Customer Ratings & Reviews

This is a rather expensive, but ultra-convenient, kitchen appliance. Over the last couple of weeks I used it roughly every other day. It neatly takes food scraps and breaks them down to a dry compost if used as directed. On one experiment I weighed the scraps before and after. The heavy-duty bucket weighs 3lbs. 8.3oz. and when I filled it to the "fill line" it jumped to 6lbs. 10.8oz. Then, close the lid, hit start and wait. 8 hours later, it had reduced a full bucket to 4.5oz of dry compost. (see photos) The dry compost can be collected and sprinkled on your garden as fertilizer as needed. There are some cons, however. First, the price is steep at $399, but it does go on sale periodically. Second, it says the cycle is 4 to 8 hours, but every cycle I ran was around 8 hours so I let it run over night. Third, it does smell when working and when you open to collect it. It is not terrible, but I moved it out of the kitchen because it was noticeable. Lastly, its size. It takes up a lot of kitchen space and if you live in an apartment it will eat up counter space, but in my case it was twice the size of my previous compost bucket which I now use to collect the dry scraps.

Wow! This Vitamix Foodcycler is amazing. You can put virtually any leftover/throw-out food in the bin and it will process it into dehydrated broken down particles as small as wood shavings to flakes as large as a silver dollar. We get different results every time. We throw almost everything in here. Be careful with other types of bones, but we put left over chicken bones in here from making chicken noodle soup and it handled it just fine. We used about 1/4 of the chicken bones, bones we didn’t think were too thick. We may try the whole chicken next time. We leave our bucket out in our kitchen and it blends well without being noticed due it’s dark Matte black gunmetal color. We put the provided filter cover over it and it prevents it from attracting bugs. We throw food in there until it’s at or a tiny bit over the max fill threshold until we start it. Sometimes it takes two or three days for us to fill it. That filter cover keep any mild-medium smells, in that bucket during that time. Also, it’s waaay quieter than the average dishwasher. The only time it’s ever louder, is with bones To product designers. (Flaws) - The inside arrows are not easy to find to align the metal bucket into the housing. - The very first time we washed the metal bucket that you claim is dishwasher safe, the gears on the bottom developed surface rust. We were able to get it off, but because of this we recommend that this should be hand washed and not put in a dishwasher.

I’m a cook and there’s some waste involved. I have an outdoor composter but I live in the desert and honestly I’m not inclined to rush out in 100 degree days to add another layer and spin it around. I tend to use my outdoor composter more for lawn clippings and leaves than kitchen scraps. This thing works like a dream. It is amazing how orange rinds and broccoli shreds and unused greens are reduced to...well...kind of dry shavings. I put everything veg and fruit in there, lightly chopped or torn up...no pits. One caveat I had a bumper crop of tomatoes this year and towards the end just couldn’t keep up with it. A few tomatoes mixed with other things is no problem but too many tomatoes is too juicy and may wind up gummy instead of dry even with a second run. A little bucket soak though and good to go. I love not wasting anything.

I am amazed of how great this product is and all the great pros by using it. Package said.. 1000 pounds per year per household are being diverted from landfills by just using this. I CAN NOT RECOMMEND IT MORE! I can't wait to start sharing my homemade fertilizer with my neighbors!

This thing is amazing! I love that I have less food waste and that I will have compost to add to my garden. Well worth the money. Photos attached are before and after. It only took 5 hours for the whole process. Completely impressed.

This is awesome! We use it every night and recycle our food scraps into tillable garden material. Does what it says: keeps food waste out of landfills. Video of my Vitamix Food Cycler in action at https://youtu.be/BdkWPU4fAEA

I love it it’s the best purchase I did now no wasting any fruit and vegetables

It turns all my food scraps into dry crumbs that I can use for compost or fertilizer. It's easy to use, quiet, and odorless. It saves me space, time, and money. It also makes me feel good about being a good steward of the Earth. I love my food cycler. It's the best thing since sliced bread. I use my food cycler every night. I just dump all my cooking goods into it and let it do its magic. It dehydrates and grinds everything, even small bones. It reduces the volume of my waste by 96%. When I run a batch of non-animal products, I can mix the crumbs with soil and use it for my plants. I have adapted to my food cycler in no time. People are amazed that it's so fast and efficient. It runs for about 4 hours, depending on the volume. If I have more than one meal in a day, I just leave a plate with the scraps and add them to the next cycle. This product is well made, simple to operate, and a blessing for me. I also like that my food cycler is silent and clean. I don't have to hear a garbage disposal run or smell a garbage disposal stink. I don't have to use toxic chemicals to keep my pipes clear. I don't have to worry about what goes down my drain and how it affects the water supply. I'm not being a snob or anything, I'm just being a responsible citizen of the Earth. And to have a product like this is awesome.

