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e

Tech

Useless Product Design: Reporter Discovers $400 Juice Machine's Job Can be Done Faster by Hand

The Juicero's investors will not be pleased

By Rain Noe - April 19, 2017

This is hilarious:

A company called Juicero Inc., one of "the top-funded U.S. hardware startups in 2016," according to Bloomberg, produces this eponymous $400 cold-press juice machine.

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The end user pays $5 to $8 to have sealed pouches of fruit and vegetable parts mailed to them on a subscription basis. To get the juice, the user places these pouches in the machine, which is capable of "four tons of force," and the machine squeezes the juice out of the bags for you.

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But Bloomberg reporters discovered that you could simply squeeze the bags by hand:

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The machine took two minutes to evacuate all 8 ounces of juice. The reporter took 1.5 minutes to squeeze out 7.5 ounces.

Last year, when the Juicero cost $700, the company's CEO boasted about the machine to Recode:

There are 400 custom parts in here. There's two motors, there's 10 printed circuit boards, there's a scanner, there's a microprocessor, there's a wireless chip, wireless antenna. There's 775 aircraft-grade aluminum. There's a gear box. There's latches that support 16,000 pounds of force.

So why is there a scanner, microprocessor, wireless chip and wireless antenna? Because the machine scans the pre-packaged juice and won't press it if it's expired. This is an absolutely crucial feature for those who cannot read an expiration date, maintain an awareness of what the current date is, and compare the two.

To be fair, the company deserves praise for having set up the infrastructure to source fresh ingredients directly from farms and packaging them for consumers. In a perfect world, they would ditch the machine and be in the business of selling juice packets to customers. But all of those investors—Juicero racked up some $120 million in funding—are probably going to want to see a greater return on their investment.

Rain Noe

Rain Noe is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.

19 Comments

Brad Comis

a year ago

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Better yet eat whole fruits and drink water. Anyone trying to tell you juice is somehow a healthy eating solution is trying to make money off you. You wouldn't squeeze the juice from a steak and then throw away the meat would you? Throwing away the squeezed fruit is insane and wasteful. There is a lot more nutrition in whole fruit than juice and whole fruit comes prepackaged by nature. Perfect example of the capitalistic profit motivator creating business where there should be none.

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O Studio

a year ago

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On second thought, what the company needs to do is redesign the pouches to be so strong you can't squeeze them. Reinforce the pouches with aluminum cells so that you absolutely have to put them in the machine. Make it hurt to squeeze! Put in a battery so it will shock you if you squeeze it!

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Robert Wilkey

a year ago

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*7075 aircraft-grade aluminum

Which I'd like to point out is probably just a result of shitty engineering, as the only time to use 7075 instead of 6061 or steel is to keep something stronger than 6061 and lighter than steel. This thing sits on a countertop. You do the math.

I fully recognize the futility of pointing this out, like noting the bad graphic design of the logo on the side of a derailed train, but nonetheless...

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larry gassan

a year ago

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My late 90yr old mom had an aluminum grapefruit squeezer that would kick Juicero's ass. I'm partial to my Vintage Juice-O-Matic.

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David Alan Foster

a year ago

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Love the "make it even MORE complex" comments! Would be interesting to see their biz plan... How much of the fruit juice market did they claim to own? Are the investors just as culpable for throwing their good money after bad into this? Would a $59 manual lever-press be worth considering? A good idea grossly over-engineered.

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O Studio

a year ago

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I wonder if the subscriptions will continue to rise while machine sales drop - it still might be profitable for the company! That would be even funnier! Then years down the road, they can sell the machine as a retro device and collector's item.

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Bob Builder

a year ago

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You know what they've done? They have cold pressed the juice at the plant, filled the pouches with the juice and the pulp. The rest is just smoke and mirrors to make you believe you just cold pressed a bag of veggies while you talk about how wonderful this machine is to your tennis partner in your never used designer kitchen.

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Sasha Gorski

a year ago

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Rain Noe, I like your articles very much. Some critic will only see the good of everything, and some only see the bad. You seem to be one of the very few designer who attempt to cut the good part of design out from all the bad.

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Chuck Mack

a year ago

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It does have a nice 'look'. Maybe it's possible to use it for some other task.

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Chuck Mack

a year ago

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I know the world and the VCs are fascinated with gadgets and are happy to spend for them. I like doing stuff by hand. I do pour-over coffee while my wife's Nespresso machine just sits there. I hate my smart phone and plan to get a Nokia with buttons. I wish a car company would make a plain-Jane with a $5 key and leave off all the interactive features. It is possible to live well with minimal tech and I sure don't need a Juicero.

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Noodle Time

a year ago

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wow, the company is already issuing refunds....

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Ono Oh nO!

a year ago

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This makes me sad for some reason, who knows what's inside and the state of the fruit.. I can't see why anyone would chose this rather than fruit or cold pressed prepackaged, but what do I know, people do use those coffee capsules too.

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Noodle Time

a year ago

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just wait a few months and you will see posts of moldy packets... just like the juice and apple sauce companies have... all it takes is one bad pouch full of mold to spoil sales.

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Christopher Hanks

a year ago

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Has anybody cut a bag open to see what is actually inside? On another note, I'm not sure how the CEO compares to Steve Jobs, but Apple did a similar thing with the music experience, combining the shopping and consumption of music through iTunes and iPods. It seems to be a formula for business success, whether or not people really "need" it. Maybe people just need an expected uniform quality, variety of choices, and streamlined delivery of that product. The only thing this product misses are the juice bottles to drink from...except then why don't they just bottle it in the first place? Is the juice really any fresher when it is stored as pulp rather than pure juice?

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Jay Davis

a year ago

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Yes I see the advantages for the Elderly or those with difficulty with the hands.

But this just seems like the Robot for the original NES. Also it just seems like you should go straight the juice.

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- Jay Davis
  
  Jay Davis
  
  a year ago
  
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  Well now that I read up more it feels like a scam. The device itself seems very pointless. The packaging seems very wasteful.
  
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  - Christopher Hanks
    
    Jay Davis
    
    a year ago
    
    Z
    
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    Yeah, it seems like they are using the device as a way to create dedicated customers, instead of creating a device dedicated to their customers.
    
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Bas Thanakhet

a year ago

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With Reduce price it might be useful for elder people who leave by their own

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- Austin Liu
  
  Bas Thanakhet
  
  a year ago
  
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  Or, perhaps they can make a vertical mount for a tortilla press and add an extra long handle. Elderly folk probably prefer simplicity, I suspect.
  
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