A lot of you who are planning to open a juice bar are probably wondering whether you should have food on your Juice Bar Menu or not.

Well, I have a simple answer for you…

YES! Your juice bar should serve food!

Why is the better question.

1) People eat

People eat on average 2 to 3 times a day, while they will only drink juice once maybe twice a day at most.

2) Convenience

Considering that most people eat, it would be more supportive to your customers not to force them to decide between getting a juice or getting food. Or to give them more destination points. If you juice bar does not serve some simple food items, your customer will have to make 2 stops instead of simply being able to make one.

Your job is to make that decision really easy for them, you don’t want to put people in a situation where they’re challenged and have to decide between you and something else.

What kind of food should you serve?

Food that’s aligned with your brand.

Make sure that the food you’re serving is in alignment with your client base and your brand.

I’ve seen people and clients have ideas about serving things that aren’t in alignment with health, like fried foods. Just remember that you are running a juice bar!

You’re there to support people’s health, you want your food to also be congruent, otherwise people will start questioning your brand’s integrity, intention and proficiency.

Outsourcing

Unless you’re in a place where you really feel 100% confident that you can execute on all of the food that you’re making with mastery, then I recommend in the first phase outsourcing it.

There are likely to be a lot of retailers in your area that sell ready made fresh healthy foods in take-away refrigerators.

If any of these food products align with your customers needs, it might be wise to connect with them and consider selling those products in your juice bar as well.

Don’t go overboard

Having too many food items will be a burden to your business. Especially when it comes to fresh food items. If you are not doing a large enough volume of business in your first phase, you could run into issues of spoilage by offering too many fresh food items that have a short shelf life.

Keep it simple like a few salads or a few wraps, some chia bows, and some overnight oats.

Just make sure that you have enough. But don’t try to sell too many different items.

As you guys gain more mastery over your processes and your product, you can decide to expand into creating and developing more food items.

But until then, you have got to realize that you are running a juice bar. You’re supposed to be specialized in making juice.

You only get one chance to make a first impression

When you’re opening a juice bar you want your customers to have an amazing experience.

Imagine when they walk in to your place and the food is not good and isn’t being executed well, they will think twice to come for the second round, and they will even warn other people not to come based on their poor experience at your place.

Not an ideal first impression.

As they say, people only give you one chance for a first impression, and you want to make sure that the first impression is beyond amazing.

What are the key takeaways?

Yes, you should serve food.
Make sure that food is in alignment with your customer base.
Don’t over complicate it by selling too many food items
Consider outsourcing it to start.
As your business grows and your operations smooth out, you can considering making more food.

Our team of chefs have made countless menus for clients all over the world. If this is something that you would like to learn more about, reach out to us.