One of the first steps for starting a juice bar is to find an optimal location. What makes a good juice bar location? It needs to get high traffic and be strategically chosen based on the demographics and competitors in the area. Read on to find out how to choose your juice business location and which mistakes you need to avoid.
In This Article
- Narrow Down a Geographic Range
- Know Your Customers
- Aim For A High-Traffic Area
- Know Where Your Competitors are Located
- Get a Professional Location Analysis
- Juice Bar Location Mistakes to Avoid
Tips for Choosing the Perfect Juice Bar Location
Choosing a location for your juice bar business is a crucial decision — one that can make or break your business right from the get-go. That type of pressure can easily get overwhelming, so we’ve broken it down into actionable steps for you.
1. Narrow down a geographic range
The first step is to narrow down a certain geographical range on your city map to have a broad idea of which area your juice bar will be located in. You can select this range based on factors like the population density of the neighborhoods, whether there are areas that have a greater amount of health and fitness establishments, and more (that we’ll outline in this article).
2. Know your customers
From there, you’ll have to narrow it down to a certain neighborhood or street. Searching for commercial real estate or having an agent to help you with this will help you narrow it down. The most important thing to remember in choosing your location is to really know who your customers are. That way, you’ll be positioning yourself in line with the people you’re directly targeting in the area.
For instance, if your menu items are going to be all about capitalizing on the health benefits of fresh juice, fresh fruits, veggies, and juice cleanses, your target audience would be health-conscious consumers.
Generally, juice and smoothie businesses focus on health-conscious consumers, but some will be even more mindful of clean and optimal ingredients and superfood inclusions than others. For instance, an affluent area with yoga studios and gyms will likely have people willing to pay top-dollar for super clean and healthy beverages and food.
If your business is playful and has menu items that are healthy, yet also indulgent (like plant-based waffles or specialty fun smoothies, then you might want to consider an area where there are a lot of families (close to schools could be a good juice bar location choice).
Get clear on your target audience so you’re clear on why the location you are choosing is the best way to get in their line of sight.
3. Aim for a high-traffic area
High traffic means a place where people are walking or driving past your business throughout the day. A quiet corner store on a residential street is not considered a high-traffic area. A juice shop in the city center, in a mall, or near a very busy park are all bound to have many people walk or drive past your store.
So, when choosing your juice bar location, ask: “How many people are going to be naturally driving or walking past the store?” And think about car traffic, as well as foot traffic – especially if there is parking close-by for customers.
4. Know Where Your Competitors are Located
Competitor research is just as important as customer research when it comes to choosing the right juice bar location. While competition is always good for the consumer to get the best choice, it’s not so good for entrepreneurs — and a new small business generally takes a bigger hit than a well-settled juice bar.
When you know about your potential competitors (other health food cafes and juice bars) you can try to position yourself to not make it hard to capture a loyal customer base. This is much more complex than just trying to be ‘away’ from other juice and smoothie bars. Actually, the population density of this area matters a lot at this point.
If it’s an extremely high density of people in that area, then there may be multiple juice bars within 5 minutes drive. That doesn’t mean your business won’t be successful since there are so many people to serve.
When you analyze your competition, go onto their yelp or google reviews to understand how they are already performing (maybe they have terrible reviews, which means they likely won’t be a strong competitor). Also, see where your point of difference is in the menus that you’re serving, too.
5. Get a Professional Location Analysis
Before you zero down on a particular neighborhood and property, it’s essential to perform a complete location analysis to get an expert report on how your potential locations may result in greater success.
A location analysis looks at intricate details that impact its feasibility for your business needs, including, population size and density, average income, customer access, competitor analysis, and much more. It’s important to take all of these things into consideration when analyzing your juice bar location.
Reach out to us on our contact form at the bottom of this article if you already have a location in mind and we can look at all relevant elements that contribute to your potential success in it.
Our team will perform a location analysis and provide you with expert feedback on the chances of your success in that location, and if it’s feasible for you to start there.
Juice Bar Location Mistakes to Avoid
1. Cheap & easy ≠ good
Remember that convenient locations for your juice bars aren’t necessarily “good” for the business. They might make it easier to execute your business operations, but that doesn’t mean it’ll lead to more sales, higher profits, and faster growth — which are the metrics that really matter for a business, not convenience.
For instance, settling for a subpar store in an unsuitable location might help you cut down some start-up costs, but could potentially lead to a complete failure of your business just because there weren’t any valuable business prospects nearby. You save money on rent, but lose everything you’ve invested.
Instead, you could pay a bit more rent for a high-value location, but have a much better chance of establishing your business in the area and making it all back.
2. Signing a lease too early
While the perfect location for your juice bar business often demands a certain sense of urgency, you should never sign a lease too early.
Often, people make the mistake of thinking that getting a location is the first step and all other parts of the business are supposed to fall in place. But that’s not how it should go.
One way to do that is to have everything ready before signing and paying for your lease. That helps you know that you really can afford the lease price and any build-out costs that the location may need.
This includes having your business plan, commercial juicer, menu, branding, social media handles, and ingredient sourcing solutions ready before you sign a lease and set up your storefront.
3. Not negotiating favorable lease terms
It always pays to negotiate favorable lease terms with a potential landlord. But to do that effectively, you need to know and understand your leverage. For instance, if the landlord already has several interested parties — some of which might even be big franchises like a Starbucks — you don’t have much leverage to negotiate.
However, in some cases, you might have a lot more space for negotiation than you think. In those cases, some valuable tenant incentives can be just one discussion away — such as:
- Tenant improvement money
- Free-rent
- A more flexible lease term
The Bottom Line: What You Need To Know To Choose A Juice Bar Location
Without any prior experience, hunting for an ideal location for your juice business is daunting. The worst part is not knowing what to look (and watch out) for. Since a location decision is somewhat permanent for a business (you really don’t want to be moving a few months after you set up shop) there is much less room for error. This is why it is best to seek help from experts.
We provide our clients with a variety of services to help them find the right location for their juice bar business.
For instance, we design business plans that are complete with an expert location analysis to report on its viability for your business. We also help people with their store design, if needed.
If you’d like to take advantage of such services, or need help with any other area of your juice bar business — feel free to reach out to us below.