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An AI Smoothie Shop Opened in San Francisco With Much Hype. Why Is It Closed Already? 91

Posted by msmash from the tough-luck dept.
In September, a "bespoke AI nutrition" store opened in beleaguered downtown San Francisco to much fanfare, promising smoothie concoctions generated by AI and a much-needed boost to the area. Less than two months later, it has seemingly closed without explanation. From a report: BetterBlends advertised "Your Smoothie, powered by AI" and received positive press upon its opening, ginning up excitement for a new business and a novel use of artificial intelligence. Its AI model would take customer orders and preferences to generate a smoothie recipe that would then be blended by hand by co-founders Michael Parlato and Clayton Reynolds, who worked in the shop. But now the storefront sits empty. On Friday 20 October, the locked doors to BetterBlends featured a sign that read "temporarily closed," stating the shop would reopen in one hour -- but sources in the neighborhood said the storefront had been closed for more than three weeks.

By the following Monday, the sign had been removed, and the inside of the shop was largely cleared of blenders, fruit, vegetables and other supplies -- anything you might need to make a smoothie, with or without AI. Only a trashcan and a few plants remained. The store's Google Maps listing speaks to both problems in the physical world and its roots in AI. A Google Maps review posted two weeks ago accompanied by a picture of the sign read: "I was hopeful for this business. The owners however did not understand the discipline to run a restaurant. It was often open late and closed early. They changed their hours after a week of being open. And then 1 day they put up a sign, 'Temporarily closed, be back in an hour.' They have not been back in over two weeks."

Other reviews were positive, awarding BetterBlends four or five stars. The shop owners themselves uploaded pictures of their smoothies to the Google Maps page as well as an image of happy customers that bears the hallmarks of generative AI. The light on their smiling faces is soft and glossy like a photoshoot. The fruits in the store window are, on closer inspection, unrecognizable blobs of fruit-colored things. The clear plastic cups are branded with gibberish characters that don't spell anything and filled with lumpy smoothie-ish mixtures. They are cartoonishly large in the customers' hands, one of which has only three too-long fingers. AI image generators have a documented history of failing to produce text within images or realistic human hands.
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An AI Smoothie Shop Opened in San Francisco With Much Hype. Why Is It Closed Already? More

An AI Smoothie Shop Opened in San Francisco With Much Hype. Why Is It Closed Already?

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  • Is anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Finallyjoined!!! ( 1158431 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @01:03PM (#63969474)

    After all it's a really crap idea.

    Sorry.

  • Was about the AI, not the smoothies (Score:5, Interesting)

    by topham ( 32406 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @01:04PM (#63969478) Homepage

    I think you'll find the smoothies business was never the intent.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      It may well be, but to have the human beings taking orders from the AI is some Star Trek, "A Taste of Armageddon," crap.

      It's also a waste of actual AI, assuming that actual AI was involved and they weren't merely stretching the meaning of the term for their own small shell script of an order-taking system.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stripes ( 3681 )

        assuming that actual AI was involved and they weren't merely stretching the meaning of the term for their own small shell script of an order-taking system

        I assume it made bespoke recipes, maybe something per customer. I also assume they were not in reality any better then non-AI generated recipes, but if customers think they are and visit you for their customer smoothie as opposed to Jamba Juice for the Mango-a-go-go it is a win for your AI powered business. Hopefully that doesn't encourage them to get i

  • Because 90% of new businesses fail, and the rate is even higher for restaurants.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      what do you mean? we don't even know for sure this place is closed because the person writing the article couldnt be bothered to confirm

      "it has seemingly closed"

      • I mean the default state is failure. The newsworthy thing would be if it survived. There are a million reasons for this thing to fail.

      • Re:uhhhh (Score:4, Informative)

        by Xenx ( 2211586 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @01:25PM (#63969540)

        what do you mean? we don't even know for sure this place is closed because the person writing the article couldnt be bothered to confirm

        "By the following Monday, the sign had been removed, and the inside of the shop was largely cleared of blenders, fruit, vegetables and other supplies -- anything you might need to make a smoothie, with or without AI."

        Yeah, I dunno. It seems pretty uncertain for me too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Yeah, but they shouldn't close that fast. Something else is going on. (Possibly they didn't get their licenses straight, or failed the first health inspection.)

    • Re:uhhhh (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @01:41PM (#63969606)
      The numbers for restaurant closures within the first year are all over the place. From what I can find, it's somewhere around 30-60% fail in the first year. I've also seen references to both lower and higher percentages. However, the fail rate is higher when looking at the first few years. That said, this place closed in less than two months. I don't know if it'd be correct to label it as part of the expected failure rate.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stripes ( 3681 )

        this place closed in less than two months. I don't know if it'd be correct to label it as part of the expected failure rate

        Yep, anyone that takes advice when opening a restaurant will be able to run it for six months to a year without any actual income. Except that many many places underestimate how much it costs to get a place open in the first place, like all the months you are paying rent on a commercial space waiting for health&other inspections before you can open.

        So if they followed common pract

    • Because 90% of new businesses fail, and the rate is even higher for restaurants.

