Juicero: Silicon Valley's $699 Monument to Solving Problems That Don't Exist, Then Solving Them Wrong

In 2016, a startup called Juicero raised $120 million in venture capital funding from investors including Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Campbell Soup Company. One hundred and twenty million dollars. For a juice press.

The Juicero was a countertop machine that pressed proprietary juice packs — pre-filled bags of chopped fruits and vegetables — into a glass. You inserted the bag, pressed a button, and four tons of force squeezed the bag into juice. The machine cost $699 at launch (later reduced to $399). The juice packs cost $5-8 each and were available only through a subscription. The machine required Wi-Fi to operate because it scanned a QR code on each pack to verify freshness — and would refuse to press packs past their expiration date.

The juice press had DRM. Digital rights management. For juice. The machine wouldn't press a bag that had expired, which means Juicero built a juice press that could refuse to make juice. It was a juice press with veto power. It was an appliance that had opinions about your produce.

In April 2017, Bloomberg News published the article that killed Juicero. Reporters discovered that you could squeeze the juice packs by hand — with your human hands — and get the same amount of juice, at the same speed or faster, as the $699 machine. The machine that applied four tons of force to a bag of pre-chopped produce was outperformed by a reporter's grip strength.

Four tons. Of force. To squeeze a bag. That a person could squeeze with their hands. In the same amount of time. The $120 million machine was a $120 million pair of hands.

Juicero shut down in September 2017, sixteen months after launch. One hundred and twenty million dollars. Sixteen months. Wi-Fi juice press. Hand-squeezable bags. This is Silicon Valley's masterpiece.

The Vision: What If Juice, but with a Subscription and Wi-Fi?

Juicero's founder, Doug Evans, pitched the company as "the Keurig of juice" — a comparison that was accurate in one specific way: like Keurig, Juicero locked consumers into proprietary pods that only worked with the machine. Unlike Keurig, the pods could be squeezed by hand, which is like discovering your Keurig coffee pods can be opened and poured into a cup of hot water to produce the same coffee.

The machine was beautifully engineered. Seriously. It was a genuine feat of mechanical engineering — CNC-milled aluminum, custom geartrains, a precision press mechanism that applied consistent, measured force. Teardowns revealed a machine with the build quality of medical equipment. The engineering was extraordinary. The problem was that the engineering was applied to a task that didn't require engineering. Or electricity. Or Wi-Fi. Or four tons of force. Or $120 million.

The juice packs were the business model. Juicero sold machines at a loss (or near-loss) and planned to profit from recurring pack sales — the razor-and-blade model. The packs contained pre-washed, pre-chopped fruits and vegetables in a sealed bag. You could not see inside the bag. You could not add your own produce. You could not use the machine without the proprietary bags. The $699 machine was, functionally, a bag squeezer that only worked on Juicero-brand bags.

Evans described the Juicero as a revolution in nutrition. He compared himself to Steve Jobs. He said the machine applied "four tons of force" with the reverence that other people reserve for describing the Apollo program. Four tons of force. On a bag of carrots. Like the carrots were fighting back.

The Glorious User Experience

Jason from San Francisco, CA — ★☆☆☆☆

"I bought the Juicero at launch. $699. I set it up on my counter. I connected it to Wi-Fi — my juice press REQUIRED WI-FI — and I pressed my first pack. Green juice came out. It tasted like juice. Like the juice I could buy at the grocery store for $4. But this juice cost $7 for the pack plus the amortized cost of a $699 machine plus the electricity plus the Wi-Fi it used to verify I was authorized to drink juice. I was paying $12 per glass for the privilege of having a machine squeeze a bag that I could have squeezed myself. I have a degree from Stanford. One star."

Elena from Palo Alto, CA — ★☆☆☆☆

"The Bloomberg article killed me. Not the machine. The article. I read that reporters had squeezed the bags BY HAND and gotten the same juice in the same time. I walked to my kitchen. I looked at my Juicero — this beautiful, $699, aluminum monolith sitting on my counter. I took a juice pack. I squeezed it by hand. Juice came out. The same amount. In the same time. I stood in my kitchen, holding a bag of juice in one hand and $699 of regret in the other. The juice tasted the same. The realization tasted different. One star."