I am curious about the state of the juice making world. How are other’s business’ fairing? I can only speak from my experience. I hope to learn how others are doing, and what changes they have made to survive.
When we closed down for 6 weeks in mid-march I did not think the business would survive. We were trending well for Q1 and was just getting out financial legs going. We are in that precarious 2-3 years mark from open where most businesses make it or break it.
After reopening in May and having another local restaurant that serves sandwiches, salads, etc open up a shop in shop within my location we have been thriving. We are up over 100% over LY, and may even beat 2019 handily, despite being closed for a 6 week period.
I am not a religious man, but I am praying that other small businesses in our industry have been able to adapt and succeed. I would like to hear from anybody all over the world if they are seeing success, or have been forced to pivot to keep their business going.
we are up 3x over LY. But we’re only a year old last month. still very encouraged.
“Good on ya” & the rest of you here.
We are 3 years old this Sunday 7/19, which is so exciting. We are 70% up from our first year of business (implementing one million lessons learned and a new retail front), but 7% down from last year. I feel great about that, but it is exciting and hopeful to see others are way up. However, we are down about 16% in transactions. We were never mandated to close but reduced hours and days for about a month. This last week though has been one of our busiest this year. Being in Alaska, we actually don’t depend on tourism much we have a great local community in Anchorage so they are supportive!
What I’ve generally been hearing from juice bar owners is that if they weren’t forced to close down they seem to be doing fine or even better. I think there’s a general increase in awareness around immunity and wellness due to the pandemic. Silver lining I guess?
It’s great to see others are thriving, even though our business has really taken a hit. We live in an area where we either are too healthy for people or not health enough, it’s very strange. We’re always working towards educating our customers, but this is proven to be a really trying time for us.
We were suppose to open our second location in March, a week or so after we were semi-forced to shutdown our first location. The health department wanted to hold on our final inspection, so we weren’t able to open until June by that time all our employees were collecting unemployment and with sales so low we didn’t even want to think about bringing them back and burning through payroll, instead I’ve now employed my boyfriend who was laid off and we are working 7 days a week at both locations just trying to keep our heads above the water.
I’d love to hear what some of you are doing and what has been your most popular menu item during COVID. We are still only offering our top selling items due to the waste factor and how drastically different our days are. Overall, we are down 40% even with the launch of our second location.
Amanda, I’m sorry to hear that sales are down and that you and your boyfriend are the only ones running things. That is very tough, I have no doubt.
Two menu items that have really helped keep us afloat are lemonades and wellness shots. I noticed you don’t have either on your menu. The lemonades appeal to everyone (health, not so healthy) and help with incremental sales to parents with children with them. The wellness shots have very much become a greater part of our sales since COVID. Marketing an immunity booster 2 - 4oz wellness shot may help as well. Between those 2 items they are now just over 18% of our sale and have been steadily increasing in sales.
I’ll have to see if I can come up with a few lemonade recipes. I’ll have to give our shots another try, we typically have them on the menu, but they didn’t make the cut when we looked at our top selling items. I’ll keep every posted, maybe they will help someone else too! Thanks for your input, I really appreciate it!
Shots for us have to be suggested sales, both at the register and online (every juice or smoothie sold has the suggested add-on to their purchase). Otherwise they tend to be wasted.
Our only failure for shots was Wheatgrass, which I’m sure sounds surprising. We just didn’t get any demand for them.
We saw the same thing with Wheatgrass, buy the whole tray for it to be wasted. I made some shots last night and put some signs out at both shops, lets see how they do!
Any luck on the shots?
Same for us with wheatgrass. We are no longer offering it fresh or in a shot bottle - too much time for too little return. Shots for us are up 8% year over year.
Honestly not too bad! We aren’t ripping through them, but they aren’t staying on the shelves and we aren’t dumping them, so I’d say that’s a win. I’m going to be doing an immunity boosting play very soon which may help. Thanks for the push to put shots back on our menu! 
Heck yeah! I’m so glad it has some success. 
Hey there! Erin Powell from Richmond, Va. We were able to keep 1 location open of 3 during the pandemic. To Charlie’s point, that location is doing better than last year and thriving in a lot of ways. However, we have 2, X1 minis we are looking to sell as a result and I’m happy to share my shut down plan with others if you are in a similar situation. I’d love nothing more than to continue to see this industry thrive and hope we can all make a full recovery soon! Pls don’t hesitate to email if you are interested in the equipment of a discussion: erin@gingerjuiceco.com.
Sorry to hear that Erin! And thank you for letting us know.
Ugh Erin, I’m sorry to hear that you have to close two locations. These are really difficult times. It’s great to hear your one location is thriving! If you don’t mind me asking, what type of location is the one shop you were able to keep open? Business district? Town? City? Plaza? Just curious!