I am an employee of Best Buy and have had the opportunity to use the FoodCycler in my home. We have been composting for a few years, but living in the city, the process has been cumbersome. We’d keep a small bucket on our counter, which we’d fill up, take to a larger container in the garage and then every few weeks would haul to our city drop off site. While I hate to admit it, we’d sometimes throw out food scraps because the containers would be full or too stinky and we knew we wouldn’t be doing a trip for a bit. Using the FoodCycler has been amazing! I cook almost every night which means we fill it up and run it almost every day. I am honestly shocked how much our waste has gone down as I have started composting things I usually didn’t because of the smell (meat, bones, cooked scraps). I noticed very quickly we were not filling up the trash as rapidly and was surprised by how much a full pail of scraps can be reduced to a small amount of fertilizer. The size is perfect for fitting under my cabinets on my counter top since we are constantly using it. It’s just slightly bigger than our coffee maker. Depending on how much you fill it up, and what items are in it, the time it takes to run can vary, but each time it’s done, everything is thoroughly broken down and dried out so you can be confident it’s not just operating on a flat timer with mixed results. The pail is also incredibly easy to clean. Although dishwasher safe, I have just been running it with hot water and soap between cycles and it rinses clean. Much better than my previous counter container which I never felt was clean enough! I can’t recommend this enough for anyone that’s been considering trying to reduce their food waste, but doesn’t want to deal with traditionally stinky or cumbersome compost methods. You will be a compost convert in no time! I’m excited to use my compost in my garden this spring!

I am an employee of Best Buy and had the opportunity to use the FoodCycler in my home. I’ve always been intimidated by composting. I live in an urban setting, which means I have a small yard and kitchen. For years I’ve written off composting as too hard, too smelly and too time consuming. But lately I’ve read more about the environmental impact of throwing out food, and I’ve been really bothered about the amount of food we waste in my household. So, for my family, FoodCycler has been a game changing. We set it up near our garbage cans in the kitchen and throw our food scraps in there throughout the day. There are two things that really stand out to me. First, we can throw anything in – chicken bones, coffee grounds, peanut butter & jelly, etc. – so it’s easy. Second, it doesn’t smell, and with a small kitchen that was a major reason I didn’t compost in the past. We generally run the FoodCycler at night since it’s quiet, and the next day we use the fertilizer it produces on our plants in the house and yard. I would recommend this product for anybody who is looking for an easy way to make composting a part of their daily routine.

This thing is great for a small household (it's just me and my partner). It's basically enough space for a day's worth of scraps, small bones, paper plates, paper towels, etc. I used to have a compost pickup service before I moved out to a rural area that is somehow both 5 miles from the big compost facility and also impossible to get service for. I've had terrible luck with vermicomposting, barrel composting, and others. I have a total black thumb, and it apparently extends to making beautiful soil amendments from scraps. So when I saw this for sale pricing, I snatched it up. Even at regular pricing it's cheaper than a year's worth of compost pickup service. Another bonus--home compost heaps don't produce enough heat to break down animal proteins, but this will do the trick just fine with most animal products. Just don't throw in hambones and you'll be fine. Small chicken bones and such work great. Animal fats and oils are not overt problem (though may affect the sodium content of your compost). Works great. One cycle is about 4-8 hours generally. The more liquid you put into the inner bucket with your scraps, the longer it takes. So my first cycle, which was some damp paper towels and vegetable scraps and dry food waste took less than 4, but my most recent cycle which included some spoiled liquid took about 12 hours. Produces ZERO odor so far, but does sound a little like a spaceship while it's running. Because of the moderate noise (I guess about the level of a loud home dishwasher) and the footprint (about the size of a home bread machine), I keep it in my garage. Produces an end product that looks like shredded paper pulp (even when there's no paper included), and you're supposed to cure it for a while and add into your soil at a ratio I can't recall off the top of my head (I think 1:10 compost:soil?). So I have a 5 gallon bucket I'm emptying the finished pulp into. With the lid closed, it's critter proof and no odor. Really deeply grateful for this product, and happy to be able to properly compost again!

