JAVA Juice owner Biff Brody is taking the juice bar concept to the next level with his planned new venture, Java Joe.
Mr Brody has secured a site in the Murray Street Mall, opposite the King Kong store and new train station site, where he will open his first Java Joe, which will be a coffee shop in a new retail format.
Another will open on St George’s Terrace this winter.
“This one [Murray Street] was going to be a Java Juice but then I said we could do a two counter operation and do juice and coffee,” Mr Brody said.
“But then I thought about it and decided two counters wouldn’t work, so we scrapped that and came up with this concept.
“It will be one counter with 30 seats inside and 30 outside.
“Our alfresco area will be no smoking, which is a bit of a risk but we will see how it goes. I don’t like cigarette smoke while I’m having a coffee and I think there are other people like me.”
Mr Brody said his two Java Juice stores provided quality product and good service in a fun atmosphere, something he hoped to replicate at Java Joe.
“We’re doing coffee but we’re going to do it really well,” he said.
“We do juice really well but we can do coffee really well, too. What I’m saying is, why can’t we become the beverage experts?”
And expect Java Joe to have same sort of irreverent branding for which Java Juice is renowned.
Dressed in old-style service station uniforms, the staff will provide service with energy.
The juice bar market is booming, with about $3 million to be invested in new juice bar openings in the next 12 months.
Java Joe will be located opposite the site where national juice bar chain, Boost Juice, will open its first CBD site later in the year.
Boost Juice operates five stores in Perth and has more than 70 across Australia.
Mr Brody opened his first Java Juice store in 1996 and said he was the first dedicated juice bar to open in Australia.
He said that, like the coffee boom of the 1990s, consumers would choose their juice bar shop based on quality product and service.
Mr Brody believes some coffee shop chains have become jaded and he could offer better coffee-based products.
“We will be doing a fantastic line of frappuccinos. We will have this Joe Cool range and it’s a great recipe. Some of the places doing frappuccinos put no thought into it and you get half a cup of foam and they taste terrible,” Mr Brody said.
“We will use the real coffee blend, not extracts. We’re the blending experts and I have this recipe down to a fine art.”
Java Joe will sell eight of Java Juice’s most popular juices and smoothies.
In an effort to create brand differentiation, the wheatgrass and health additives will only be available at the Java Juice stores.
Java Joe will also sell food.
“We will be doing little food that’s bite-size pieces. We will have little muffins for 50 cents and sandwiches for $2. I don’t like buying the big serves around town because you either don’t eat it all or you feel sick afterward,” Mr Brody said.
He said his fun, and successful, Java Juice formula was based on a simple premise.
“Most of the stuff I do is because I do things the way I want to be treated,” Mr Brody said.
“You get so much bad service here. But this is all obvious to me, we are here to serve customers and they come here to escape.
“They’re not coming here just for a great product but to be in a better mood.”