A new smart home beverage machine is heading to store shelves early next year called the Cana One. This system uses recyclable flavor cartridges and a carbon canister to recreate your favorite drinks. Caffeine, alcohol, vitamins, and sugar can also be independently mixed into the user’s preferences. A mobile app and 7-inch touchscreen provide all the controls.
A major part of Cana’s pitch is to reduce the amount of waste generated by purchasing beverage cans and bottles. They’re mostly full of the same water we already have in our homes, so why waste that energy extracting, packaging, and shipping it? Cana aims to reduce the friction of mixing your own drinks by automatically shipping you new canisters when you’re running low. It is also hoping that the mobile app tie-in and flexibility of the flavoring system will allow influencers to generate their own Cana One drink recipes and share them through social channels. To that end, Cana has already secured a partnership with YouTube engineer Simone Giertz.
The pricing scheme is still a little nebulous. The Cana One itself is available for $499 on preorder today for the first 10,000 preorders. The price goes up to $799 after that. For the cartridges, Cana says pricing will be based on individual beverages, ranging from $0.29 a drink to $2.29. Brands can take a cut of those purchases when their drink recipes are used.
While it sounds like Cana One is sidestepping the trash generated from beverage systems like Keurig, it seems like the DRM lock-in could be very similar. Not being able to use third-party cartridges could keep users on the hook for subscriptions for as long as they want to use their Cana One with little recourse for inflating prices. As fancy as it looks, it’s hard to shake the worry that the Cana One would end up being less of an appliance you own and more of a vending machine living in your kitchen.
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