Just a quick question because we’re in the midst of our second week of our Soft Opening.
Somehow we’ve found a groove and are producing 100+ 16oz. bottles in one pressing. We prep one afternoon (store in fridge to crisp) and juice the following afternoon. We actually have a very open kitchen (3 compartment sinks are 36" from our POS system… so we are letting people pick-up juice, etc. after close time because we’re in the store.
I’m just curious how others here do it or have done it starting out… Love to hear how you schedule your production.
Hey Rich,
Congrats on the opening. I’ve been following your buildout via Instagram and happy to see your doors open and your press running! We do all of our production in one day, from produce prep/washing to pressing/bottling. I’ve found its more efficient that way because the staff is already there and the kitchen is already open. We currently prep 4 days/ week - Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday and this is a function of supplying juice for our 2 locations as well as a Saturday farmers market. It also is a function of the juice shelf life and trying to always have enough availability for cleanses and store stock. We are also open 7 days/week. When we first opened, we were closed Sundays and had more limited hours and were pressing Mon/Wed/Fri but quickly grew to need more production days. Since we’ve gone to 4 days/week production if we need to produce more I have just added more crew. Let me know if you have any other questions and good luck!
The biggest operational constraint we encountered when we starting growing quickly was that a single machine (we started with the CT-7 as well) was not enough. We had to add an X-1 mini as well. Even then I can see where we will start to hit that bottle production threshold. We have started to stagger shifts so we do production when the cafe is closed. This has increased our output dramatically since your team can focus on 1 task only. This I believe is a more effective strategy in the short term. Plus we did 86 some less popular juices to make time to produce larger batches of the more popular ones.
Thank you, URGE JUICE! I’ve loved following your Instagram for a while now. It’s you guys and a few others that have inspired me to follow this dream. This is so helpful. I know our next step with growth will be more hires and a “Back of House” kitchen. Realizing the realities of production is just the begining.