How to Increase Juice Bar Profit in 2023 (5 Tricks)

Juice and smoothie bars can be a tough business. Not only do you have the challenges of running a retail business, but you also have the added challenges of running a food and beverage business.

If you’re struggling to reach profitability, or want a little extra to take home at the end of the month, here are a few ways that could help.

The good news is, these are easy to implement!

1. Offer Adaptogen Upgrades for Your Smoothies and Nut Milks

Customized juice, smoothies, and nut mylks are great because they give the user an experience they value more than just buying a pre-made product. Most juice bars are already offering some sort of upgrades or “boosters”, which are a quick way to increase profit margin. Common ones include plant protein, and superfoods like chia seeds, cacao, and other add-ons.

The newest trend is the addition of adaptogens.

Adaptogens help reduce the exaggerated response to stress, which results in improved focus and attention, less mental fatigue and anxiety, and a generally healthier brain. Some good adaptogens for maximizing brain health include Rhodiola, Ashwagandha, Maca and medicinal mushrooms such as Reishi and Lion’s Mane.

With cortisol being at all time highs (stress related hormone), customers are seeking alternative, yet natural, solutions to manage their stress and inflammation. Adaptogens are the perfect solution.

Apothékary brand adaptogens are a growing trend in the juice bar industry (you may have received a sample at JuiceCon 2019). Juice bars currently offering Apothékary adaptogens are able to sell an add-on to any juice, nut mylk, or smoothie for up to $2.00. The cost on this is only $0.45. This calculates to a 78% margin for the add-on.

Here’s an example of how it can affect the overall margin of a sale:

Scenario 1: Straight Almond milk

Scenario 2: Almond Milk with Apothékary’s Chill The F Out Blend

BOOM—that's a 27% profit boost on the sale.

Offering these add-ons can be the difference between breaking even and being profitable at the end of the month.

2. Offer Branded Grab-and-Go Items Near the Register

Have you ever wondered why grocery stores make you walk through head-level walls of add-ons while you wait in the checkout line? It’s not for your own convenience, it’s because they want you to buy more stuff! And it works. Impulse buys are a significant source of revenue for retail stores.

It’s amazing to me that I still walk into many juice bars all over the world and many of them don’t have any add-ons near the point of sale. Grab-and-go items can be juice wellness shots, bottles of juice in an ice bath, nutrition supplements, vegan snacks, branded water containers, and more.

Placing add-ons near the POS will increase sales, period.

If you are offering add-ons, try to make them your own brand. The POS is very valuable real estate, and you should be using it to promote your own brand. For more on this topic, check out this clip from the Cold Pressed Truth podcast:

3. Use a Nut Mylk Base to Increase Profitability of Your Nut Mylks or Smoothies

One struggle for many juice bars is keeping fresh almond milk prices and labor costs down when making it in-house. Of course, fresh almond milk made on a Goodnature juice press will always be the best product you can make, but there is a good alternative if you are struggling to do this profitably.

A company called Goodmylk Co based out of Los Angeles makes fresh, raw almond milk on Goodnature juice presses and ships it frozen in bulk to cafes and juice bars. For that reason, you can be sure you’re getting the highest quality product to serve your customers, while eliminating the need to manage the production yourself.

Once it arrives, you thaw the product, add the desired amount of water, and it’s ready to serve or add to a smoothie or coffee.

Here are some basic stats from Goodmylk that they’ve received from some of their current juice bar customers:

• Using Goodmylk cuts the cost of product and labor by up to 50% for those currently making their own plant based milks.
• Goodmylk cuts down on waste by 25% since you can thaw it as you need it you won’t have fresh almond milk spoiling due to a short shelf life.
• Goodmylk is available nationally so you can scale with any business.
• The sustainable packaging Goodmylk comes in means 75% less waste compared to boxed nut milks.

Beyond being more profitable than making it yourself, it could actually be higher quality. The reason is that the “raw” almonds you’re buying probably aren’t actually raw, unless you are intentionally seeking out imported raw almonds from Europe. Goodmylk only sources truly raw, imported almonds.

If you happen to be (cringe) using boxed almond milk, Goodmylk will absolutely raise your standard of quality.

The founder, Brooke Rewa, has offered to send free samples to juice bars and cafes by request here.

4. Use a Real Cold Press to Make Your Juice

Many juice bars I go into are making their juice on a centrifugal juice machine or a “slow juicer”, both of which are not cold-press (even if you’re told they are).

Using a real press like a Goodnature juice press can increase your profit in the following ways:

1. Higher yield on most recipes. You can get more juice out of the same amount of produce.
2. Longer shelf life. When making juice on a real press, it will last 3-5 days in a refrigerator. You will not get the gross layers of foam, chunks, and other yucky stuff you see in the other juicing methods. This means you can juice in larger batches and get stuck with less waste.
3. Better taste and a more premium product. Higher quality juice will result in better customer loyalty. You may not even realize you are losing customers to other juice bars that use a real juice press.