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With battery technology no one uses in consumer devices and a half-horsepower motor, the BlenderCap is one of the funniest over-the-top products we’ve seen in a hot minute. At CES in Las Vegas, we took a closer look, talking to the team behind the product to learn more.
Let’s start, why do we need a portable mixer in the first place?
“We originally created this just for personal use as a post-gym smoothie. I was going to CrossFit, and then I wanted a protein shake. I made my own shake, and after an hour or two of making it, it’s melted and mushy,” says company founder Dakota Adams. “Then came the idea to put a mixer on these hydroflask-style bottles. Matthew [Moore] And I became a friend and started working on how to package that technology in a tiny little cap.
At the time, Duo was building a battery factory for Apple in China, working on a blender on the side. A year ago, the Blenders quit their jobs at Apple to make BlenderCap a reality. In the process they created an absolute beast of a fusion.
The BlendCap kit, features a custom PCB and the batteries are soldered directly to the board. Image creditTechCrunch / Haje Kamps
“WTurns out Margarita can make soft drinks. We tested an entire bag of Costco ice on one charge. You can do 10 in a row,” Adams laughed. “We filled a whole five-gallon Home Depot bucket with margaritas. What that means in real life is that you charge once a week or every two weeks instead of charging every day.
Battery technology is the company’s strength, and the founders are using batteries customized with technology that will begin to appear in the next generation of electric vehicles.
The mixing cap weighs about a pound, and is very simple: there’s only one button. Hold to blend, or double click to blend for 25 seconds. It charges via USB-C, and the company decided to use the same threaded design used by the Hydroflask, which means it’s compatible with the thermos-like bottles that most people already own.
“We sell it as a kit – it has a 32-ounce vacuum-sealed bottle and double-wall stainless steel and is dishwasher safe. It comes with a BlenderCap, a blade cover and a dual screw cap, which turns the wide mouth bottle into a smooth mouth,” says Matthew Moore, the company’s co-founder. “It charges via USB-C and you can buy it for $129.”
It is not yet possible to buy the blender hat itself; The company said it is trying to control the amount of product it sells.
This is where the magic sauce is stored. In this case the ‘magic sauce’ is electricity, obviously. Image credit: TechCruch / Haje Kamps
“In the future, we’ll probably use a multi-kitting approach to offer it on its own or in different-sized bottles, etc. Right now, to limit SKU count and make it easier to get started, we’re selling one kit,” Moore explains. “
Pre-orders for the device opened on January 4 and shipping will begin late next month. The company says that the products are already manufactured; It’s just a matter of knowing the logistics of getting here.
own factory
Perhaps most unusually, Cruze has its own factory that builds blender caps.
“WWe’re renting factory space from a high-end manufacturer in Shanghai, and we own all the equipment and robots to build it. So we actually have on our assembly line — we’ve designed the entire assembly line — and we have more robots than people putting this together,” Adams says. “It’s crazy. There are glue dispensing robots, automatic screw dispensers. that’s nice. Actually, that was a bit wishful thinking. And we are very happy to have our own factory building.
For the first time, the company is producing 6,000 BlenderCaps, and is expanding to increase the sustainability of the production.
Everything is custom. Because why the hell not. Image creditTechCrunch / Haje Kamps
The company says it will be profitable from day one, and is starting to look at what the next generation of products could be. We’ve asked, but the company refuses to share what’s next.
“We’ve got a secret product,” Adams said. “Obviously this battery technology can go into different devices, and we have a full product roadmap, and we’re excited to build the ecosystem around what we have here and then other new consumer products. One of the things we’ve noticed in the market, all these DTC brands in the last 10 years. They basically came from repurposing cheap Chinese commodity products, lots of plastic casings and junk. We have this design philosophy that we’ve grown at Apple for 10 years. So we have a whole range of products that come with the same philosophy: low-end, super high-quality materials. We’ll see where it goes from there. “
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