Why not just go with a square carton design? Now the whole rectangle is full and they're mostly recyclable (I think?). It would probably also normalize Soylent into something like milk.
The blog post cites visible damage from door delivery shipping as the major design issue that they were trying to solve.
(Paper) cartons are much weaker and less resilient than plastic bottles. Think about the number of times you've seen dented or folded chicken soup cartons on supermarket shelves... I've certainly seen plenty of Safeway soup boxes to avoid because of obvious exterior damage.
I don't think cartons would get them very far in that area.
I've never really seen milk cartons delivered towards schools or shops (think juices and milk) be damaged all that often, but I'm not watching their deliveries either! I just imagined it was a problem already solved for non-pressurized drinks.
Then you're blessed with good fortune! Unfortunately I remember getting my lunch milk carton already sticky and wet from other damaged cartons in the elementary school cafeteria many times. Only the inside was waxed, so once one carton sprung a leak, the rest would weaken from the leakage, and sometimes when you'd go to pick yours up, it would tear and spill. Yuck.
The problem is the customer paying $4+ a serving won't find that acceptable. A school won't care if a few $0.50 cartons are dented in a shipping crate of over a hundred milk cartons, but a customer that gets a dented $5 drink is going to complain and ask for a refund/replacement.
"So why sqround? Why not a crisp cornered square bottle, you ask? Obviously, a perfect square would be most efficient in terms of packing. Squares, however, come with their own set of challenges. When bottles travel down the manufacturing line on their way to your door, they are constantly moving from single file to big groups, around curves and corners, and jostling into place. A bunch of round bottles will roll off one another and travel smoothly around corners, but a bunch of square bottles have a tendency to lock up with one another, kind of like a losing game of Tetris. By generously rounding the corners of a square (to the industry-coined “sqround”) we solve these production line issues."
They are selling a lifestyle and an experience more than potions of liquified nutrients. As such the packaging, the marketing, the blogs about it are very important (maybe even more important than what's in the bottle).
It's a bit like people go and pay $5 for a cup of coffee in a coffee shop. They are buying the experience more than the coffee.
> ..$5 for a cup of coffee in a coffee shop. They are buying the experience more than the coffee.
Slightly OT but for me it's the reverse. If I go to a really good gourmet café then yes it may be expensive and yes, a component of the price is the experience (usually these cafés are nice places to hang out in) but most of it is the coffee itself. I cannot buy a coffee that good for less money in another place, hence I am willing to pay the price they are charging.
Agreed. Where I work, I can get a cup of iced coffee at 7-11 for $1, or I can go to a coffee stand and get significantly tastier iced coffee for $4.75. They have roughly the same experience in this case because the coffee stand doesn't have a place to sit.
They never really talk about alternatives to the plastic bottle, just variations of it.
I would also think filling and distribution of a carton is a solved problem considering how much milk/juice gets moved in them without too much damage.
They talked about shipping durability, which was the point I was making. A cylindrical-ish plastic bottle would be less prone to crushing than a square cardboard carton.
(Paper) cartons are much weaker and less resilient than plastic bottles. Think about the number of times you've seen dented or folded chicken soup cartons on supermarket shelves... I've certainly seen plenty of Safeway soup boxes to avoid because of obvious exterior damage.
I don't think cartons would get them very far in that area.