Jamba juices up image with new prototype design

Nation's Restaurant News, Sept 23, 2002 by Lori Lohmeyer

In a bid to streamline its brand's image, smoothie and juice specialist Jamba Juice has added a new prototype design to its mix, featuring a streamlined kitchen, colorful art and a more inviting atmosphere.

Marking Jamba's first effort to develop a chainwide prototype since the company was launched in 1973, the remodeled Cupertino, Calif., location opened in late August. The new prototype features a revamped interior that focuses on Jamba Juice's core values of fun, integrity, balance, empowerment and respect. According to the company, the new design is intended to embody the image of an active lifestyle and a healthful diet.

"The vision of our company is really about enriching people's lives, helping the mainstream to get on their way to having five servings of fruit and vegetables a day," said Kirk Perron, Jamba Juice's founder. "Jamba is health food in disguise. The new store design provides a positive uplifting feel to it."

With more than 350 units, San Francisco-based Jamba Juice specializes in its own smoothie blends, such as the Jamba Powerboost, which features fresh-squeezed orange juice, sorbet, frozen strawberries, bananas and raspberries blended with ice and a special vitamin booster. In addition to smoothies, Jamba Juice offers customers a wide assortment of juices and healthful snacks as a nutritional alternative to fast food.

Jamba Juice needed its stores to appeal to the chain's varied customer base of both health-conscious consumers and those customers simply wanting a fresh treat. Hornall Anderson Design Works and GGLO Design Inc., both of Seattle, designed the new prototype to bridge that gap in customer demographics.

"It had to appeal in taste profile and graphic presentation to that broad audience," said Jack Hornall, president of Hornall Anderson Design Works.

In addition to appealing to the chain's customers, Hornall said, the new design also needed to differentiate itself from typical fast-food restaurants with their stark lines and sterile atmospheres.

To capture Jamba's unique style, Keith Smith, designer at GGLO Design, focused on cues taken from the company's signature whirl logo. By incorporating the top of the whirl logo into the floor, Smith said, he was able to tie the space together. He then took the logo a step further by adding its curves into the prototype's counters and using it as an accent for the menu boards. Softening the harsh lines in the restaurant also enabled Smith to reduce the echoing sounds from the background music and blenders to make the space quieter.

While adding curves helped give the space shape, adding warm tones alleviated the more sterile atmosphere of the original units. In a nod to the chain's core juice products, Smith said he based the color scheme on fresh fruits and vegetables. The prototype predominantly features an orange-juice hue, coupled with some lime-green colors.

Before the redesign, Jamba Juice relied on a number of posters to merchandise its products. As a result, Smith said, the interior design did not flow smoothly. To create a more unified design, Smith removed the posters and added maple wood paneling throughout the restaurant. On the wood paneling he painted various graphics to give the space life and emphasize Jamba Juice's fresh fruit and vegetable offerings.

One large, maple wall covered with graphics and accented by unique lighting helps give the space a cozy, sophisticated atmosphere, which brings the area to life, Smith said. Framing the graphic imagery and layering it on the wall also helped give the space an added touch of sophistication, he added.

"We looked at the design as a whole, layering the color so it all works together and not in pieces," Smith said.

Complementing the chain's message of a healthful lifestyle, the new prototype also incorporates Jamba Juice's signature "Jambaisms" throughout the space. A "Jambaism" focuses on the company's core branding and is defined as "the belief in being good. On the inside. And the outside." Examples found in the space include "Your body is a temple," "Littering is strictly prohibited" and "There will be no dessert until you finish drinking your vegetables."

Along with front-of-the-house modifications, Perron said the designers revamped the chain's display kitchen to make it run more efficiently.

"We've been focused on simplifying the kitchen [in order] to make our products quicker and to make it easier for our team members in the store to do it with less labor as well," Perron said. New equipment and a T-shaped kitchen area make it easier for employees to get the made-to-order drinks ready in a hurry.

Although Perron said the company is satisfied that the new prototype will appeal to its customers and bring in sales that will attract potential franchisees, he noted that Jamba Juice would test the Cupertino location for several months before implementing the prototype chainwide.

The new unit's modular design allows it to be developed in a wide variety of locations and enables franchisees to revamp existing units in a cost-efficient manner, he added. However, Perron said, Jamba Juice has made no decisions on whether it will mandate that franchises remodel existing units.