In honor of its 25th anniversary this year, Southern California–based Juice It Up! introduced a refreshed store prototype that boasts its new logo, branding, and color palette. The corporate-owned flagship location in Costa Mesa, California, will serve as both an innovation kitchen and training center for franchisees, as well as a template for the brand’s ongoing growth efforts.

Key to the upgrade that Juice It Up! gave its visual elements? Social media. The simpler logo, bolder color palette, and sleeker store design were all re-imagined with how the guests would share them on their social channels in mind.

Natalie Eaglin, vice president of marketing for Juice It Up!, says the share-worthy new designs are a reflection of how important social media marketing has become to both guest engagement and new guest acquisition. “There are new things popping up left and right, and it’s really important to continue to stay relevant and keep up with the ever-changing times as it relates to social media,” she says.

Reflecting a lifestyle

Eaglin says Juice It Up! extends its social media marketing beyond simply posting photos of its juices, smoothies, and bowls. It wants to establish a lifestyle brand mentality, she says, and the social channels help it reflect that mentality.

“We want our social media to be approachable, so we love to share family-friendly content [and] stories from our guests who are really committed to supporting a healthy lifestyle,” she says. “It’s our commitment to support the wellbeing of our guests, and we’re really confident that our pages reflect that.”

She adds that the brand has run social campaigns around things like mindfulness, and it looks to turn its followers into “ambassadors of healthful living.” To that end, Juice It Up!’s social presence is a balance of company-designed posts and repurposed content that’s been shared by guests.

“They’re reaching out to us wanting to share their experience, and it’s really important for us to engage with that content and share that love,” Eaglin says. “It allows for a lot of relatability, gets the guest sharing those different experiences, and then it’s not just our product photography and our pictures and our campaigns that we’re sharing on social media.”

Encouraging a share

The inherently visual nature of Juice It Up!’s brand experience encourages loyal customers to post about that experience on social media, Eaglin says.

“Our product really lends itself to beautiful photography, because it’s so vibrant and colorful and people just naturally want to photograph it and share it,” she says.

The brand tried to lean into that fact with its new branding. Eaglin says the company aimed to make the store design a more open and inviting type of environment, featuring the bright new colors around the store. In addition, guests can now see their orders being made from start to finish. All of those components encourage guests to document their experience, Eaglin says.

Perhaps the biggest social element in the store, though, is the brand’s logo—“Live Life Juiced”—displayed prominently on one wall. The logo was purposefully stacked in such a way that it would fit easily into a photo.

“It’s a really great message for snapping selfies in front of,” Eaglin says. “It’s ingrained in a lot of our campaigns and in our social media, and we see a lot of engagement with that because it’s been a part of the brand. … It really gives a sense of pride that they’re doing something good for themselves.”

Social during COVID

Eaglin says Juice It Up! has made education around the benefits of its products core to its social media marketing efforts, and that’s more important now as COVID-19 has forced healthfulness to the top of everyone’s minds. The brand’s immunity-boosting products and wholesome ingredients have been more in demand as consumers seek to take care of themselves through the pandemic.

The coronavirus has also forced the majority of restaurant business to be conducted off premises, which undercuts a lot of Juice It Up!’s efforts to make its store design share-worthy. But Eaglin says that hasn’t affected how much its guests share their brand experiences, as now they just more often share pictures of them taking Juice It Up! into the world with them, whether that’s to the beach, to a workout, or even just in front of the store after picking up their order.

“Our product is very photogenic,” she says, “and we’re seeing just like we’d seen before COVID that our guests are really sharing their on-the-go product shots with us all the time.”

Design, Fast Casual, Story, Juice It Up!