Monday, July 27, 1998
Stop and taste the juice
TREND: Smoothies and blended juices are carving themselves a
lucrative niche as a healthy alternative drink
By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Contributor
When Susan Jespersen opened the first ever Juice Stop store in a
small city in Orange County, she had humble dreams of expansion:
perhaps another three or four stores in a couple years.
That was 1993. In the five years that have passed, Juice Stop
has built itself into a franchise of over 100 stores in 15
states.
Just two months ago, another Juice Stop opened in Westwood.
"I saw the need for a juice bar and thought it looked like a fun
business to go into," said Jespersen, president of Juice Stop
(California), "But I never dreamed the company would grow so
large."
Other people also saw this need for a juice market. Many people
approached Jespersen wanting to get involved, and the Juice Stop
franchise kept growing.
Today, it serves hundreds of thousands of people on both coasts
of the United States.
Juice Stop isn’t an isolated success story, though. Juice bars
all over are experiencing growing business because they’ve become
so trendy.
UCLA opened its own juice bar in 1994 with the opening of
Tropix, a restaurant that sells smoothies in Ackerman Union.
At that time, an extensive market research study was performed
for UCLA food services to find out what products students wanted
that weren’t already available to them.
"We identified a juice bar as something the campus wanted that
we were not providing," said Pat Eastman, executive director of
ASUCLA.
"Juice bars are always a healthy alternative to other places,"
said Kristen Stancik, a second-year English student and Orange
County resident.
"Before Juice Stop opened, there wasn’t much (in Orange County)
except Taco Bell and Carl’s Jr.," Stancik said.
Stancik also noted that when Juice Stop opened, it immediately
became the trendy place to be.
"It was cool for high school students to go there, like after a
workout for athletes. Getting a smoothie is the ‘in’ thing to do,"
she said.
Besides blended juices, another key product of juice bars are
smoothies, which are blended juice concoctions mixed with frozen
yogurt or bananas and ice to give the drink a thicker texture.
Smoothies, in fact, seem to be more popular than blended
juices.
"Their greatest appeal is that they’re a healthy alternative to
a meal," said Bob Glembine, manager of Hansen’s Juice Creations in
Westwood, which celebrates its one-year anniversary next month.
"After people work out at a gym they’ll come and buy a smoothie.
Business people who want lighter lunches that can still fill you up
will buy a smoothie," he added.
Customers get their choice of two additives, or nutritional
enhancers which help replenish the body with energy.
These additives range from common vitamins, like protein, to
less common ones such as spirulina, wheat germ or ginseng, and
these are mixed into the smoothie.
In addition, fresh smoothies bear the healthiness of fruits and
vegetables, which provide carbohydrates and are good sources of
protein and potassium. Other benefits include less fat,
cholesterol, calories and sodium.
Meriam Azusada, who works at the recently opened Hollywood
Smoothy’s in Los Angeles, has found that smoothies succeed in
energizing her.
"Instead of coffee, I’ll have a smoothie for a power boost," she
said.
With such valid reasons to embrace the smoothie as a drink full
of vitamins, a meal replacement and a stimulant all rolled into
one, it is easy to forget another reason for their popularity.
"They just taste good," Azusada said simply. "They remind me of
a shake, only much better."
Proof of this lies in where the smoothie revolution is heading
now.
Restaurants such as TGI Friday’s and Claim Jumper have added
smoothies to their menu for a more attractive variety of
drinks.
Baskin Robbins, the second largest frozen yogurt retailer in the
nation, also expanded its menu over a year ago to include smoothies
as well.
Smoothies are also beginning to find themselves in
supermarkets.
Hansen’s has long sold "ready-to-drink" bottled smoothies,
although Glembine admitted that those made at Hansen’s Juice
Creations "are technically a little better" because of their
freshness.
Juice bars have become one of the hot new industries of the
’90s, according to Dan Titus, director of the Juice Gallery, a
research and consulting business.
A successful juice bar can average $1,500 per day in sales, he
said.
As of May 1997, total juice bar sales reached over $300 million,
he added.
The juice bar concept is not entirely new, however.
The Hansen company has been making juice blends at people’s
request since 1935, Glembine said.
Juice bars have been in existence since the ’70s, according to
Jespersen.
However, it was only in the ’90s that the juice bar concept took
off, and though it spread quickly throughout the United States, the
trend was born in California, she added.
With over 200 stores, the Golden State easily has more juice
bars than any other state in the US, Titus said.
Will the juice bar eventually die out as a passing fad,
succumbing to the same fate as the frozen yogurt stores of the
’80s?
Both Jespersen and Glembine agreed that juice bars and smoothies
are definitely not simply a fad.
"Smoothies appeal to the masses. They’re good and healthy, as
people are much more conscientious about what they put in their
bodies today, and fast. There is a need for convenience," Jespersen
said.
"America is moving faster and there seems to be less time to eat
full meals," Glembine added, "The ’90s has taken on a new health
consciousness and people are looking for more ways to be
healthy."
It looks like the smoothie, an oxymoron of healthy fast food,
arrived at just the right time.