We've been using this for a few weeks now. It does a great job handling all kinds of food waste. The bucket is not that big, but it has no problem being filled full of kitchen scraps. However, the product description is misleading. It does not compost anything! It dehydrates the food waste. This has some benefits. (1) The resulting dehydrated food waste takes up much less room. A full bucket turns into about half a cup, barely enough to cover the bottom of the bucket. Very impressive. (2) The machine grinds everything up, so if you are inclined to compost it later, the process can happen faster since the waste is already in smaller pieces. (3) The dehydrated scraps don't mold, rot, or ferment (or compost). So this means you can toss them in a storage container until you have enough to start a compost pile and compost them. This is great for the winter, or any time in between starting batches of compost. In short, we like the machine, even though it does not compost food.

Great composter and solved the issue of having scraps in the kitchen. It's quiet, but it does take up some countertop real estate. Worth it and it feels good to not throw away scraps as I used to.

Bucket does not hold much and it can take 8 hours to complete a cycle. It does reduce food waste to a small fraction of its original size. And the unit takes up a lot of counter space. If you have a lot to compost, a garden composter might make more sense and is a lot cheaper. But if you're just looking to reduce environmental waste, or produce small amounts of compost, this unit makes sense.

Very quiet operation. Must compost now, so using this almost daily and it has been easy and efficient. No odors, and the results look like mulch. I will be spreading it through my garden beds and can’t wait to see the effects on my plants. Yes, it’s pricey, but it beats smelly trash, and using up valuable freezer space for trash before it goes to the landfill.

this is a wondrous and remarkable machine. We were at a loss as to how to compost our kitchen waste. We tried conventional composting but it took days and a great investment of time to attend to the process of breaking down the food and then attempting to find a suitable place to put it in the garden. I find this product is simply incredible. We take any kind of organic waste in the kitchen except for bones or shells, simply open the lid put the material inside close the lid pushed the button wait a few hours and then retrieve completely dry compost that can either be disposed of in your weekly recycling or if you have a garden till it into the soil. If you live in the city and have no garden or flower pot, this machine will alleviate the use of plastic bags or smelly food waste. It's only about a cubic foot measuring about 12 inches on each side so it small. The operation is extremely quiet except for periodic groaning sounds that come emanating from its cast metal core. The interior of the machine, or the bucket is heavy-duty solid cast mechanism that dehydrates then grinds up the food waste and turns it into dried virtually odorless powder. So at the end of the week rather than having smelly rotting garbage you have a small paper bag filled with the kind of granular powder that smells more like lemon rinds or roasted coffee. Depending on what you put in. I think this thing is great!!!!

SO much easier to compost than I had ever expected. I live in the northern midwest, and composting is challenging year round because of the cold. I have had this FoodCycler for several months now, and I use it 2-3 times every week with consistent results. The set-up was super easy, and operating is as easy as aligning the compost bucket in the machine, sealing the lid shut, and pushing the button. In about 5-8 hours, you have freshly composted dirt with no smell or mess. Should have bought this a long time ago!

This works really well and turns all that scrap into usable compost for our garden. Compact, quiet and keeps the garbage from stinking. I gave this 4* though for 2 reasons. 1st one I had got returned because it made a louder squeaking sound. Not a good thing considering we run this overnight and kept getting woken up, but the new one works good and is quiet. Second is that you have to buy new filters for it every 3 months based on their recommendations. It depends how much i you use it I’m sure, but that’s $120 a year for filters. So just make sure you take this I to account before you purchase.

I love this unit for composting our kitchen scraps - it's helped to get rid of fruit flies and smells and provides food for our garden plants in one day! We generally run a load a day and it's worked great! If you leave the scraps sitting you may have a slight 'vinegary' smell as it composts due to fermentation as the scraps break down as they wait, but if you run it regularly there is no odor.

I happened to see similar machines on social media and decided to do some research. This machine was among the top three in all the reviews. It is made well, very easy to use, and quiet. It coverts most food waste into a small amount of mulch, which you can use for planting or just throw away. Best impulsive purchase ever.