instructions you could have found online, and a whole host of other crap you don't need that's just making waste for waste's sake.
If you already have access to a kitchen, a decent set of cooking equipment (which you need regardless of whether you go for Blue Apron or not) is only a few hundred bucks, and the "basics" (pasta, rice, potatoes, onions, garlic, spices, veggie oil, olive oil, vinegar, flour, sugar, salt) are maybe 50 bucks more. Then, for less than a months' worth of meals from Blue Apron, you're set to start cooking for life.
My fiancee and I spend a grand total of 100 bucks a week, give or take, on groceries. This is in southern California, and usually including a cheap bottle of wine. We could spend even less if we wanted, but we're cooking some gourmet shit at home and constantly have leftovers, while generating 1/2 the trash of any of our neighbors thanks both to reusable containers for everything and composting. You can do SO MUCH better than Blue Apron, both in health and in environmental impact.
The same thing applies to Juicero: If I really want to start making fruit juice, I'll buy myself a decent juicer and get fresh, local fruit because it will always be cheaper than whatever they're sending out in their little pouches. I'd rather spend a couple hundred bucks on a quality machine (or better, just make smoothies since they're better for you and use the money I saved not buying a Juicero to buy a Vitamix) than buy into some cult hype bullshit.
If you already have access to a kitchen, a decent set of cooking equipment (which you need regardless of whether you go for Blue Apron or not) is only a few hundred bucks, and the "basics" (pasta, rice, potatoes, onions, garlic, spices, veggie oil, olive oil, vinegar, flour, sugar, salt) are maybe 50 bucks more. Then, for less than a months' worth of meals from Blue Apron, you're set to start cooking for life.
My fiancee and I spend a grand total of 100 bucks a week, give or take, on groceries. This is in southern California, and usually including a cheap bottle of wine. We could spend even less if we wanted, but we're cooking some gourmet shit at home and constantly have leftovers, while generating 1/2 the trash of any of our neighbors thanks both to reusable containers for everything and composting. You can do SO MUCH better than Blue Apron, both in health and in environmental impact.
The same thing applies to Juicero: If I really want to start making fruit juice, I'll buy myself a decent juicer and get fresh, local fruit because it will always be cheaper than whatever they're sending out in their little pouches. I'd rather spend a couple hundred bucks on a quality machine (or better, just make smoothies since they're better for you and use the money I saved not buying a Juicero to buy a Vitamix) than buy into some cult hype bullshit.
Their market is people that don't cook all that often, and want to cook relatively fancy things. It's people that cook so rarely that they throw away half of the groceries they buy, because they don't cook enough, and the dishes they make don't make sense together, from a home economics perspective.
I do my best to cook traditional Northern Spanish food for myself (well, as close as I can given the available ingredients). There's very little food waste, precisely because so many recipes either use long lived ingredients, or just reuse them. Some are built using another dish's leftovers as an ingredient. This makes it very easy to just have an idea of the stock we need for certain kinds of ingredients, and make a high percentage of the shopping list just an exercise of comparing what we have with our ideal stock.
This only works, however, because we aren't really looking at dishes individually, and we cook almost every meal. Someone that cooks once a week, and isn't thinking about efficiency, in either ingredients or time spent preparing, will end up spending a whole lot more and eat less. Unfortunately, there's no money in teaching people how to understand a kitchen like this, and how to add recipes that will both add variety while minimizing waste.
I do my best to cook traditional Northern Spanish food for myself (well, as close as I can given the available ingredients). There's very little food waste, precisely because so many recipes either use long lived ingredients, or just reuse them. Some are built using another dish's leftovers as an ingredient. This makes it very easy to just have an idea of the stock we need for certain kinds of ingredients, and make a high percentage of the shopping list just an exercise of comparing what we have with our ideal stock.
This only works, however, because we aren't really looking at dishes individually, and we cook almost every meal. Someone that cooks once a week, and isn't thinking about efficiency, in either ingredients or time spent preparing, will end up spending a whole lot more and eat less. Unfortunately, there's no money in teaching people how to understand a kitchen like this, and how to add recipes that will both add variety while minimizing waste.
This is an interesting idea, especially for someone like me who cooks nearly every meal but still watches rarely-used ingredients die a slow fridge death. Are there any books you would recommend specifically for this kind of reusable cooking plan?
I generally end up just making one or two simple dishes a week with lots of leftovers.
Old standbys: One jar tomato sauce, one pound ground turkey, some peas, cook it all together and pour over pasta. One large yellow onion, bit more than a pound of chicken, three or four bell peppers, stir-fry and serve on rice.
Each of those makes about half a week of meals (not counting breakfast) using exact multiples of the unit size of the ingredients in the grocery store, so nothing gets a chance to go bad.
I too would be quite interested in how to design a recipe structure for less waste without that sort of restriction, though.
Old standbys: One jar tomato sauce, one pound ground turkey, some peas, cook it all together and pour over pasta. One large yellow onion, bit more than a pound of chicken, three or four bell peppers, stir-fry and serve on rice.
Each of those makes about half a week of meals (not counting breakfast) using exact multiples of the unit size of the ingredients in the grocery store, so nothing gets a chance to go bad.
