Business Ideas | Small Business Ideas: How to Start a Juice Bar

Thursday, January 15, 2015

How to Start a Juice Bar | Business Ideas

A juice bar is an establishment that primarily serves prepared juice beverages such as freshly squeezed or extracted fruit juices, juice blends, fruit smoothies (a thick fruit drink, often iced), or other juices such as fresh wheat-grass juice. Sometimes other solid ingredients or nutritional supplements may be added as boosters, such as fresh bananas, eggs, nuts or nut butter, bodybuilding supplements, soy protein powder or others such as whey or hemp protein powders, wheat germ, or Spirulina (dietary supplement) or Chlorella. Also if less juice is used with these same ingredients drinks called health shakes may be produced. Juice bars share some of the characteristics of a coffeehouse, a soda fountain, a cafe, and a snack bar. Juice bars may be stand alone businesses in cities, or located at gyms, along commuter areas, near lunch time areas, at beaches, and at tourist attractions.

The juice bar business started to boom in the mid-90's thanks to an increasing demand for easy, tasty yet nutritious beverages and snacks for health-conscious consumers. Whether you're selling your own unique blends of fruit juices, adding vegetables and vitamins to the mix, or even selling solely organic juices, there are a number of different approaches to run a juice bar.

Opening a juice bar requires good planning and strategic marketing to outshine the competition, so read the following steps to learn how to open a juice bar:-

What Do I Need to Start a Juice Bar?

Juice bars are known for their tantalizing combinations of fresh fruit and vegetables, appealing to customers who like to start their morning with ginger-infused apple juice or power through a workout with blueberry-pomegranate juice boosted with protein powders. Juice bars are squeezing out ample profits in today’s market, together with smoothies scoring $3.4 billion in sales in 2010.

History of Juice Bars

Juice bars entered the mainstream scene during the 1990s. Shortly afterward, independent juice bars began to give way to larger corporate juice bars. While the phenomenon began in the U.S., it quickly spread to Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Standard Equipment

Juice bars will need a variety of juicing machines, cups of varying sizes, lids, straws, napkins and equipment for cleaning machines. You’ll also need cash registers or computers, point-of-sale software, writing pads and pens, and attractive menus. Consider buying recycled paper goods or goods made from sustainable materials to promote your juice bar’s commitment to healthy living.

Vendors

Juice bars rely on vendors to bring in supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables for juice beverages. When possible, opt for organically or locally grown produce to market your juice bar’s quality offerings. If you’re not juicing onsite, contract with vendors to supply fresh, quality juice. You’ll also need suppliers for added supplements, such as vitamin C, ginseng, mint or garlic.

Opportunity for Retail

Your juice bar business can retail other items in addition to fresh-fruit beverages. These could be consumable, including smoothies, bagels, bottled water or whole fresh fruit. You might also sell durable to-go cups, branded hats or vitamin supplements.

Franchise Opportunities

Starting a juice bar can happen in two ways: you can choose to open your own independent juice bar, or buy into a franchise. Buying into a juice bar franchise allows you to access the customer base established by well-known juice bar companies. Another benefit to partnering with a franchise is accessing support and resources from the parent company. Disadvantages might include expensive franchise fees, and diminished autonomy in recipe development and store decor.

Instruction:

Steps

1. Study successful juice bars that you know of, and analyze their products as well as their marketing strategies. By learning from the best in the juice bar business, you can prevent yourself from making beginner's mistakes.

Figure out their top selling juices or other products.

Determine the demographic they target. For example, students have different consuming and spending habits from young families. Knowing your target demographic's taste will help you mine that demographic as a customer base.

Study their marketing strategies to see how they reach their consumers, as well as how they package their message.

2. Put a business plan together that includes both your expected costs and your projected income.

Look into the costs of real estate for your juice bar. You can either rent or buy real estate, depending on your financial situation. Remember to look for an area that can supply the necessary number of customers to make your juice bar profitable.

Calculate the costs of necessary supplies, including ingredients for your juices, industrial kitchen equipment, cleaning supplies, business software programs, and furniture.

Determine which licenses and permits you need, and the costs of getting them, as well as how much liability insurance you need for your juice bar.

Decide how many juice bar employees you want, and how much their salaries will cost per year.

Outline a budget for marketing that includes advertising online and in print, promotional offers, and even local television commercials.

3. Look for investors to put up the capital for your juice bar business. This can be a bank, a private investor, or a major investment company.

4. Choose the investor that understands and approves your business plan, and offers you the best financial deal.

5.Find your venue once you have your financial base worked out. Choose a venue for your juice bar that is easily accessible and visible to the public.

