Juice will be served… once again.
Last summer, Juice Served Here co-founder Greg Alterman took to the defunct brand’s Instagram account to tell its followers that the California-based company would one day return. Now, Alterman says, the day is here, as he plans for a fall 2019 relaunch.
The company, which previously operated 13 brick-and-mortar juice bar locations and a wholesale business, surprised many when it suddenly closed its doors in December 2017 after it failed to close an emergency funding round. Speaking with BevNET, Alterman said he has been working on the relaunch since acquiring the intellectual property rights to the Juice Served Here brand last year.
According to Alterman, who co-founded Juice Served Here in 2012 with former CEO Alex Matthews, the company’s storefront business resulted in high operational costs for the brand, but with more than 2,000 points of distribution, its wholesale business was thriving when the company folded. In this new “second wind,” Alterman said he intends to focus solely on wholesale distribution, with plans to reach out to former retail partners.
“We really saw our biggest growth potential in wholesale,” Alterman told BevNET. “Obviously, a lot has happened in the juice world in the last 18 months — there’s been some price erosion. But with us having been the Rolls Royce or Bentley of the juice space, I think there’s room for a beverage with the DNA like ours to be able to reinvent itself by being more price relevant and reassessing the functionality in our beverages.”
The new Juice Served Here, Alterman said, will reduce the bottle size to 10-12 oz. bottles and, as a result, can be priced in line with the rest of the cold-pressed juice category. The brand will potentially feature 20 SKUs in multiple categories, including cold-pressed juice, cold-pressed lemonade, sports drinks, kombucha, and coffee. Many of the products will be carried over from Juice Served Here’s original run, but Alterman also plans to explore new functional beverage opportunities — including CBD products.
Working with manufacturing and marketing partners, Alterman intends to keep the operational team small, he said. Alterman, who is also the founder and CEO of gender inclusive apparel brand m/f people, inc., will lead the company and is primarily self-funding the venture.
Alterman has founded a new parent company, Alternative Beverage Concepts, that will house Juice Served Here. He hopes to build a portfolio of beverage brands under the new entity, including some based on past Juice Served Here SKUs, though he did not specify which ones.
Alterman said he has “tried to keep the Instagram account warm” over the past year, with each post generating supportive responses from consumers. He hopes that the dormant consumer fan base will help Juice Served Here to pick back up from the place it left off.
“These people are speaking and they want to see Juice Served Here come to life again and be revived,” he said. “It’s firing me up to be able to deliver that back to them in a way that will not only help the previous die hard customers to be satisfied, but even be able to take the brand into some new waters as well.”