I too would be quite interested in how to design a recipe structure for less waste without that sort of restriction, though.
With all due respect, I think you've completely missed the point of something like Blue Apron. It's not about saving money at all. It's for folks who enjoy cooking, but want to completely avoid trips to the grocery store or at least greatly simplify those trips. There's also a fun element of surprise since it not only takes out the grocery store trips but even basic meal planning.
That said, the one point I agree with you on is Blue Apron's generation of trash. It's wildly wasteful in that sense because so many of their ingredients are individually wrapped and packaged.
That said, the one point I agree with you on is Blue Apron's generation of trash. It's wildly wasteful in that sense because so many of their ingredients are individually wrapped and packaged.
A significant part of the Blue Apron value proposition (and I am not a subscribed or otherwise interested--I cook for myself, mostly from scratch), is:
"You don't have to think or plan anything."
And that is where your one paragraph about how easy it is to cook for yourself falls down. You have to think up a menu. You have to find a menu (and hope it is good), plan, get ingredients, get the right odds and ends and figure out portions.
That is all fairly easy to do (and I do it myself), but not cost-free. If you have more money than emotional energy and time, the Blue Apron value proposition may appeal to you.
I hate the amount of waste it produces too, but "waste for wastes' sake" is not what is going on there.
"You don't have to think or plan anything."
And that is where your one paragraph about how easy it is to cook for yourself falls down. You have to think up a menu. You have to find a menu (and hope it is good), plan, get ingredients, get the right odds and ends and figure out portions.
That is all fairly easy to do (and I do it myself), but not cost-free. If you have more money than emotional energy and time, the Blue Apron value proposition may appeal to you.
I hate the amount of waste it produces too, but "waste for wastes' sake" is not what is going on there.
> "You don't have to think or plan anything."
Yeah, and you lose a lot of what makes cooking cooking.
You put effort into something, your satisfaction goes up. Extend this to how you live your life, and learn the secrets of being happy.
Yeah, and you lose a lot of what makes cooking cooking.
You put effort into something, your satisfaction goes up. Extend this to how you live your life, and learn the secrets of being happy.
I think it depends what aspects of "cooking" you value.
Some people really enjoy the meal planning part. Some people really enjoy picking out fruits and vegetables at the store. But others don't like planning out meals for the whole week and find grocery store trips stressful and frustrating (maybe their local store is incredibly busy). Blue Apron has a value proposition for those in the latter category who also enjoy the part of cooking that starts once you've got the grocery bags in your kitchen.
Some people really enjoy the meal planning part. Some people really enjoy picking out fruits and vegetables at the store. But others don't like planning out meals for the whole week and find grocery store trips stressful and frustrating (maybe their local store is incredibly busy). Blue Apron has a value proposition for those in the latter category who also enjoy the part of cooking that starts once you've got the grocery bags in your kitchen.
I assume you don't grow all your own produce, or slaughter your own meat. My extended family does (at least mostly) and they would claim that I would have a more satisfying life if I did as well.
Where one draws the line at doing it all on your own depends on time available, motivation, and opportunity cost. I'm not going to judge people whose utility function is different than mine.
Where one draws the line at doing it all on your own depends on time available, motivation, and opportunity cost. I'm not going to judge people whose utility function is different than mine.
> You put effort into something, your satisfaction goes up.
I enjoy menu planning, shopping, and cooking more than most people.
OTOH, I also enjoy ballroom dancing, and a variety of other non-cooking hobbies. Sometimes, I want to devote lots of time to cooking. Sometime, I want good food at home with the care I (or my wife) puts into cooking without the rest of the organizational and planning overhead. Blue Apron excels at the latter case. It's more packaging than I'd prefer, and than I need for the use case because I have a pantry well stocked with basic essentials (which is where the worst of Blue Apron's packaging excess tends to be), but for something that works in a diverse market and without gotchas, I see why they do it.
I enjoy menu planning, shopping, and cooking more than most people.
OTOH, I also enjoy ballroom dancing, and a variety of other non-cooking hobbies. Sometimes, I want to devote lots of time to cooking. Sometime, I want good food at home with the care I (or my wife) puts into cooking without the rest of the organizational and planning overhead. Blue Apron excels at the latter case. It's more packaging than I'd prefer, and than I need for the use case because I have a pantry well stocked with basic essentials (which is where the worst of Blue Apron's packaging excess tends to be), but for something that works in a diverse market and without gotchas, I see why they do it.
Everyone's different. You can't expect that everyone will derive the same satisfaction from the exact same activities as you.
We did Blue Apron for a few months, and I rather liked it. Believe it or not, some of us just aren't creative enough to spend tons of time thinking up recipes, or looking them up, and ensuring we have enough of every ingredient for every meal.
We still eat almost all of our meals at home, with or without Blue Apron, but it substantially improved the quality of the average meal.
The problem with Blue Apron is that they made meals complicated for the sake of being complicated. Way too many sauces to make, things to reduce, things to mix, etc. Every meal took at least 2x what they claimed it would take, and it seemed to take tons of dishes just because of how needlessly complex they made them.
