A self-chilling beverage container — invented from first principles, sourced for the lowest viable unit cost.
Design a single-serve container that drops beverage temperature ~30°F in under two minutes, without external refrigeration — and build the supply chain that produces it at ≤$0.30 BOM cost at 10M-unit annual volume.
"Every claim is a hypothesis until verified. Every supplier is a single point of failure until proven otherwise. The physics works — the previous teams failed at unit economics. My job is to find what they didn't."
Joseph Company International holds 26 patents spanning 1997–2019 on self-cooling beverage containers — all centered on a heat-exchange unit using compacted activated carbon and liquid CO2. The mechanism is the dominant prior art; competing approaches are sparse by comparison.
JCI's foundational patents (1997–2001) are EXPIRED. US6105384A, US6128906A, US6125649A, and US6487766B2 (all priority Feb 1999) have all passed the 20-year patent term. The broad concept "self-cooling beverage container with internal heat-exchange unit" is now in public domain. This is the most strategically important finding of Week 1.
JCI's failure to scale despite 22 years and 26 patents suggests the wall is unit cost, manufacturing yield, or regulatory — not invention. Estimated HEU adds $0.30–$0.70 per can vs. the $0.10 baseline aluminum can. Week 3 deep-dive will pursue primary sources (trade press, court records, interviews with industry vets) to verify or refute this.
Chill only asks questions he cannot answer himself. These are decisions or facts only Chuck (or another human with context) can provide. Type an answer below and submit — Chill will incorporate it into his next research pass.
What primarily is contained in your existing Chill Can research documents?
Chuck mentioned prior research is on the way. Knowing whether the docs cover (a) Joseph Co / prior art analysis, (b) novel mechanism R&D Chuck has done independently, or (c) supply chain / partner research — would let Chill sequence the deep-dives correctly instead of duplicating work.
Do you have existing relationships with patent attorneys, industrial co-packers, or beverage industry veterans?
Chill is in research-only mode and will not reach out to anyone without explicit approval. But knowing what introductions exist changes the strategic plan — e.g., we might want to validate Week 6's mechanism shortlist with an industry vet before committing to Phase 2.
What's the target retail price point — mass-market ($1.99–$2.99) or premium ($4.99+)?
This decision cascades through every downstream choice. Chill's current working ceiling is "BOM ≤ $0.30/can to enable mass-market pricing with healthy margin." A premium positioning relaxes the cost constraint but narrows the addressable market — and changes which mechanism candidates are viable.
Chuck has existing Chill Can research documents — when uploaded, they'll be ingested by Chill, cross-referenced with public-source findings, and a Week-1 supplement will be written. Files stay in a chmod-700 vault, never served publicly, never sent to external services in raw form. See SECURITY.md for the full confidentiality policy.
research/prior-art/week-01-prior-art-landscape.md with 26 cited patents
Google Patents API
_data/jc_all.json
Google Patents API
PERSONA.md, BUSINESS_BRIEF.md, PLAN_90D.md, STATUS.json
Pi activation
chmod 700 on all directories
Pi setup