Jamba Juice plans to test a breakfast menu of hot stuffed-pocket sandwiches and ‘chunky smoothies,’ or meals-in-a-cup that have to be eaten with a spoon.
The hot items will require new equipment that could also be used to cook or heat lunch, dinner or snack products, but ‘food offerings will always be a complement to our drinks, which are center-of-the-plate for us,’ said chief executive Paul Clayton.
New selections are part of the 633-unit juice chain’s strategy to boost visits by current customers as the system continues to grow, Clayton explained. 80% of Jamba’s customers now stop into a unit fewer than 2 times a month, according to a report this week in BusinessWeek. Boosting that frequency, said Clayton, would propel the average unit’s intake far above the present level of $771,000. At present, he added, 95% of the system’s sales are generated by smoothies.
Morning sales of Jamba’s regular smoothies already account for 18% of the chain’s intake, according to Clayton. He noted that lunch is the concept’s busiest time, followed by the pre-dinner period.
The breakfast menu slated for a test later this summer would include whole wheat pockets with ‘3 different fillings appropriate for breakfast,’ said senior vice president of marketing Paul Coletta. He described them as ‘very healthy,’ and said they would be ‘bundled with our fresh juice products’ to create premium meals whose quality would make them a good value. He did not disclose the anticipated prices.
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