We're using Gobble now, which is billed more as 15min meals and usually only dirty a couple of dishes. I vastly prefer it.
I don't like the trash aspect of it, I'll give you that.
We still eat almost all of our meals at home, with or without Blue Apron, but it substantially improved the quality of the average meal.
The problem with Blue Apron is that they made meals complicated for the sake of being complicated. Way too many sauces to make, things to reduce, things to mix, etc. Every meal took at least 2x what they claimed it would take, and it seemed to take tons of dishes just because of how needlessly complex they made them.
We're using Gobble now, which is billed more as 15min meals and usually only dirty a couple of dishes. I vastly prefer it.
I don't like the trash aspect of it, I'll give you that.
I'm not a good cook, but I like the idea of cooking. I don't have time to plan a week of meals. I want someone to tell me what I need, and if they can also send me exactly what I need so that I don't get it wrong, that's fantastic. It may be so fantastic that I am willing to pay twice as much as it might cost in the grocery store.
I'm sure with a bit of culinary expertise and experience I could probably do it all on my own, but I don't have that experience, and I don't really have the time to acquire it, but I sure don't want to order out every night.
I haven't tried it, but Blue Apron sounds pretty great to me. I can cook but I don't need to worry about having no real idea what I'm doing? Good deal. That is way more approachable than doing a bunch of independent learning.
I'm sure with a bit of culinary expertise and experience I could probably do it all on my own, but I don't have that experience, and I don't really have the time to acquire it, but I sure don't want to order out every night.
I haven't tried it, but Blue Apron sounds pretty great to me. I can cook but I don't need to worry about having no real idea what I'm doing? Good deal. That is way more approachable than doing a bunch of independent learning.
There's a business idea in your comment.
Whenever I make a recipe I end up guiltily throwing away a ton of food two weeks later. Is that better or worse than throwing away lots of packaging?
What am I supposed to do with 90% of the smallest bunch of scallions the supermarket will sell me after I use the 10% the recipe calls for? I know, I know, I'm supposed to have 5 other recipes that I either know or can invent at the drop of a hat that just happen to use all the same ingredients. But how realistic is that for those of us that aren't amateur chefs and don't really want to become one?
What am I supposed to do with 90% of the smallest bunch of scallions the supermarket will sell me after I use the 10% the recipe calls for? I know, I know, I'm supposed to have 5 other recipes that I either know or can invent at the drop of a hat that just happen to use all the same ingredients. But how realistic is that for those of us that aren't amateur chefs and don't really want to become one?
jodrellblank(1)
> If you can afford Blue Apron, you can afford to buy 3x as much food and have control over your ingredient choice by just going to your goddamn supermarket.
If you ignore time costs, sure; pre-measured ingredients in the quantity necessary for the recipe provided is a huge time saver.
Yes, it creates waste, but it's not without utility.
If you ignore time costs, sure; pre-measured ingredients in the quantity necessary for the recipe provided is a huge time saver.
Yes, it creates waste, but it's not without utility.
I couldn't care less about the recipes and tutorials; for me the thing that such a service provided was small portions of ingredients. At the time I ate at work for all of my meals during the week, and so needed to cook maybe 3 meals/week (for one person). There's no other way I've found to get 1tbsp of butter, or flour, or 1 green onion. So for me it eliminated a fair amount of food waste.
That being said now that I don't get free food from work, I'll be buying groceries and cooking often enough to use the larger portions.
That being said now that I don't get free food from work, I'll be buying groceries and cooking often enough to use the larger portions.
The people who use Blue Apron and such are mostly educated, wealthy people who would order takeout/delivery otherwise, but are now cooking.
I also think getting ingredients at your doorstep from some VC backed startup with YouTube recipes on how to cook them is one of the most privileged things you can do, but at least people are cooking. Anything to get more americans cooking is a good thing, in the grand scheme of things.
I also think getting ingredients at your doorstep from some VC backed startup with YouTube recipes on how to cook them is one of the most privileged things you can do, but at least people are cooking. Anything to get more americans cooking is a good thing, in the grand scheme of things.
I mean...yes, you're right, in the grand scheme of things more people cooking is an objectively good thing. I just wish we didn't need this bullshit to get us there.
Believe it or not, some people are not sensitive to price and are not looking to do more work to save money.
I was planning to give Blue Apron a whirl, but decided against it for the reasons mentioned. Plus my wife is a picky eater.
Instead I use a service called plantoeat which lets me import my own recipes and optimize my grocery store runs. Once you get a good rotation going it helps with the problem of over buying certain ingredients.
Instead I use a service called plantoeat which lets me import my own recipes and optimize my grocery store runs. Once you get a good rotation going it helps with the problem of over buying certain ingredients.
> The same thing applies to Juicero: If I really want to start making fruit juice, I'll buy myself a decent juicer and get fresh, local fruit because it will always be cheaper than whatever they're sending out in their little pouches.
It's different because making fresh juice is more time and labor intensive than "just buying a juicer" (try it... I did). Want bananas in your orange juice like Dole sells? Now you need to combine that juicer with a blender, etc. Peeling a bunch of oranges by hand takes time. Making fresh juice by hand is completely not worth it.