6.Order all of your equipment and supplies such as blenders, juicers, orange presses, an ice machine, fresh fruit and vegetables.

7. Interview and hire employees. Be sure to hire people who are both friendly and upbeat, as well as efficient and responsible.

8. Advertise your juice bar with flyers and in the local paper, as well as on the Internet and local radio.

9. Open a juice bar with a big celebration and lots of free samples to get your customers acquainted with your products.

Tips

Think up fun and catchy names for your products.
Consider adding healthy snacks to your juice selection.
Choose a venue with plenty of pedestrian traffic, for example near a college campus or busy fitness center.

Warnings

Avoid overbuying supplies, as fresh ingredients are highly perishable, and always keep your line of supply open.

Things You'll Need

Reference:

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Easy Tips and Ideas to Start Business

Although anyone can start a business, many people fail because of a bad product or improper research. If you want to start your own business, you can improve your chances for success before you even begin. In order to make your business successful, start strong and make sure that your idea will hold out for the long haul.

Have a Good Product

Ensure that you plan to sell something useful. Although you may think that your product is important or special, that doesn't mean the general public will agree. Ask friends, family and strangers what they think of your product. If they don't seem that interested, ask them why. With their suggestions, you can either improve the product or scrap the idea completely. According to Brad Sugars of Entrepreneur magazine, most small businesses fail because they sold a product that didn't have an adequate market. This also applies to small businesses that provide a service. A lawn-care business might be useful for part of the year in a northern state, but it is in-demand year-round in the south. Consider whether people will actually want to use your service and get constructive advice from those not afraid to give their opinion.

Research Local Businesses

Research local companies before starting up your own business. This will not only give you an idea of the amount of competition you will have, but it will also help you price your product or service. If you're looking to start a wedding photography business, you may find during your research that the market is over-saturated in your area. If not over-saturated, you should contact each business and ask them for a price list. Alter your prices so you can stay competitive with the competition in town. Researching similar local businesses will also help you decide where to locate your business location. Try not to start up a store or office close to another business of your type. If your small business is located away from similar business types, this will cause locals to choose you over businesses that are farther away from where they live.

Get Professional Advice

You may know someone who has started their own successful business. Ask him for advice and listen to his stories of how he started his company. You may gain useful advice on the good and bad ways to start a business. Local entrepreneurs can also introduce you to local product providers or advertisers that you may not have met without their help. Accept any advice with open arms, especially if the advice is coming from someone successful in the area.

How to Calculate Business Start Up Costs

Starting a business in no easy endeavor. It takes a great deal of research, perseverance and hard work. While sweat equity will make your small business more successful, you will most likely need real capital to get the business started. Before you start raising capital and/or investing your own funds, the first thing you need to do is determine the total start-up costs.

Step 1

Determine your costs of sales. For most small businesses this means inventory, the cost of raw materials, manufacturing equipment, shipping, packaging, and warehousing. However, not all businesses sell products. In this case, the cost of sales is primarily the direct labor involved in making the sale. For example, to open a small shoe business entails purchasing enough inventory ($10,000) to stock the store.

Step 2

Determine professional fees. Planning your business structure, i.e., limited liability corporation or general partnership, means hiring an attorney. There may also be the need to pay an attorney for help with establishing trademarks, copyrights, and patents. In this scenario, that puts total professional fees at an estimated $20,000.

Step 3

Determine technology costs. Technology can greatly reduce the cost of labor for small business if used effectively. Most small businesses require computers, printers, cell phones, website development, Internet access, software applications, information security, data storage, and outsourced information technology (IT) consulting. If the cost of technology is $10,000 to start, add an additional $5,000 a year for maintenance (hint: maintenance is not included in start-up costs).

Step 4

Determine administrative costs. This varies with business types and may include items such as business insurance, office supplies, product packaging, parking, rent, express shipping, desks, chairs, fax machines, phones, or anything else necessary to operate the business daily. A good estimate for start-up administrative costs would be $5,000 for the first six months.

Step 5

Determine initial sales and marketing costs. Now that you have your product, you need to let folks know about it. Sales and marketing costs generally include marketing materials for presentations, printing stationery, business cards, advertising, trade show events, and public relations. These initial sales and marketing costs can add up to $3,000.

Step 6

Determine the wages and benefits needed to secure a staff. This includes employee salaries, benefits, workers compensation, and payroll taxes. Let's put the cost of wages and benefits estimated at $20,000 for the first three months of business.

Step 7

Add all costs associated with starting the business for a total. Be sure to only include business start-up costs that will be incurred in the first three to six months of operations. For this example, the calculation is: $10,000 + $20,000 + $10,000 + $5,000 + $3,000 + $20,000 = $68,000.

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