      2 months is a business failing, it's the owners realizing they were way in over their heads.

      Of course, "Temporarily Closed" could in fact just be temporarily closed. The thing with a new business is you probably did some things wrong. They could be taking a few weeks to rethink / redo the concept.

    • And I think it's even higher than the normal restaurant rate when you fail to maintain consistent hours.

  • Maybe these smoothie blenders wouldn't blend because they were like the AI elevators in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy": They felt that their intellectual abilities were being wasted their menial vertical motion task, so they refused to work and just sulked in the basement.

  • Kale (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @01:14PM (#63969508) Journal

    Kale is awful no matter how many blue berries you blend with it.

    AI can't fix kale.

    On serious note, it was a specialty restaurant in a relatively crowded space (smoothies) with a bunch big franchise players that are incumbent. They were evidently hopeful they could overcome that with a novelty (AI) but failed to realize that novelty does not really translate to the product itself. It isn't like you can see or taste "the AI" in your fruit blend.

    Its not like AI can generate a bunch of novel new combinations from the restaurants finite array of ingredients they can stock at least not in a way that is going to be better than human or some for-each loops would be unable to.

    • Kale is fine, cooked. Olive oil, salt, pepper, hot pan, wilt, don't let it sit until it turns to mush. It's certainly better tasting than spinach prepared the same way.

      • That's why you don't make spinach like that. Telling me that Kale is better than shitty spinach isn't making your case. :)

        If you're going to compare like for like, compare raw spinach to raw kale. I do love me a good spinach salad. Raw kale should be found above ice, and below serving vessels.

        • Spinach is fine raw, kale is not. Spinach is not at all fine cooked, kale is. That's the split.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HBI ( 10338492 )

            Ungodly good cooked spinach can be had. I've had it a variety of different ways, but one of the best is when it's grilled with a veal chop. Another is inspired creamed spinach. Or just boil a can of Popeye's favorite and give it a bit of butter. Yummy.

            Maybe just liking spinach is required.

          • There are varieties of kale which are enjoyable raw, if you grow your own and live where you get at least occasional frosts. Kale is one of those plants - like cabbage and Brussels sprouts - which pump sugar into the leaves when hit with cold weather (sort of a natural antifreeze).

            The real problem is the majority of all vegetables grown commercially in the United States are grown in central California. And kale (again, like Brussels sprouts and cabbage) really isn't a summer vegetable.

            • There are varieties of kale which are enjoyable raw, if you grow your own and live where you get at least occasional frosts. Kale is one of those plants - like cabbage and Brussels sprouts - which pump sugar into the leaves when hit with cold weather (sort of a natural antifreeze).

              The real problem is the majority of all vegetables grown commercially in the United States are grown in central California. And kale (again, like Brussels sprouts and cabbage) really isn't a summer vegetable.

              Yeah, there's a farmer's market in town where we can buy locally grown that's pretty tasty in the late fall. Grocery store oranges? Good in the spring. TERRIBLE by fall. Granted, most "fresh" foods at the grocery suck. Tomatoes are god-awful unless locally grown. They're like styrofoam without the texture.

    • Food coloring is the trick!
      Add a 3D food printer [aliexpress.com] for that extra personalized bespoking.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Stabbings and street-shits are likely not on the short list of things that AI can address, either.

      Putting any business in downtown SF is a likely precursor to failure.

    • "It isn't like you can see or taste "the AI" in your fruit blend."

      What if you use aÃAI berries?

  • Because whole concept is a stupid gimmick that doesn't translate into better and/or cheaper smoothies and just generally it's a stupid idea? It reminds me of those robot cocktail bars that also suck for similar reasons.

  • ...because AI has nothing to do with nutrition? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Big Hairy Gorilla ( 9839972 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @01:17PM (#63969518)
    If you think so, LG has a washing machine for you... it has an "AI Wash" ... becauuuuse... ummm... you're an idiot?

    Please "like and subscribe" below

  • An outgrowth of the "X + Catchphrase/buzzword" (Score:3)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @01:19PM (#63969528) Homepage Journal

    Like "On the internet."

    Chat with people on the Internet.
    Draw pictures on the Internet.
    Buy physical product on the Internet.
    Get shipped gourmet dog food on a subscription basis ON THE INTERNE.

    Basically the intersection of Internet users, customers and product diverge too far and the model falls apart.

    • "on the internet" was the 2000s, this is BETTER (tm) "now with AI".

      Time to patent business nominal ideas as "NEW" by adding AI

      • "on the internet" was the 2000s, this is BETTER (tm) "now with AI".

        Time to patent business nominal ideas as "NEW" by adding AI

        I found the problem! THEY FORGOT THE BLOCKCHAIN!

  • Were there investors?

    • Were there investors?

      Perhaps there were investors, but they didn't want to make a profit, but rather to make a loss to offset some other part of their business. Now that everyone knows NFTs are just a money laundry, shady "investors" have gone back to the traditional "unprofitable restaurant" to hide their money... but with an AI flavour.

