http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2016/apr/03/juicero-juicer-shortcuts
They sell fresh carrot juice, etc as well. I just have zero desire to drink carrots. That said, if I DID want to drink a carrot, I have better options than a $700 machine with special $10 carrot bags.
[nitpick] fazed [/nitpick]
I see a small niche for this product in the “I have the coolest new stupidly expensive gadget and you don’t” demographic.
The name alone pretty much kills it for me. It sounds like an imaginary product from South Park or the Simpsons.
I get my daily dose of chewing from my steak. Also chewing my juices would put me over my daily calorie limit. So, no thank you. I will drink my juices.
I kind of like the idea.
I was given a juicer. I used it twice and cleaning it was a huge PITA. So much so that it’s made me think several times about ever juicing again. So, the idea of a juicer that I don’t need to clean is intriguing.
However, at that price point (both the initial and the ongoing cost of the juice) is laughable. I can just go on with a juice free life. If it dropped to Keurig prices ($100-ish for the machine, $1/serving - at my discretion, not theirs), I’d consider it.
Oh god, I actually laughed after clicking on their website. It looks *exactly *like I imagined it. Then I saw the price and wondered what is wrong with people. Then I saw it’s only available in California (for now) and laughed again.
Oh dear.
Of course the answer to this question is no, I would not buy this because it is the stupidest thing ever.
I don’t know much about juicing – I eat a largely fruit-based diet, but I eat all of the fruit in its solid state – but from a business perspective this certainly seems ridiculous. It has all the telltale signs of those dotcom disaster stories that I loved so much 15 years ago. I liked this quote from the Times article:
If I were an investor, this would be a big red flag for me. You want someone who has evaluated the market and seen a potential moneymaking opportunity, not someone who wants to preach the gospel of juice, and doesn’t care how much it costs.
The reaction here and in the media has been so uniformly negative that I wondered if anyone had anything good to say about it. So I did a Google News search. Almost every article was negative (and some also assumed it was an April Fool’s Day joke). Except for Vogue, which thought it a great idea and illustrated the article with what’s certain to be the typical customer.
As i said earlier in the thread, we have an Omega slow masticating juicer. I reckon it takes maybe two or three minutes to clean. The only part of the cleaning process that takes any real effort at all is the mesh where the juice is strained, but even that is taken care of by maybe 30 seconds worth of scrubbing with the brush that came with the juicer.
From that article:
Hours of buzzing exuberance? Maybe the green leafy vegetables weren’t actually kale and spinach after all.
This guy also loves it, and predicts that it will “completely disrupt the home juicing industry.” His use of “disrupt” is convenient, because it allows us to easily identify him as a Silicon Valley douchebag. And at the bottom of the article, after the email subscription box, is the following:
Surprise, surprise!
I just saw an ad for this on Yahoo.
I’m answering Other because I’m not a juicer, but this isn’t putting me off it forever. There’s no way in heck I’d buy that particular one, but my wife and I have been bouncing around the idea of seeing if we can’t find a real juicer in the sub-$50 range at garage sales.
My parents had a juicer when I was a kid and I do have some fond memories of it. Just not fond enough to shell out a ton of money and give up half my counter space.
Update: They’ve lowered the price of this gizmo to $400 from $700, but some investors were surprised to learn that you could just squeeze the juice packs in your hands and get almost as much juice as the thing produces, and sometimes quicker. “Reporters were able to wring 7.5 ounces of juice in a minute and a half. The machine yielded 8 ounces in about two minutes.” Or you could just buy bottled juice from any market in America, almost certainly for less than the five to eight bucks these guys charge (for eight ounces of juice).
the packs say “keep refrigerated,” so I’d wager they’re shipped with cold packs or dry ice.
You could buy a pack of carrots and crush them with your teeth for even more nutrients. It only costs a buck and the carrots won’t spam your phone with updates about their expiration date.
I can’t find it now, but I read an article about the Juicero earlier this week that said it wasn’t that hard to crush the packs by hand, and save yourself the $399 for the machine. (Apparently they’ve marked it down from $699 at least temporarily, due to lack of demand.)
Still, at $4 to $10 per bag (a bag that produces only 8 oz. of juice), even the bags are pretty steep without the fancy gizmo.
That’s the Bloomberg article linked by Dewey Finn three posts up.
I buy a half gallon of OJ from the supermarket every 2 weeks for $3. It would take nearly a decade to save back just the cost of the machine, let alone the packs.
Fuck that noise.
What a crock. I’ll stick with my Vitameatavegamin. It’s tasty, too!
Temporarily, as in “until they further their slide down to the Rite-Aid clearance bins at $11,” which’ll be their last stop on the retail scene.