Juicero is Going The Way of the Dodo

If you keep up on your ridiculous news, you might have heard of Juicero. The company and its flagship device came to us early in 2016, from Doug Evans, the founder of the now-bankrupt restaurant chain Organic Avenue. The Juicero was a $699 juicer that could only make juice from the company’s own juice packs.

Although you might find it hard to believe, the company is unfortunately shutting down. The last juice packet will be delivered next week, which means all those juicers out in the wild are now useless (though they were always kind of useless, more on that in a bit). Customers have 90 days to get a refund for their device, regardless of when they purchased it. Employees were reportedly given 60 days notice. Regardless of how ill-conceived the entire venture was, Juicero is doing right by its customers and employees.

When I say the juicer was always kind of useless, it’s because it was eventually discovered that the company’s juice packs could be squeezed by hand, meaning the machine wasn’t needed at all. This was exposed in an April 2017 Bloomberg article and it’s not unrealistic to say that Bloomberg may have nailed all of the nails into Juicero’s coffin.

Juicero’s next step was to cut staff, offer refunds, and brings the price of the machine down to $200, but it wasn’t enough to save the company. Even at $200, it’s still a $200 paperweight. Price regardless, the machine lost its entire appeal once it was discovered that nobody actually needed it. Just to hammer that point home: there was zero incentive to purchase the machine. Let’s all just sit back and revel in the sheer insanity of all of this, and then laugh when nobody learns from their mistake and tries to do the same thing all over again.