Jamba Juice announced that it has entered a new phase of growth and will be ramping up expansion across the country this year.
James White, president and CEO of Jamba Juice, says the company achieved the goals laid out in its 2009 “BLEND” plan and is now pursuing BLEND Plan 2.0.
The original BLEND plan saw Jamba Juice eliminate store-level costs, expand its food and beverage portfolio across multiple dayparts, and grow its licensing segment, among other things.
BLEND 2.0 will find the company being more aggressive on the customer interaction front and expanding into new touch points.
“The starting point for us is really the work that we’re doing to make the brand top of mind from an awareness perspective,” White says.
Part of doing that includes taking advantage of the company’s Ambassadors of Wow program, White says, which includes “a number of fans of Jamba that we’ve picked nationally, including celebrity fitness trainers, radio DJs, choreographers, folks who run marathons and triathlons, Olympic hopefuls, [and] bloggers.”
“We’re really unleashing them to help advocate around healthy lifestyles and making the brand more available,” White says.
Another person Jamba Juice plans to take advantage of is Venus Williams, who became a franchisee with the company in 2011.“That’s to reinforce and encourage healthy, active lifestyles,” White says. “We think Venus embodies that.”
Jamba Juice will also use employees to help deliver the healthy, active lifestyle message in the stores. White says there will be a “greater emphasis on nutrition training for all of the Jamba employees.”
Expanding the number of Jamba Juice touch points will also be a major focus of BLEND Plan 2.0. White says the company plans to grow its licensing category from 30,000 to 50,000 touch points, and it has also debuted a new platform, JambaGo, that it will use to grow into nontraditional venues like schools.
JambaGo is a flexible platform, Whites says, that can include the company’s prepackaged products, as well as a self-service smoothie machine.
“We’re troubled by the childhood obesity challenge and we think we’ll be one of the solutions going forward, and we’re going to invest a ton of time and attention from a resource perspective to make sure we bring healthier solutions to them,” he says.
The company will also expand its retail unit presence across the country.
“We’ve got 750 units today and there are almost 2,000 more opportunities as we fill in geographies and go to more college campuses and go to more airports,” White says.
By Sam Oches