It's different because making fresh juice is more time and labor intensive than "just buying a juicer" (try it... I did). Want bananas in your orange juice like Dole sells? Now you need to combine that juicer with a blender, etc. Peeling a bunch of oranges by hand takes time. Making fresh juice by hand is completely not worth it.
I don't get people's irrational hate for just the trash they personally throw away. Most of your environmental footprint is based on being in a rich country, driving a car, flying on a plane and consuming food period. The amount of paper and plastic you throw away into your trash can is a rounding error. The fact that people complain about too many napkins and for take out food and how to recycle it is silly to me.
It is one of the few tangible things we do envirnmentally. Its all about intent and feelings. Honestly I would be happy if people would just make it to a trash can instead of the roadside or ocean.
Imho even recycling is mostly useless. The return, both environmental and economic, on everything but metal recycling is abysmal. Most plastic and paper processes are lucky to break even, with a few exceptions (hdpe comes to mind).
Imho even recycling is mostly useless. The return, both environmental and economic, on everything but metal recycling is abysmal. Most plastic and paper processes are lucky to break even, with a few exceptions (hdpe comes to mind).
Both things you mention are interrelated. People want to feel like they are doing something tangible and we waste time and money on recycling even when it doesn't work. Stop recycling and calling blue apron to complain about waste. Instead spend that time calling your congress person to start a carbon tax or to stop farm subsidies. Doing something that feels like it helps is worse than doing nothing. At least when you do nothing, you know it.
>Stop recycling and calling blue apron to complain about waste. Instead spend that time calling your congress person to start a carbon tax or to stop farm subsidies.
Sorry, but I can't really agree with that line of thinking because it's basically throwing any and all personal responsibility out of the window.
While pushing for better/smarter regulation is an important part of the whole process, it's only one part of the whole process that involves many different parts.
On an individual basis recycling might only add up to a rounding error but the same could be said about many improvements in energy efficiency, the point here being that many of these rounding errors add up to a bigger actual impact.
If everybody thinks recycling is a waste of time and they should instead just lobby for carbon tax, then barely anybody will be more conscious about their waste production and how to prevent more needless waste from being produced, which is just as much of an actual issue (if not even more) as farm subsidies or carbon production.
It's estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastics swimming in the ocean than actual fish, we are on a steady course of turning this planet into a massive garbage dump.
Sorry, but I can't really agree with that line of thinking because it's basically throwing any and all personal responsibility out of the window.
While pushing for better/smarter regulation is an important part of the whole process, it's only one part of the whole process that involves many different parts.
On an individual basis recycling might only add up to a rounding error but the same could be said about many improvements in energy efficiency, the point here being that many of these rounding errors add up to a bigger actual impact.
If everybody thinks recycling is a waste of time and they should instead just lobby for carbon tax, then barely anybody will be more conscious about their waste production and how to prevent more needless waste from being produced, which is just as much of an actual issue (if not even more) as farm subsidies or carbon production.
It's estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastics swimming in the ocean than actual fish, we are on a steady course of turning this planet into a massive garbage dump.
> If everybody thinks recycling is a waste of time and they should instead just lobby for carbon tax, then barely anybody will be more conscious about their waste production and how to prevent more needless waste from being produced, which is just as much of an actual issue (if not even more) as farm subsidies or carbon production.
A huge percentage of it is a waste of time. It is a small positive for paper and aluminum. If this doesn't make people feel like they are doing their part, this adds up to a tiny benefit. However, it probably does make people feel like they are doing more then they actually are. The net effect could easily be negative. For many other things, recycling has no effect or a small negative effect on carbon. This does not add up to a bigger actual impact. It is only negative.
> if everybody thinks recycling is a waste of time and they should instead just lobby for carbon tax, then barely anybody will be more conscious about their waste production and how to prevent more needless waste from being produced, which is just as much of an actual issue (if not even more) as farm subsidies or carbon production.
I am saying this would be a good thing. People are way too conscious about their recycling when it has almost zero impact. Doing literally almost anything else, has a bigger impact in most cases.
> how to prevent more needless waste from being produced, which is just as much of an actual issue (if not even more) as farm subsidies or carbon production.
I don't know how you decide is needless waste but a carbon tax will cause everyone decide what they need vs don't need. Regardless, there is no chance that needless waste is as much of an issue as farm subsidies or global warming.
A huge percentage of it is a waste of time. It is a small positive for paper and aluminum. If this doesn't make people feel like they are doing their part, this adds up to a tiny benefit. However, it probably does make people feel like they are doing more then they actually are. The net effect could easily be negative. For many other things, recycling has no effect or a small negative effect on carbon. This does not add up to a bigger actual impact. It is only negative.
> if everybody thinks recycling is a waste of time and they should instead just lobby for carbon tax, then barely anybody will be more conscious about their waste production and how to prevent more needless waste from being produced, which is just as much of an actual issue (if not even more) as farm subsidies or carbon production.
I am saying this would be a good thing. People are way too conscious about their recycling when it has almost zero impact. Doing literally almost anything else, has a bigger impact in most cases.
