Nicole Loomis
Starting your own juicing business is intimidating for a bevy of reasons. You may be trading the stability of a full-time job to open up shop and rely on the volatility of a fledgling business. You’ll need to learn on the fly and build your business skills as you try to hone your product and distinguish it from competitors.
If you’re considering adding a juice bar to a restaurant, supermarket, farmer’s market, or hotel that you manage, the decision is intimidating too. Will juicing help you attract and retain customers? How will you run it in conjunction with your other responsibilities?
For the prospective small-business juicer and manager curious about adding a juice bar, consider these advantages. It engages with a health-focused culture that’s intensifying in the US. This means the market is rife with opportunity. For the prospective business owner, you can finally start that juicing company through which you can express your passion for nutrition and culinary creativity. And for the manager of an established business or franchise, adding a juicer diversifies your particular location and brightens up its feel.
Whether you’re starting a small business or looking to add to an established business, choosing an appropriate juice model is incredibly important. You can choose to go straight to leasing a store or adding a physical juice bar to your existing space, go the delivery-only route, or combine those offerings. To determine which model you should use for a juice business to ensure your success, read these considerations when starting.
Delivery-Only
A delivery-only venture, commonly referred to as virtual eateries or ghost restaurants, is an increasingly common model to get your juice directly into consumers’ hands. With modern app-based food delivery services, this option is growing in popularity due in part to its streamlined nature.
Delivery-Only for a Small Business Owner
For someone starting up their business, they’ll need to find space to operate, find all-important juicing equipment to churn out product, build an attractive and functional website, and market their juice effectively.
A Space
It’s not recommended to start a juicing business out of your home—you’ll be breaking more than a few health-code rules in the process. Though you won’t need a full retail location that is customer-facing, you’ll need somewhere to operate. You can get creative and squeeze into existing commercial space, set up your juicers, and go.
Marketing
Because customers don’t come into contact with your physical location, your website and marketing campaigns become the face of your company when you’re delivery-only. Take advantage of targeted social media campaigns to connect with customers who have a high probability of becoming consistent patrons, such as people who follow popular exercise or nutrition lifestyle groups. If you go this route, take advantage of local events to build brand awareness and be physically present. Customers want to trust what they buy, especially their food, so if they see your delivery-only venture present at a town food-truck event, you can build that trust.
Delivery-Only When Adding a Juice Bar
It’s unrealistic for established locations such as a restaurant or hotel to not utilize their existing retail space to attract customers to a juicing stand. But if you’re strapped for space and don’t have an inch to spare for a customer-facing juice bar, house the equipment on your property and deliver it as it’s juiced. This allows hotels an interesting opportunity—offer your cold-pressed juice as part of your room service offerings to differentiate your franchise. This helps break the stigma that ordering in for the night must be unhealthy. For restaurants and other venues that want to combine selling their juice on-site with delivery, delivering expands your reach and overall business. Who knows, your juice may help grow your total online orders.
Advantages
Save Money
Your advantages going this delivery-centric route include saving money in several different ways. You save because you don’t need to rent a large space that holds your guests. You also don’t need to spend money on decorating and cleaning a bar’s interior if you deliver your juice. And when your operation is smaller, you can do more with fewer employees and save money on staffing. Instead of paying someone to deliver your product, get on board with the existing gig-based food delivery network and have other people deliver for you. As you save money, you can reduce your juice’s price without compromising on quality.
Reach and Scalability
You’re also not restricted by location if you’re delivery-based—your website reaches people from all over your area, and you can deliver your delicious juice almost anywhere. This is sometimes better than just depending on your store’s presence to attract people who pass by. A final note—if you start as delivery-only, you’re in a better position to start small and potentially scale when you have success. This is better than starting with an expensive lease and becoming cash-strapped when you struggle later.
Retail
Retail is another model you could use for a juice business. Focusing solely on juicing in a conventional retail setting has its advantages for the small business owner and the manager of an existing retail space.
Retail for the Small Business Owner
When starting a juicing business, you must find a location, sign a lease, define your space, and market your store’s opening.
A Space
When picking a spot to settle, you’ll need to determine where your customers are and what you can afford that can also hold your equipment. You’ll likely want to place yourself in high-traffic places among other stores that attract your ideal customer. Also, going the retail route means picking an accessible spot that doesn’t present challenges to visitors, such as minimal parking.
Marketing
When you secure a spot, you’ll need to drum up interest. Some people will organically stop by, but you’ll need to make your grand opening as grand as possible. Make sure you have a website that takes pains to advertise your new location and offer special deals each day of the first week you open.
Retail When Adding a Juice Bar
The nice part about adding a juice bar to an existing space is you don’t need to spend more on rent. If you have available space, you may as well put it to use to add to a customer’s overall experience. If you manage a supermarket, having a freshly juiced drink in hand allows your shoppers a less tedious shopping trip. For hotel guests, though every place they stay has a bed, the food you offer sets you apart. You can define your hotel by the fresh juice served with breakfast and during the day. Restaurants can diversify their offerings with juice. And setting up a juice stand at a farmer’s market will get more people interested in the nitty gritty of juicing produce.
Advantages
Build Trust
Besides saving existing spaces money on rent, a retail model allows you to turn your space into an effective customer-facing tool for growth. For marketing purposes, your retail space is a concrete representation for your brand that customers can easily interact with to determine whether they trust the product or not. This customer contact helps you build relationships with customers and ensure they frequent your juice bar often. Retail juice bars also hold more inventory than smaller operations, increasing your juicing capacity and ensuring you won’t run out of ingredients easily.
Your Equipment Needs
If you’ve decided that you’d like to start a juicing business or add a juicing component to your current operation, consider partnering with JuicerNet. We have quality commercial juicers for sale that can handle all the produce you can throw at them. Please contact us to determine what juicing setup is best for you.
