Quelling the Sizzle

Mike Buzalka

Summer is high season for beverage sales. Customers dehydrate in the summer heat and eagerly seek refreshment wherever they can find it.

And with consumer attitudes bending toward favoring drinks perceived as fresh, healthful and exotic, onsite operators have a chance to boost profitability by offering drinks with high perceived value that can command premium price points.

Freshness is almost a must these days in all sorts of foodservice environments, and summer is a great time for leveraging the bounty of fruits that come to harvest over the hot months in your specialty drink menu.

An extra bonus: if your operation can secure produce from nearby farms, you can tap into the hot new trend for locally produced, sustainable ingredients.

Though probably not produced locally except in a few select areas, exotic juice ingredients like pomegranate or acai in drinks and smoothies offer another promising marketing draw, especially among young trend followers and health-conscious baby boomers.

The highly successful Jamba Juice smoothie concept for example touts an offering called the Acai Supercharger that blends acai juice, soymilk, raspberry sherbet, strawberries, blueberries and ice into a drink marketed for its powerful antioxidant content (acai and the various berries are all very high in antioxidants, regarded by some as effective cancer fighters).