> how to prevent more needless waste from being produced, which is just as much of an actual issue (if not even more) as farm subsidies or carbon production.
I don't know how you decide is needless waste but a carbon tax will cause everyone decide what they need vs don't need. Regardless, there is no chance that needless waste is as much of an issue as farm subsidies or global warming.
I didn't know that plastic like PE is worth money (my local garbage service manages to sell it) but cardboard has been worth as much as steel for a long time now.
Interesting. It's obvious that Blue Apron produces more trash than buying the ingredients the traditional way, but do you think it produces more trash than, say, ordering take-out?
I'm not a customer, but I've been thinking of trying it. Honest question.
I'm not a customer, but I've been thinking of trying it. Honest question.
Because when a restaurant buys vinegar, it comes in a gallon jug, if not a five gallon bucket. Hell, it might come in a 55 gallon drum. But then Blue Apron puts it in single 1 oz bottles and ships them all over the country, wasting a huge amount of packaging to supply commodity ingredients.
I get the basic concept, but I was thinking of all of the waste in the-take out packaging.
That said, the idea of getting a single ounce bottle of something any reasonable kitchen should already have (like vinegar) does feel pretty gross.
That said, the idea of getting a single ounce bottle of something any reasonable kitchen should already have (like vinegar) does feel pretty gross.
Take out dinner in itself is not a thrash concept. Something like Blue Apron is. A thrash concept producing thrash. You don't have to cook with takeout. You have to cook with Blue Apron, spend extra money on groceries and produce extra thrash when the entirety of it is avoidable. And if you are nearly a good cook and follow the instructions on a prepackaged thing, you surely can go and shop groceries and cook better meals. So this kinda solution is not for the lazy (take-out crowd) and neither for the home chefs.
Trash. Thrash is something else.
Take-out trash it pretty bad, but I'd imagine that packaging every ingredient individually is even worse. More surface area to cover, if nothing else.
1 quart of white vinegar = 80 cents for a supermarket brand. If you want organic Sprouts white vinegar it's $1.80. If you need something like rice wine vinegar, ~$2 for 12oz. Anyway, the point is that they must be making a huge mark up even if they charge 50 cents for 1 oz bottles of vinegar.
Don't people poach eggs? You need vinegar for that. Boil a pot of water, two capfuls of vinegar, crack 2 eggs into something like a 3/4 cup measure, turn heat off wait for water to stop aggressively boiling, lower the measuring cup of eggs so it partly submerges, tip it to empty the contents (you don't want to drop the eggs in from altitude), lid on the pot, set a timer for 5 or 6 minutes. Play around with the time. It'll take less time if you have a stove with residual heat: glass or coils. It'll take more time if you have gas or induction.
If you do it a bunch of times, you can figure out when they're done the way you like them just be jiggling the pot and seeing how the eggs move under water.
The fresher the egg the more it will hold together. If it flattens out on the bottom, oh well some eggs do that even with vinegar. You'll get over it.
Next start making homemade bread for your eggs. And now you'll be willing to pay $6 for really good eggs from chickens that eat insects. OK I'm carried away now...
Don't people poach eggs? You need vinegar for that. Boil a pot of water, two capfuls of vinegar, crack 2 eggs into something like a 3/4 cup measure, turn heat off wait for water to stop aggressively boiling, lower the measuring cup of eggs so it partly submerges, tip it to empty the contents (you don't want to drop the eggs in from altitude), lid on the pot, set a timer for 5 or 6 minutes. Play around with the time. It'll take less time if you have a stove with residual heat: glass or coils. It'll take more time if you have gas or induction.
If you do it a bunch of times, you can figure out when they're done the way you like them just be jiggling the pot and seeing how the eggs move under water.
The fresher the egg the more it will hold together. If it flattens out on the bottom, oh well some eggs do that even with vinegar. You'll get over it.
Next start making homemade bread for your eggs. And now you'll be willing to pay $6 for really good eggs from chickens that eat insects. OK I'm carried away now...
I'm trying out Blue Apron right now. As far as packaging:
* 1 big box
* 1 "bubblewrap" cooler bag
* 2 huge ice packs
* Misc. plastic bags for produce
* 3 small paper bags for "extras"
How about instead of ordering takeout or blue apron, you go to the store and buy groceries? It literally takes less than 2 hours a week from planning meals to getting home.
Plus 4-7 hours of cooking and cleaning. Suddenly you just spent an entire work day on dinner.
I'll throw in the excellent 5 ingredients 10 minutes http://5ingredients10minutes.com/ from Jules Clancy, most of the recipes can be found for free on her blog at thestonesoup.com 10 minutes required a bit of training, but it's almost always easily cheaper, faster and better than random food for order.
There's really no need to spend 4-7 hours a week prepping food if all you want is a decent and healthy dinner - though spending time preparing something fancy for friends and family is a rewarding activity in it's own right, but that's an entirely different matter.
There's really no need to spend 4-7 hours a week prepping food if all you want is a decent and healthy dinner - though spending time preparing something fancy for friends and family is a rewarding activity in it's own right, but that's an entirely different matter.
