We’ve established quite a strange relationship with our kitchens as of late. On the one hand, we want be in them more — we buy meal kits that help us cook in instead of eat out, and Keurig machines that allow us to brew our own coffee instead of ordering from Starbucks. But on the other hand, we’d still like to do as little as possible with our kitchen appliances. After all, the appeal of a meal kit is its premeasured, precut portions that require less prep and cleanup; and the beauty of a K-cup is its all-in-one combination of coffee grounds, filters, and water.
Now, there’s yet another product to further confuse how we really feel about our kitchens. Meet Blix, a new kind of blender that doesn’t want you to blend just anything, but rather smart cups filled with fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, and more that can become smoothies, dips, and soups. It’s much like an actual blender, but with prepackaged ingredients instead of ingredients you select yourself.
Promising all the benefits of a blender without any of the fuss, Blix hopes to differentiate itself by keeping all mixing contained and highly efficient. The sleek machine (available in either black or white) almost looks like an Amazon Echo, but with a cubical base that supplies the power. You won’t just throw raw produce into the Blix, though. Rather, you’ll insert a Blix cup, add your liquid of choice, and then press the “magic” button. In under 60 seconds, you’ll have a finished product, and nothing to clean up.
At launch, Blix will feature smoothie recipes like Very Berry, as well as spreads like hummus or guacamole, and soups like butternut squash ginger. All recipes claim to be GMO, preservative, and added sugar-free, and to integrate a number of trendy superfoods like matcha, spirulina, and goji berries.
But wait, you say. Why buy a blender that uses cups when I can buy a blender that … doesn’t use cups? Ultimately, the Blix team seems to think that blenders, while popular in theory, often go unused because of the amount of fuss they require. After all, cleaning those blades and chopping those fruits can get pretty tiresome, which leads to a perfectly good blender sitting unused for months on end. Blix hopes to offer a more straightforward solution, though it’s certainly a more expensive one as well.
You can pre-order the Blix for $100, which comes with the Blix machine as well as six smoothie cups. Once you’ve used all these smoothie blends, you’ll have the option of ordering cups on a weekly subscription basis ($39 for six cups and $70 for 12), or a la carte in multiples of six cups, in which case pricing will be $6.49 for smoothies and $6.99 for spreads.
