Kitchen gadget maker Juicero feels squeeze, cuts 25% of staff

Juicero Inc., the startup behind the $399 Internetconnected juice machine, said it’s cutting 25 percent of its staff.

The job reductions, which are primarily in sales and marketing, are being made as Juicero is trying to lower the price of its machine and juice packs. The company’s product came under scrutiny in April, when Bloomberg revealed the packs could be squeezed by hand, yielding almost the same amount of juice in a shorter period of time than with the machine. CEO Jeff Dunn addressed the revelations in a letter Friday to employees announcing the cuts and thanked them for remaining focused despite the negative press cycle.

Juicero declined to comment. The company didn’t say how many people it employs. The job cuts were reported earlier by Fortune.

“We’re still some time away from introducing substantially lower pricing and unveiling a national distribution strategy to achieve the scale we’re aiming for,” Dunn said in the letter. Juicero’s machine costs $399 and the company’s juice packs cost $5 to $7.

As part of the change in strategy, Doug Evans, Juicero’s founder and former CEO, will no longer be involved in the daily operations of the San Francisco company, but will keep a board seat, Dunn said.

Evans, 50, is credited with pitching investors on a high-powered machine that could turn chunks of fruits and vegetables into juice, said two of Juicero’s shareholders. In 2014, he raised about $120 million in venture funding for the concept from Alphabet Inc.’s GV, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and others.

But after the product’s introduction last year, two of Juicero’s investors told Bloomberg they were surprised to find that the packs could be handsqueezed and didn’t require the high-priced hardware. The investors, who asked not to be identified because they signed nondisclosure agreements, said they invested after viewing a threedimensional-printed rendering of the product and didn’t see a working prototype.