You do that with blue apron as well....? I dunno, cooking is an inherently relaxing experience for me and many others. I don't think Blue Apron is a better solution if you're making the "counting hours" argument, as for much less money I could do marginally more work and spend marginally more time. That's a win in my opinion.
It's really not marginally more work. I think it'd take me at least three hours a week to plan out meals like Blue Apron does and acquire all the ingredients myself. That's a ~42% increase in time spent if you wager 7 hours normally spent on cooking and cleaning.
But I also just flat-out don't like going to the grocery store, mainly because the one near me is so busy. It's great if I go at 11PM on a weeknight, but I'm usually too sleepy to do that. It's complete chaos on a Saturday or Sunday (and go too late on a Sunday and the produce section will be emptied out too).
But I also just flat-out don't like going to the grocery store, mainly because the one near me is so busy. It's great if I go at 11PM on a weeknight, but I'm usually too sleepy to do that. It's complete chaos on a Saturday or Sunday (and go too late on a Sunday and the produce section will be emptied out too).
I haven't used Blue Apron, but they do all the prep, which is often the biggest time suck in cooking something complex. Anyhow, if you find that part relaxing, I think that just means you're not Blue Apron's target customer. That's fine, but insufficient for making claims about whether or not Blue Apron is a good solution in general.
I would recommend trying PeachDish. https://www.peachdish.com/ We are the best quality meal kit company. We were voted best quality by Forbes and the New York Observer. I would be honored to be upvoted by the HN community. Thank you. I started it in my garage 4 years ago- the first year I was not sure about the food, and then met my business partner judith, who used to be president of slow food in the south east, and her husband is an organic farmer.
Thank you,
Hadi Founder, PeachDish - also use coupon code HADI
Thank you,
Hadi Founder, PeachDish - also use coupon code HADI
I do go to the store (and the farmers market) and buy groceries, and cook, all the time. I've recently been curious about Blue Apron as a relatively low-effort way to expand what I cook and how I cook it.
My wife and I have been using Plated and HelloFresh for over a year now. While the services are not cheap, I have found that it's a much better and cheaper option over the course of a week. The food tastes better than the things I would attempt to cook, but more importantly, I end up saving money on meals because I don't end up wasting ingredients or throwing away leftovers.
It seems at least a little debatable that Blue Apron is going the wrong direction, especially when you consider the decrease in food waste: https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/weeknight-dinner-20
Obviously it's not ideal, but it should be compared to current behavior, not ideal behavior.
Obviously it's not ideal, but it should be compared to current behavior, not ideal behavior.
> the decrease in food waste
Can we tell how much food waste Blue Apron is saving? I remember reading that they're extremely picky about what they're willing to ship out and end up wasting quite a bit to send out "perfect" ingredients.
Can we tell how much food waste Blue Apron is saving? I remember reading that they're extremely picky about what they're willing to ship out and end up wasting quite a bit to send out "perfect" ingredients.
Yeah I don't have any numbers, I'm just saying there's more to it than meets the eye. It looks wasteful, but that's because the waste happens to be very visible and tangible. Grocery stores and restaurants can be wasteful in less obvious ways.
Although food waste in a landfill is probably better than non-decomposable waste (all of Blue Aprons individual packaging) in a landfill.
Technically all of their packaging is recyclable, although I realize lots of people don't bother. You can also just mail the box back to them for free and let them deal with it.
bold statement. I'm assuming you mean the potential env. damage, correct? Have you done a thorough analysis on, say, Blue Apron's impact on the environment? for example, do people who use Blue Apron decrease usage of their car to go to restaurants? I'm not convinced it's as black and white as you imply it is
Has anyone actually analyzed things like "household share of total waste," or "food share of household waste," or impact of waste compared to other environmental problems? Generally when people rail against waste, I have a suspicion that it's focusing at a highly visible but ultimately trivial problem. But I don't know where to go to falsify my suspicions.
It's a hard problem and I'd like to know too.
When I was doing a MSc in environmental engineering we were careful to let the stakeholders decide what environmental problems are important based on their feelings and not try to prioritize ourselves. Part of it is practical, it's very hard to have stakeholder buy-in on problems they don't care about, but part of it is that I don't think there is consensus on how to do comparisons across problems. You have to make difficult value judgments. (How many kgs of CO2 is one beautiful pristine forest worth? etc.)
Some keywords you could look into are multi-criterion decision analysis and ecosystem services.
My intuition and back-of-the-envelope estimates say that household waste, recycling, and water use don't matter that much.
I'm not too popular with the environmental committee at work because I like to remind them that their annoying, time-consuming eco-friendly intervention of the week matters an order of magnitude less than switching a single meal per week from beef to a veggie alternative.
I think the big questions are: how big is your house? what type of energy do you use for heating/AC? how much do you drive/fly? do you eat animal products?
For most people the rest is comparatively not super consequential. (With some exceptions of course, there are hobbies that are 100x worse than others. People around here drive snowmobiles with 2-stroke engines, they are much less regulated and produce horrendous pollution compared to cars.)
