Bring on the juice

Since the last blog entries I have started focusing my attention on the juice bars again, since that is where my core interest is. I enjoy the thought of working in a health and nutrition-driven, lively business. Although there are a number of juice bars in the UK now, they are mostly focused on shopping centres and other climate controlled, high footfall areas. Very few focus on the professional office market in the city of London.

The established juice bars are, broadly speaking, pretty simple. They tend to be small kiosks offering a basic range of juices and smoothies. Most of these are sweeter drinks made from apple, carrot, orange, etc. Many people like these, but if you drink fresh juice on a daily basis, the natural sugars have to be balanced out by the more beneficial vegetables such as leafy greens. Done properly, these can be used to make very tasty drinks, which are also much more nutritious.

Furthermore, due to the lack of space and minimal staff, many kiosks use pre-chopped fruits (which become oxidised!), pre-made mixers (dead ingredients), and fast, but poor juicing techniques. All of these things can reduce the nutritional benefits of juicing.

With growing interest in juicing, as well as a general drive to all things healthy, the market is ready for much better quality and more professional outfits, and I can think that nowhere is this more appropriate than in the city of London and surrounding office areas. It’s a well educated demographic that understands the health benefits of juicing. They tend to be cash-rich and time-poor, hence juicing is a great way for them to get their health on track. It also presents a good alternative to coffee, with natural energy boosting properties. And of course they taste great!

The problem of course is that juice bars on their own suffer from the cold, damp weather in the UK, when many people don’t want juice. They consider it too cold, even though most juices are served at room temperature. We decided that this can be overcome in two ways. Firstly by promoting the health benefits of juicing, especially the heating properties of particular ingredients like ginger. The second is that we can introduce hot, healthy, nutritious drinks alongside it, such as warm juices, tea-based drinks and juice-tea blends. The tea base in particular enables us to open the door to a whole host of healthy drinks, using loose leaf tea, blended with vegetables, fruits and herbs.

At first, we thought something along the lines of a general drinks bar, but with juice at the heart of it would work, such as PURE – Juice & Java. This would enable us keep our primary focus on juices, but also offer hot drinks, including coffees and tea. As the number one drink consumed in the UK (having overtaken tea a few years ago), we thought it would be good to include premium coffees that were produced in a professional manner by hand, using freshly roasted coffee – everything Starbucks does not do! The UK market definitely needs more ‘proper’ coffee bars. Also, the name sounds catchy, and we demonstrate the ‘purity’ of the drinks, offering the highest quality in both.

Further research and monitoring of the market however revealed that, as is well known, the London coffee market is absolutely saturated. While you have an abundance of Starbuck, Caffe Nero and Costa, you also have every other food retailer shouting about their premium coffee quality. In reality, very few of these serve freshly roasted coffee. However what it made me realise is that most people are fine with the coffee they drink, and most of these places serve pretty good coffee, even if not the best. I am hearing of some specialist coffee retailers opening up, addressing this shortcoming in the market, but again only a connoisseur would appreciate it. In short, there is very little point trying to compete in such a crowded market, when we have something already very unique to offer – high quality and really fresh juices and teas.

Thus we have now come to settle on the concept of ‘Natural Tonic’. At heart it is a juice bar, offering a proper range of juices and smoothies, but also doing so using a wide variety of fresh ingredients prepared to order, and offering the option to use equipment that is much more nutritious than that normally used (albeit it takes slightly longer to prepare). This will be complimented by a range of teas, especially tea blends that address particular health or nutrition requirements, such as calming, energising, detox, etc. We will go further still by offering blends with fresh fruit, vegetable and herb ingredients, such as ginger, mint or fennel.

Together, this focus on ‘natural tonics’ enables us to offer a wide range of nutritional, healthy and refreshing drinks, while balancing out the hot and cold offerings and thus giving us a strong year-round business. The professional approach that we will take to juicing, including customisation based on health and nutritional requirements, will demonstrate our strong focus on healthy drinks.

The premises will be modern, funky and energising, encouraging people to stay and learn more about our products, and also to ask questions to a knowledgeable staff. There will also be complimentary food offerings, although these will not be a core focus and most likely outsourced.

All the above is not done by any of the juice bars in London, and I reckon that, done properly, it could work quite well.

I have been thrashing out the concept and speaking about it to numerous people. Once we fully discuss the concept, most people consider it to be a good idea and think the idea is perfect for the city environment. I would love to hear your thoughts on this too.

I recently discussed this with the owner of an existing juice bar that owns 7 juice bars in shopping centres around london. He agreed that the more professional approach is exactly what would be needed in the city environment, and he has agreed to join me in this venture by providing operational support from his existing business, and take a financial stake too.

I have identified some premises that I think could work quite well and fit the budget. London rents are crazy, and rates aren't much better. So my dream of getting super-prime locations will have to wait until we can prove the concept. Super-prime locations have rents in excess of £80,000 and rates in excess of £40,000, and they usually don't give them to new businesses. Whereas reasonably 'prime' sites go for about half that amount. I think it is better to open a couple of locations in reasonably prime areas in order to maximise business initially, and then go for the super-prime ones. The other problem is that many sites require a premium to buy the lease, this is effectively a lump sum upfront payment of anything from £20-60k. Needless to say, we have to evaluate these carefully because it effectively wipes out a lot of our profit.

Our frontrunner is a premises in St James Park station for which we have put in an application. Although it is not in the city, where I ideally want my first sites to be, I think it is a good location with the right demographic (office workers) and very heavy footfall. At the same time, we will apply for something in the city, and the frontrunner there is Bow Lane.

It’s all coming together, and I will post the executive summary of my business plan onto this blog and invite any feedback. I'll also fill you in on what's happening with premises.

In the meantime, back to work…