<story><title>Why Juicero’s Press Is So Expensive</title><url>https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensive-6add74594e50</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jessaustin</author><text>&lt;i&gt;...the worst coffee this world has to offer.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having heard this from a number of coffee fans, I suspect you&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;ll be expected to provide coffee for someone. We don&amp;#x27;t know how to buy coffee, we don&amp;#x27;t know how to prepare it, and we don&amp;#x27;t know how to clean up after preparing it. Also, we don&amp;#x27;t care to know any of those things. So, here&amp;#x27;s a something we made for you that came out of a fancy package. Now we&amp;#x27;re going to throw away this little plastic cup.</text></item><item><author>IAmGraydon</author><text>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.</text></item><item><author>PaulHoule</author><text>Keurig is not that bad.  The system is out of patent so you can get off-brand brewers and cartridges that aren&amp;#x27;t quite as good in quality but are unlikely to cause a terrible mess in a hotel room.</text></item><item><author>awalton</author><text>&amp;gt; but it seems like a roller would be able to provide a more efficient and focused method of squeezing than a press they&amp;#x27;re using now.&lt;p&gt;Or maybe, just maybe, a screw-driven piston, like many actual juicers have...&lt;p&gt;But let&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t know how much it&amp;#x27;ll cost...  This is exactly why the engineering staff was told &amp;quot;go nuts&amp;quot; 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.&lt;p&gt;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...</text></item><item><author>freehunter</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not a mechanical engineer, but it seems like a roller would be able to provide a more efficient and focused method of squeezing than a press they&amp;#x27;re using now.&lt;p&gt;What we see in most products is a result of the accountants saying &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; to too much. Cheap parts, assembled cheaply, pennies saved per part. What we see here is the exact opposite: the accountants didn&amp;#x27;t say &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; 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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t matter a bit, because this is a worthless piece of equipment. Beautiful engineering, though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mathw</author><text>Seems like an expensive investment on the off-chance that you might have guests who really can&amp;#x27;t handle not having any coffee when they&amp;#x27;re visiting a non-coffee-drinking household. My solution is the small jar of instant coffee I periodically have to throw out because it&amp;#x27;s gone mouldy.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Juicero’s Press Is So Expensive</title><url>https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensive-6add74594e50</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jessaustin</author><text>&lt;i&gt;...the worst coffee this world has to offer.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having heard this from a number of coffee fans, I suspect you&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;ll be expected to provide coffee for someone. We don&amp;#x27;t know how to buy coffee, we don&amp;#x27;t know how to prepare it, and we don&amp;#x27;t know how to clean up after preparing it. Also, we don&amp;#x27;t care to know any of those things. So, here&amp;#x27;s a something we made for you that came out of a fancy package. Now we&amp;#x27;re going to throw away this little plastic cup.</text></item><item><author>IAmGraydon</author><text>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.</text></item><item><author>PaulHoule</author><text>Keurig is not that bad.  The system is out of patent so you can get off-brand brewers and cartridges that aren&amp;#x27;t quite as good in quality but are unlikely to cause a terrible mess in a hotel room.</text></item><item><author>awalton</author><text>&amp;gt; but it seems like a roller would be able to provide a more efficient and focused method of squeezing than a press they&amp;#x27;re using now.&lt;p&gt;Or maybe, just maybe, a screw-driven piston, like many actual juicers have...&lt;p&gt;But let&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t know how much it&amp;#x27;ll cost...  This is exactly why the engineering staff was told &amp;quot;go nuts&amp;quot; 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.&lt;p&gt;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...</text></item><item><author>freehunter</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not a mechanical engineer, but it seems like a roller would be able to provide a more efficient and focused method of squeezing than a press they&amp;#x27;re using now.&lt;p&gt;What we see in most products is a result of the accountants saying &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; to too much. Cheap parts, assembled cheaply, pennies saved per part. What we see here is the exact opposite: the accountants didn&amp;#x27;t say &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; 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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t matter a bit, because this is a worthless piece of equipment. Beautiful engineering, though.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>myrandomcomment</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></comment>