  • Well, after the homeless move onto the sidewalk and start street-shitting and the customers get attacked and robbed for change, the place probably decided to look for a better environment to operate in.
  • I'd like an AI certification label, which explains 2 things: - which is the principal model architecture (CNN, transformer, LSTM...) - what makes AI necessary for this purpose Truthfully answering those two questions, under pain of fraud, would eliminate various misuses ranging from "algorithms in AI clothing" to "not actually using AI at all"

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by wed128 ( 722152 )

      The question i'd like answered is this: how is "now with AI" better for the customer? why would i buy a smoothie here rather then a non-AI smoothie place? why even tell me about the AI?

  • It's kind of strange to ingest something into ones body which the author of said substance has not tried themselves.

  • Too bad they closed. I missed my chance to have a randomly generated smoothy, although given the numerous mixes and options at most smoothy places what more could they have done?

    Blueberry Bleach
    Rats n Rasberries
    Moldy Potato Crunch Boost

    But now I'll never know. Yes, AI is a serious threat to the world and any day now Skynet will release literally hundreds of millions of new flavors!

    • My guess is the AI fed the employees to the smoothie machine.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      And the ever popular Spring Surprise.

    • I don't think the picture of the two kids outside the shop holding smoothies is AI generated. The lighting looks fine to me and the pinkie finger is under the cup - perhaps the writer has object permanence issues.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by wed128 ( 722152 )

        Look at the fruit through the window -- it doesn't really look like fruit

      • I don't think the picture of the two kids outside the shop holding smoothies is AI generated.

        Yes, they are. Look at the fingers on the guy or the woman's hand where the back of her hand meets her wrist. Also, if you look at how her fingers are holding the cup, they're not pressed into anything. Further, his face is too symmetrical.

        Finally, what do you think the chances are of these two just happening to have their pictures taken outside the store?

    • New AI generated flavor: Soylent Sarah Connor! What a treat! It's even green-flavored.

  • Hitchhiker's Guide to San Francisco (Score:5, Funny)

    by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @01:46PM (#63969622) Journal

    The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a smoothie.

    =Smidge=
    /With apologies to Douglas Adams

    • You joke, but it should make one wonder how exactly they were generating so-called custom smoothies and what exactly the benefit to the customer is. I can certainly imagine a huge company feeding in data like customer purchasing history across multiple business back to the beginning of time, any recent data they can buy from privacy invading cell phone apps, current data like the customers demeanor, manor of dress, time of day, current weather, and a billion other obscure details, all to generate the optima

  • Artificial (Score:5, Funny)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @02:11PM (#63969696)
    The problem was that the intelligence was an artificial ingredient. If they had advertised locally sourced, fair trade, organic intelligence it would have been a hit.

  • 1. The owners made all they money they wanted to so they buggered off.

    2. The owners lost all of their money and couldn't get any more so they buggered off.

    Gee, I wonder which one it was? /s

  • They probably did NOT pay their rent (or other accounts payable like produce or rental fees for equipment or utility bills) properly.

    Several small businesses often forget that obligations like rent are due when the Company says so, and not whenever you feel like it with as many IOU promises as one desires.

    With a timing of "1 month after launch" to business closure, they were probably in arrears on several core business expenses and decided to close-up shop instead of lining up their finances to maintai

  • ... the lack buzzwords.

    They lacked blockchain integration, there were no smoothie NFTs, and you couldn't pay in crypto. /s

    • Au contraire, from TFA (some SF business development weenie):

      âoeWhile the failure of San Franciscoâ(TM)s generative AI blockchain-powered autonomous 5G smoothie bot may be splashy,...

            Seems like he got the memo!

  • I'm sceptical about the number of different options we should really have to be honest. Especially in a bar when I'm waiting for a drink and the bartender spends five minutes making a concoction for somebody. Any more than ten different smoothies is an extravagance and even five seems a lot!

  • Wrong kind of AI (Score:3)

    by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2023 @05:17PM (#63969968)

    They were using LLMs when they should have been using RL.

    In a few weeks all the smoothies would use poppy extract and they'd have the world's most loyal customer base.

    • ROTFL. Yes, that is what AI would do!

    • They were using LLMs when they should have been using RL.

      In a few weeks all the smoothies would use poppy extract and they'd have the world's most loyal customer base.

      “GODDAMN IT MOMMY I WANT A SMOOTHIE NOW!!!1!!!1!11!!!!”

      There hasn’t been a drink that popular since they decided to make a cocaine flavored soda.

  • And, we know what that is.
  • Putting a back in one hour sign for weeks makes me think they have terrible work ethic and that's why they closed? I find it hard to believe they were rolling in the $$ making (probably $20) smoothies even though while jumping on the AI bandwagon.

    • Hey maybe they intended to be back in an hour and just got stabbed on the way down the street by some substance-hungry street friends.

  • I plan to get really rich by combining juice, Internet, AI, crypto, political kickbacks, the Ukraine, and massive human stupidity. Our fresh kale, prune, DMT, and adrenochrome smoothies will be delivered by robotic drone right to your mansion. You pay for your drink in my new crypto called GFT, which stands for greater fool theory.
  • Really, really interesting. So interesting. I can't tell you how interesting this was. I really can't.

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