I love my oat milk in the morning, but I don’t love the big plastic jugs it comes in. It just feels wasteful, especially since so little plastic actually gets recycled. With that in mind, could the Numilk Home be the key to more conscientious plant-based milk consumption? Given how quickly the company has blown past its Kickstarter goal, a lot of other people seem to think so.
The Numilk Home is a countertop version of the Numilk kiosk, which is a large plant-based milk dispenser installed at grocery stores across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. For the kiosk installations, users place an empty Numilk glass bottle under a dispenser and choose from a selection of plant-based milks.
For the Numilk Home, the main concept remains the same, only on a smaller scale. The countertop devices uses a combination of ingredient pouches and special bottles. The ingredient pouches contain a variety of different plain and flavored milks (almond, soy, oat, chocolate, etc.). The Numilk bottles have a special emulsifier at the bottom.
To make milk, users place the ingredient pouch in the top and push a button. The ingredients are dispensed with water into the special bottle. Special technology built into the base of the machine emulsifies the milk. We reached out for more details about how this emulsifying technology works (e.g., Are bottles single use?) and will update when we hear back.
Numilk founders actually pitched their device and company on a March episode of Shark Tank, accepting an investment offer of up to $2 million from Mark Cuban. Now Numilk is reaching out through Kickstarter to crowdfund the rest, and is off to a strong start. As of today, Numilk has pulled in nearly $210,000 in pledge funding, more than doubling its initial goal of $100,000. The campaign still has 27 days to go.
In some ways, the Numilk feels kinda like the Juicero, the infamously expensive juicing machine that flamed out a few years back. You’re not just buying a machine, you’re buying into the Numilk ecosystem, and will be reliant on their pouches. And, as with any hardware crowdfunding campaign, there is the chance that Numilk won’t be able to move from prototype to scaled production, a very real problem on the platform.
But if you want to back the project, a Numilk Home machine will set you back $199. Numilk ingredient pouches will cost between $3 and $5 and will be available through the Numilk website. The company says it will ship the devices in August of 2022.
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