When I was doing a MSc in environmental engineering we were careful to let the stakeholders decide what environmental problems are important based on their feelings and not try to prioritize ourselves. Part of it is practical, it's very hard to have stakeholder buy-in on problems they don't care about, but part of it is that I don't think there is consensus on how to do comparisons across problems. You have to make difficult value judgments. (How many kgs of CO2 is one beautiful pristine forest worth? etc.)
Some keywords you could look into are multi-criterion decision analysis and ecosystem services.
My intuition and back-of-the-envelope estimates say that household waste, recycling, and water use don't matter that much.
I'm not too popular with the environmental committee at work because I like to remind them that their annoying, time-consuming eco-friendly intervention of the week matters an order of magnitude less than switching a single meal per week from beef to a veggie alternative.
I think the big questions are: how big is your house? what type of energy do you use for heating/AC? how much do you drive/fly? do you eat animal products?
For most people the rest is comparatively not super consequential. (With some exceptions of course, there are hobbies that are 100x worse than others. People around here drive snowmobiles with 2-stroke engines, they are much less regulated and produce horrendous pollution compared to cars.)
So, I get sun basket delivery. It's like blue apron, more-or-less. more attention paid to reusable / recyclable / compostable packaging (everything is recyclable officially, although you may find that plastic film isn't accepted in many recycling bins), and everything is organic (which is something I am prepared to pay a premium for). It's also local to my region (although people can get it delivered across the country, mine doesn't travel far).
I love cooking. I cook six meals a week, the seventh is take-out or off the grid or something. Three of those six meals I cook a week are sunbasket, and those are weeknight meals where I don't have to go to the store ahead of time. I don't stress the meal plans, which means I can actually cook dinner and eat at a sane hour (say, 7pm) without having to leave work early or stress about starting cooking as soon as I'm able.
I also regularly alter recipes I get, as part of the "I love cooking" bit - I add ingredients, rearrange stuff, change out the process to make it easier / simpler / better. I'm able to express myself, cooking-wise, even though the recipe is mostly fixed. Price-wise, I end up spending about $10 per person per meal. That's around 140% of my average per person per meal cost when I just shop on my own (although there's an externality here: i get more actual meals when I shop for myself, because I usually cook for at least one lunch worth of leftovers when I shop, so up the price a bit more).
Personally? I'd be happy with a box of food where things weren't pre-measured and stuff (every N weeks they send you a new bottle of coconut vinegar or whatever), cutting down on the single-serving bags that hold a single clove of garlic or whatever. I'd also be happy with someone just shopping on my behalf, but these boxes are a real bargain compared to instacart prices, so there's that.
I love cooking. I cook six meals a week, the seventh is take-out or off the grid or something. Three of those six meals I cook a week are sunbasket, and those are weeknight meals where I don't have to go to the store ahead of time. I don't stress the meal plans, which means I can actually cook dinner and eat at a sane hour (say, 7pm) without having to leave work early or stress about starting cooking as soon as I'm able.
I also regularly alter recipes I get, as part of the "I love cooking" bit - I add ingredients, rearrange stuff, change out the process to make it easier / simpler / better. I'm able to express myself, cooking-wise, even though the recipe is mostly fixed. Price-wise, I end up spending about $10 per person per meal. That's around 140% of my average per person per meal cost when I just shop on my own (although there's an externality here: i get more actual meals when I shop for myself, because I usually cook for at least one lunch worth of leftovers when I shop, so up the price a bit more).
Personally? I'd be happy with a box of food where things weren't pre-measured and stuff (every N weeks they send you a new bottle of coconut vinegar or whatever), cutting down on the single-serving bags that hold a single clove of garlic or whatever. I'd also be happy with someone just shopping on my behalf, but these boxes are a real bargain compared to instacart prices, so there's that.
Not sure about blue apron. I use hello fresh. It's sourced locally and there's no waste in food. The box is recycled and the freezer pack they pick it up once I fill up a box full.
I do agree that the vinegar and a stuff like that is a waste. I would rather get a large bottle
I do agree that the vinegar and a stuff like that is a waste. I would rather get a large bottle
For a good substitute at a much lower price with no ridiculous trash, you should checkout https://www.platejoy.com/.
We started using them a month or so ago and its been pretty good.
Disclaimer: My Fiance works with the husband of someone who works there. (Not sure if that is a real conflict of interest or not)
We started using them a month or so ago and its been pretty good.
Disclaimer: My Fiance works with the husband of someone who works there. (Not sure if that is a real conflict of interest or not)
Blue Apron is a piece of junk, environmental issues aside. The whole concept of not telling someone they can only make a certain subset of meal combinations and not any 3 meals, only after they've taken your credit card is such a dark pattern. I refuse to give them business after that. I filed a complaint about this and they ignored it.
Guys, cancer. It's still out there. Donate for research instead of wasting 400 Bucks on a fu*king juice press. No one can justify this useless piece of crap.
The so-called hack is that if you squeeze the bag you get 7.5 oz of juice compared to 8.0 oz from the machine.
This clearly means to anyone with technical insight that what is inside the bag is not really sealed raw vegetables in a plastic bag able to handle 10,000 lbs/sq in of pressure, but is some sort of processed vegetable juice that has been artificially processed and embedded within some sort of substrate meant to appear solid-ish.
