Tech bros who feel that actually making food and enjoying a meal at home is an unecessary burden will have to wait a few days longer for the latest edition of Soylent to ship.
The meal-replacement/dignity-depleter launched Version 2.0 (lol) in September, with the latest upgrade coming bottled as a pre-mixed drink, saving customers the burden of actually having to mix the powder before consuming it. However, customers who placed their orders after September 22 began to complain their food had not shipped. A problem if you are literally replacing your entire diet with Soylent, as some people are.
"I ordered some Soylent 2.0 a week ago and got the initial email confirming the subscription but have yet to see a shipping email or anything else from the company," wrote redditor mulderc on the Soylent subreddit last week. Although they were pleased with the 15% refund offered, they wrote they still had "no idea" when they would get their Soylent. Other users chimed in on the same subreddit and Soylent's own Discourse board with the same problems and lack of information from Soylent.
"I don't think they are being as forthcoming as possible," Soylent user Hayden Barnes told Motherboard. "They are undeniably in a uniquely challenging circumstance because this isn't just a product, this is a product people rely on for their food, many for all of their food, so fulfillment problems are particularly problematic."
On September 30, Soylent acknowledged the issue, calling it a "minor issue" and in a blog post on Friday revealed what the problem was: mold.
Indeed, a few users had received a few bottles of Soylent 2.0 with the black, spotty mold, and shared the images on Discourse and the Soylent subreddit. "I just opened my fourth bottle of Soylent 2.0 and found these black specks on the rim," wrote redditor RazziaJA. "There's also a larger dark spot inside the rim, and a white patch that looks like powder didn't get fully mixed in."
According to Soylent, they had received reports of 11 bottles of the 400,000 bottles of 2.0 that had already shipped. "Well within the industry standard rate of one in 10,000 defects in low acid aseptic packaging," they note. In a review, they determined that "conveyor guardrail settings were not optimized, causing some bottles to move erratically on the conveyor, which resulted in small splashes on the external surface of the bottle, thereby allowing mold from the environment to grow on the bottle." Any problems they had in the manufacturing process has been fixed, according to Soylent, and shipments will resume later this week on October 8.
Until then, here's how to make a sandwich.