Hi, I’m Jeff Dunn. You may not know me in my new role as CEO of Juicero as I’ve only been here since November. But I’ve been involved with the company for the last few years as an active investor and board member working closely with Doug Evans, our founder. My career has led me from Coca-Cola to Bolthouse Farms and Campbell Fresh over the past nearly 40 years in the food business.
The journey from Coca-Cola to carrots to Juicero’s rainbow of fruits and vegetables has let me connect my work to my personal mission and passion: solving some of our nation’s nutrition and obesity challenges. I’m very proud of what my teams and I have accomplished in the last ten years, especially in regard to positively shifting the dialogue about our food system and how it can better serve all of us in health, nutrition, and sustainability. All of that was training for becoming CEO of Juicero — the single most ambitious and inspiring job I’ve ever held. Let me explain.
Last summer when Juicero’s Board and Doug asked me to join Juicero as CEO, it was driven by the recognition that we were launching a totally new long-term approach which would require a tremendous effort to innovate, improve and scale. Juicero’s mission is to make it dramatically easier and more enjoyable to consume more fresh, raw fruits and vegetables, and that’s a really tough nut to crack. It seems simple, but despite everything we’ve done to-date as a food community, we’ve barely moved the needle.
What I love about Juicero is that our team is attacking this issue in a way unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s incredible to come to work everyday alongside hardware and software engineers, food scientists, designers, farmer partners, and all our other team members who are committed to building a new way of delivering raw, plant-based nutrition. What we’re building is long-term in nature and requires us to innovate each part of our system — from Press, to Produce Pack, to how we source organic produce directly from farms, to how we deliver the produce to consumers’ doorsteps. It’s hard work and not perfect yet by any measure — getting this right is a process of testing, learning and iterating.
So when I saw this week’s headlines about hacking and hand-squeezing Produce Packs, I had a one overriding thought: ”We know hacking consumer products is nothing new. But how can we better demonstrate the incredible value we know our connected system delivers?”
First, the Press. Our connected Press itself is critical to delivering a consistent, high quality and food safe product because it provides:
- The first closed loop food safety system that allows us to remotely disable Produce Packs if there is, for example, a spinach recall. In these scenarios, we’re able to protect our consumers in real-time.
- Consistent pressing of our Produce Packs calibrated by flavor to deliver the best combination of taste and nutrition every time.
- Connected data so we can manage a very tight supply chain, because our product is live, raw produce, and has a limited lifespan of about 8 days.
The value of Juicero is more than a glass of cold-pressed juice. Much more.
The value is in how easy it is for a frazzled dad to do something good for himself while getting the kids ready for school, without having to prep ingredients and clean a juicer.
It’s in how the busy professional who needs more greens in her life gets App reminders to press Produce Packs before they expire, so she doesn’t waste the hard-earned money she spent on them.
These are just a few examples of the value that the Juicero system offers, and we’re just getting started. As I said, this is a long-term vision and we’ll encounter bumps in the road, but our team and our investors understand the important problem we’re trying to solve, and they’re committed to helping us get there.
The sum of the system — the Press, Produce Packs and App — working together is what enables a great experience. However, you won’t experience that value by hand-squeezing Produce Packs, which to be clear, contain nothing but fresh, raw, organic chopped produce, not juice. What you will get with hand-squeezed hacks is a mediocre (and maybe very messy) experience that you won’t want to repeat once, let alone every day.
We strive to put our customer at the center of everything, and to do so with utmost transparency and integrity. That’s our business credo, as well my own personal belief system.
While it is never easy to face some of this week’s headlines and critiques, we’re still learning, listening, and improving, and we confidently stand behind our promise to help people on their journey to health. So, for the next 30 days, we’ve decided to extend our Happiness Guarantee to any Juicero customer — new or old — who feels that we aren’t making it easier, more enjoyable and delicious to form a healthy habit. That means that if you send us your Press, we’ll refund the money you paid for it. Period.
I’m committed to engaging the community in conversation about how we best serve our customers with raw, plant-based nutrition. You can reach me at jeffdunn@juicero.com, so please share your thoughts. I look forward to reading them.
Jeff
