It's already being called "Juicegate."
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What it's like to use the $400 juicer that people are freaking out about
Honestly, the juice was pretty darn good.
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On Wednesday, Bloomberg broke the news that Juicero, the high-end juicer backed by Silicon Valley's elite venture capitalists, wasn't even needed to squeeze out the juice.
When it was launched a year ago, the $700 machine touted the tons of force it generated to squeeze out every last drop of juice from the fresh fruits and vegetables.
Bloomberg found that squeezing the packets by hand yielded nearly the same result.
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Now Juicero is on the defensive and is arguing that its juicer, whose price was cut to $400, is needed because "the value of Juicero is more than a glass of cold-pressed juice," says its CEO, Jeff Dunn. "Much more."
To Juicero, the value of the company is its connected juice press that can tell you when the juice is about to expire and saves you the two minutes you'd spend squeezing the packet by hand. Anyone who thinks otherwise can return their press for a full refund, Dunn says.
When Business Insider's Alyson Shontell tried the Juicero machine (pre-Juicegate) in April 2016, she found herself saying "Oh my God" as she put down her first glass of the pressed juice.
Whether a $400 juicer is worth saving two minutes is something you'll have to decide, but here's what it was like to use the Juicero machine when Business Insider visited last April.
Juicero has three big warehouses in the Bay Area. This is the building where most of its 70 full-time employees work, and it's also a factory where Juicero parts are made and tested. It's a pretty wild operation inside, but I was asked not to take photos of any of the testing facilities.
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I walked up one flight of stairs where the employees were stationed to meet Juicero's founder and CEO, Doug Evans. Along the way, there were some strange contraptions lined up against a wall. It turns out they were Juicero prototypes that Evans and his team built before landing on the current model. Left to right is oldest to newest. (In November, Evans was replaced by Jeff Dunn.)
Evans worked on Juicero for three years in "stealth mode" before publicly launching his juicer in March 2016 with about $100 million in funding from investors. There were 12 prototypes in total.
The Juicero currently on sale is 16 inches tall, making it a somewhat bulky kitchen appliance that will fit on your countertop but take up a good amount of space.
Here's Evans opening the Juicero box. When it launched, Juicero cost $700, but it has dropped the price to $399. The model is kind of like Tesla, launching with a pricey model then using funds from those sales to figure out a way to create more affordable versions.
The Juicero comes with easy instructions: place it on your countertop, plug it in, and make juice.
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Ahhh! The Juicero in all its glory. This isn't just any juicer. It syncs with your home Wi-Fi and smartphone, and it squeezes small pouches of fruits and vegetables into full glasses of juice without requiring any prep or cleanup. Unlike a Keurig, it doesn't make you add water. Just stick in a pouch, press a button, and two minutes later your juice is poured.
The Juicero team sells one-serving pouches — which are the size of IV bags — for $5 to $7. Evans decided my first glass of juice should be Sweet Greens.
The app, as well as the bag, tells you exactly what you're about to drink. There's nothing extra added to the pouches like preservatives or water. It's all fresh produce the Juicero team has washed, chopped, and packaged itself in one of its San Francisco warehouses. Sweet Greens contained an apple, lemon, kale, spinach and pineapple.
Evans opened one of the bags before we pressed it into juice so I could see, feel, and taste the contents. It tasted pretty good and fresh — you could probably eat it with a fork and be pretty satisfied.
Each bag has a breathing hole to help the ingredients stay fresh in your fridge. They also have a QR code, which is necessary for the Juicero juicer to work. Juicero wanted to learn from mistakes Keurig has made, and one problem Keurig has said that other companies are making pods for its coffee maker and stealing profits. Juicero's QR codes prevent any other companies from making Juicero-like juice bags for its machine. The machine won't work if it doesn't recognize the product it scans.
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The QR code also has safety benefits. If a pouch has been sitting too long and may have gone bad, for example, the scanned QR code will alert the Juicero, and the machine won't press the juice. Juicero is also working on biodegradable bags so its pouches won't be harmful to the environment, unlike Keurig's plastic pods.
Here's what the Juicero juicer looks like loaded with a pouch.
We loaded Sweet Greens, and Evans pushed the only button on the machine to start the pressing process.
Here we go! It came out bright and green with zero pulp, even though Sweet Greens has some fiber. One glass of this stuff is just 80 calories.
We shot a video of the Juicero working its magic while Evans explained that every recipe takes a specific amount of time to pour. Sweet Greens takes just over two minutes to make, while an unreleased wheatgrass shot Juicero is working on takes less than one minute.
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Almost ready!
At last, I was ready to take my first sip of Juicero juice. I had high expectations. For all this startup's hype — and the about $100 million investors have given the company — I was hoping it would taste like nectar from the gods.
And it was really good! Was it the best thing I've ever consumed? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But it was sweet and fresh. I own a juicer, but it doesn't make anything quite this smooth. Evans said his goal for me was to find myself craving the juice the next day, even though I'm not a big sugar fiend. And I did — just not enough to pay him another visit just to get another glass.
Evans poured a glass of store-bought green juice and placed it next to Juicero juice. The difference was obvious. Almost immediately, the store-bought juice began to separate, with cloudy stuff sinking to the bottom, requiring you to stir it. I nursed this glass of Sweet Greens for over an hour while I ate lunch with Evans, and it never started to separate.
Here are the two glasses side by side. As good as the juice was, though, Juicero will have some obstacles to overcome beyond its price tag. Sweet Greens, on the left, has 17 grams of sugar, more than half the amount of sugar people are supposed to have in one day (25 grams). Other Juicero products contain less sugar — as little as 2 grams. The war on sugar, which is currently being waged on products like Coke and Gatorade, could prove to be Juicero's biggest problem.
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The best thing Juicero has going for it is the fact that there is zero prep or cleanup process. You just remove the bag and chuck it. Even the spout is on the bag, so you don't have to clean that out either.
Here's what the Juicero looked like right after Evans removed the bag. It was spotless — not one drop of juice or shredded fruit anywhere.
To show me how good the Juicer is at juicing, Evans opened the bag we had just used.
The contents looked much different than before. There was no moisture at all. I tasted the product, and it wasn't nearly as good as the pre-pressed version I had eaten earlier. All the flavor was gone.
Here's a before-and-after shot of the produce.
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For my next drink, Evans whipped up another Juicero recipe, Sweet Roots. This one also had 80 calories per serving and 17 grams of sugar.
Sweet Roots contains carrot, apple, beet, spinach, lemon, celery, and ginger. This juice was my favorite one.
Slurp slurp!
And again, the contents were dry as a bone when the Juicero was done pressing them.
For my final drink, Evans had me try the recipe he drinks every morning, Greens. It has only 2 grams of sugar and 25 calories. It was still pretty good, but not sweet like the others. It's made of spinach, celery, romaine, kale, cucumber, and lemon.
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Here are the three Juicero drinks side by side. I drank them all, every last drop.
So will Juicero succeed? Or is it just a silly, expensive Silicon Valley toy, like the critics say? I told Evans that if he could get the price down to $200 per machine, I could easily imagine Juiceros on every wedding registry. When you meet Evans, he's sincere and passionate about his product. He set out to make a great product, not a minimum viable version that most startups launch with, and he believes the Juicero can help everyone be healthier.
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