Boost Profits With Booster Juice

The Booster Juice is a huge success in US and other foreign markets. Even in India, it is successfully catering to the increasing demand of the Indian customers. India, accounts for approximately 10 per cent of the total beverage consumption. The Indian non-alcoholic beverage market which comprises of hot drinks, carbonates, non-carbonates is estimated to be around Rs 23,000 crore growing at a CAGR of seven per cent. Booster Juice is operating successfully through 16 franchise outlets in India and is eyeing various markets of India to penetrate and establish itself. The company has a bright future in India as the health drinks hold 8.7 per cent share of the market, which is growing at the rate of 7.23 per cent.

Inception of Booster Juice

Established in 1999 in Edmonton, Canada; Booster Juice has expanded beyond its place of origin to different horizons across the globe. The company founders, Dale Wishewan and Jon Amack, wanted to create a food service concept that would capitalise on the rapidly increasing consumption of fresh juices and smoothies and provide consumers a healthy and convenient alternative to fast food. It is one of the largest chains of fresh juices and smoothie bars. Booster Juice entered India in April, 2008 through its master franchise Brand Calculus and in August the first franchised store was opened at Delhi’s prestigious Select Citywalk mall.

The Booster Juice is present in three formats – kiosk, inline store with some spill out seating and a café style full service Juice Bar with adequate seating. Presently, the company is operating through more than 300 franchised outlets worldwide and 16 outlets in India, in four cities: Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Delhi.  The company is planning to double the number of outlets in these four cities. Besides this, the company is also looking at expanding in cities like Pune and Mumbai this year and also in Kerala, Goa, Punjab and Kolkata in 2011 via franchising.

Model for expansion

After expanding the brand in US, it started to franchise overseas by building its presence in the Middle East, Netherlands and India. The company entered India through the Master Franchise business format and now the company is expanding through multi-unit franchise operator in ever city. Besides this, the company is considering a single ‘Territory Franchisee’ if an appropriate person or organisation is available.

The company also shares a favourable view on conversion franchisee concept. It is open for all of its stores except for a few in Bengaluru. These exceptional stores will operate through management commitment or a national relationship.

Take up the franchise

Brand Calculus, the Master Franchisee for Booster Juice in India is a new age company that was setup with the objective of bringing the best Quick Service Restaurant Brands from around the world to India. The company believes that the right partnership between franchisor and franchisee will lead to the creation of an outstanding customer experience which in turn will lead to customer loyalty. If you have any plans of getting associated with such an established brand in the juice and smoothies industry, then here are mentioned the eligibility criteria that company has laid for the selection of the franchisees:

• A quality and people oriented franchise partner as he will be our brand ambassador
• Our ideal franchisee must be an aggressive self-starter, and must have the ability to manage multiple stores of area that may range between 150 sq.ft to 1,000 sq.ft
• He must have investment capability of Rs 17- 30 lakh to open the multiple stores as well as management acumen necessary to manage a multi location business
• He must have integrity in dealing with his employees, his franchisor and even customers

Strong business support system

As far as training and supporting the franchisees and their respective staff is concerned, Booster Juice provides the best training system. It has a dedicated Training Manager who interfaces the support for the company with its franchisees. It trains all the crew members regardless of corporate or franchise owned, in a combination of classroom and shop floor training. The training programme is divided into two main areas:

• Hard Skills: It includes product knowledge, store operations, smoothie and other product preparation SOP, stock management and ordering, restaurant health and hygiene standards, and financial processes connected to billing, banking and so on.
• Soft skills: Soft skills comprise of greeting a customer, taking his or her order, up-selling, handling doubts if any, registering customers for the brand’s loyalty programme, communicating promotions and above all in managing the interaction with a smile.

Besides this, the company also conducts internal audits, which are conducted by in-house store quality audit team of the company. Booster Juice conducts mystery shopper audits also.

Hurdles in the way to franchise success

Challenges are a part of every business establishment. Similarly, Booster Juice also faced some challenges while introducing a new category of food products to the Indian customers. Some of those challenges are listed below:

• Supply Chain – The ability to get IQF berries like strawberries, raspberries and blueberries that are seldom available in India on a regular basis. To get the sorbets developed to the Booster Juice specs and to ensuring that the special Styrofoam Booster Juice cups that keep the smoothie cold for a long time. All this needed the development of importing and stocking expertise.
• Localising the smoothies – Booster Juice has developed a lot of beverages with Indian fruits, developed a line of milkshakes and more recently a line of fruit based hot beverages that have been very well received.
• Prices and size of Booster Juice cups – The regular size Booster Juice cup was 12 Ounce in size (350 ml), which is the Canada’s small size, smoothie cup. The company found that this size faced some entry level price resistance, as well as some perception that the quantity of smoothie served in this cup was too large. So, for this reason, the company now introduced an eight Ounce cup (235 ml) as a new ‘Junior cup’ to some outstanding response. This junior cup has also allowed the company to offer some incredible entry price beverages.  

 Thus, Booster juice offers a unique range of products best suited for today’s active lifestyle. Thus, taking up the franchise concept, that caters to the changing needs of the Indian consumers will help fetch good returns for the aspiring franchisees.