An actual vegetable press that uses immense pressure does indeed produce a particular special kind of "pressed" raw juice extract that retains the vitamins and flavor. However this machine clearly does not do that and is therefore misrepresenting itself. The evidence that proves it is that people can squeeze whatever is inside it out.
If the inventors and investors of this technology wish to claim otherwise I am more than willing to engage in a personal challenge where we get together and look inside the bag and find out if it is really unprocessed raw vegetables or not.
Disagree? Buy a carrot. Squeeze it as hard as you can. Film the result and upload it to youtube. Do the same for a beet, for lettuce, and for celery. Post the link. Demonstrate that pressed vegetable juice from raw unprocessed vegetable is possible with simple force from the human hand, unleveraged.
This clearly means to anyone with technical insight that what is inside the bag is not really sealed raw vegetables in a plastic bag able to handle 10,000 lbs/sq in of pressure, but is some sort of processed vegetable juice that has been artificially processed and embedded within some sort of substrate meant to appear solid-ish.
An actual vegetable press that uses immense pressure does indeed produce a particular special kind of "pressed" raw juice extract that retains the vitamins and flavor. However this machine clearly does not do that and is therefore misrepresenting itself. The evidence that proves it is that people can squeeze whatever is inside it out.
If the inventors and investors of this technology wish to claim otherwise I am more than willing to engage in a personal challenge where we get together and look inside the bag and find out if it is really unprocessed raw vegetables or not.
Disagree? Buy a carrot. Squeeze it as hard as you can. Film the result and upload it to youtube. Do the same for a beet, for lettuce, and for celery. Post the link. Demonstrate that pressed vegetable juice from raw unprocessed vegetable is possible with simple force from the human hand, unleveraged.
The bags contain something like a shredded pulp. Basically it's as close to being "juice" as you can get without having to call it "juice"
Many juicers have two stages: Shredding and juice separation via pressing or centrifugal force.
The centrifuge approach works surprisingly well, the pulp that comes out of a good one is quite dry, all the juice is gone. It yields a lot more juice out of a carrot than you'd expect.
This "press" simply does the last step in juicing. The hard work of shredding is already done.
The centrifuge approach works surprisingly well, the pulp that comes out of a good one is quite dry, all the juice is gone. It yields a lot more juice out of a carrot than you'd expect.
This "press" simply does the last step in juicing. The hard work of shredding is already done.
True, I don't know why nobody seems to point this out. Either what's inside the packs is already contain juice- therefore it's a scam to pretend it's raw unprocessed vegetables; or the Bloomberg "hack" only works with a specific pack that contains very juicy fruits.
Realistically, it's probably reclaimed byproducts from fruit/vegetable processing, e.g. carrot shavings from making baby carrots out of whole carrots and so forth
Hum... Yes, I could see many people investing in a way to get rid of their own food industry discards. Selling it to other people disguised again as premium extra fruit (instead to pay another company for removing it) would be a smart move.
I can't see so clearly the value for the customer. Finely chopped fruit, even if convenient, should be cheaper than entire fruit. In fruits being entire, clean, firm, and as close as possible to the thing hanging in the tree is a sign of extra quality. Each time you cut a fruit its market value diminishes.
I can't see so clearly the value for the customer. Finely chopped fruit, even if convenient, should be cheaper than entire fruit. In fruits being entire, clean, firm, and as close as possible to the thing hanging in the tree is a sign of extra quality. Each time you cut a fruit its market value diminishes.
I don't think the braniacs at Juicero thought that far ahead. They're probably using premium carrots for their product.
That's interesting. So basically, bag or not, you probably can't crush carrots to paste (and spinach leaves, etc) with your bare hands, yet Juicero claims to have things of that nature inside the bag?
I think it's time you took some scissors or an Xacto knife, whatever's required, and cut open the bag to see what's in there. I know I'd be very interested in that result.
I think it's time you took some scissors or an Xacto knife, whatever's required, and cut open the bag to see what's in there. I know I'd be very interested in that result.
They show you exactly what's in the bag in their official video: http://gizmodo.com/juicero-ceo-begs-you-do-not-open-our-juic...
This is part of their disposal process. You're supposed to cut the bag and empty it into your green bin, etc.
This is part of their disposal process. You're supposed to cut the bag and empty it into your green bin, etc.
Here is Carrots. https://vimeo.com/214030931
go there for the comment
I love how comments were apparently disabled after that, like they knew the apotheosis was already reached.
I believe you are way off the mark. The packs appear to be filled with finely chopped fruit/veg.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cfj8DI-UEAAGi5F.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cfj8DI-UEAAGi5F.jpg
What we see in most products is a result of the accountants saying "no" to too much. Cheap parts, assembled cheaply, pennies saved per part. What we see here is the exact opposite: the accountants didn't say "no" nearly often enough. Apple manufactures custom everything because they can, and because they sell at massive scales. Juicero wanted to be Apple quality without selling at Apple quantity.
I fully believe you get a better cup of juice squeezing with their massive press rather than by hand because it can press over a bigger surface. I also believe it doesn't matter a bit, because this is a worthless piece of equipment. Beautiful engineering, though.