Best Smoothie Franchises for Health Enthusiasts

Introduction

There are a few reasons why you might want to open a smoothie franchise. You don’t have to worry about the marketing, branding, because the franchisor, if they’re doing their job, is really gonna take care of that.

That should all be the franchisor that’s taking care of that for you. You’ll have access to different discounts on the raw ingredients, supplies.

If you choose the right franchise brand, they’re passing those discounts on to you instead of getting cutbacks and making money from you, the franchisee. So a lot of different smoothie franchises out there. Some of the largest ones include Jamba Juice, Planet Smoothie, Smoothie King, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Booster Juice, Juice Bars, Naked Smoothie, Robeks Fresh Juices, Jugo Juice, Playa Bowls, and there’s other bowl-related concepts that also offer smoothies.

The industry is booming right now. The smoothie and juice bar industry is worth an estimated $2 billion. And it’s projected to grow in the coming years. And a big part of that growth is the increased health consciousness of consumers and the trend of the busy lifestyle leading to a need for quick, convenient, healthy food options.

What about the healthy option concept?

That being said, not every smoothie option is created equal. And, generally, some of these juices are not actually very healthy as it’s loaded with sugar, whether that’s fructose or added sugar to the product. And you’re consuming enough sugar that’s included in, like, 15 oranges where it might be healthier just having the orange whole as of itself.

So the consumer wants to be healthier. Depending on the smoothie franchise and the products offer, they truly are going with this healthier option. And that’s one of the downsides with this industry is that health trends are constantly changing. So you have to rely on a franchisor that stays up to date on what the consumer is demanding and that franchisees in their system can provide that product at a reasonable price. And it’s not gonna cost a crazy amount and really go into the margins of that franchise.

So I’ve done videos on Jamba, Smoothie King, and Tropical Smoothie Cafe. We’ll include links to those videos and podcast episodes description. But I want to go through a few smaller ones like Bambu franchise. They have over 50 locations in the United States, and the investment amount is relatively low, anywhere from $150,000k to $260k.

Failure rate

However, the the failure rate and the franchise for sale rate has been a bit high over the past three years where a lot of Bambu franchisees have been exiting the system over 12% over the last few years, as well as the failure rates even higher than that. There’s another franchise that’s probably good for SEO market, and it’s called Bananas Smoothies & Frozen Yogurt franchise.

They have 16 locations throughout the United States that are franchisee owned, and another 7 that are corporately owned and managed. Very few people are getting out of the system. The failure rate for the last three years that we have data is 13%. That’s just a little higher than the industry average failure rate for the last three years, which is right around 10%.

And then in terms of average gross sales for their franchise system, it was trending up before COVID, 2018, 859,000, 819,000 for 2019, but 2020 they got crushed, and they only had average gross sales, AUV of 330 for Bananas Smoothies & Frozen Yogurt.

So for a franchise that, you know, you’ve got to invest $380,000 at midpoint, and if it’s making $800k and user owner nets out of $100,000, if you’re working actively in the business, you could recoup your money in four or five years, depending on when you start hitting break-even.

But that’s a key thing that for a smoothie franchise, if you’re actively involved, you better be getting your money back within four years, five years max. If not, there’s more attractive smoothie and juice options to consider. So that’s a key point. The payback period when you talk to franchisees, especially in the juice and smoothie sector, should be within four years.

Planet Smoothie franchise, they had 145 locations as of the end of 2021, investments anywhere from 79,000 up to 358,000. The franchise failure rate was pretty high for Planet Smoothie with about 25% failure rate over the last three years, and then 12% of their franchisees have left the system as well. They don’t disclose financials usually when franchise wars are on a downward trajectory. They stop disclosing as part of the Item 19.

And the investment midpoint is a lot less than a lot of the other smoothie franchise at just $219,000. But if you’re gonna consider a Planet Smoothie, definitely, talk to existing franchisees of this brand. So that’s three smoothie franchises to consider. There’s about 20 or so that you can find on our website, vettedbiz.com. We’ve also done videos on some of the larger ones, like Smoothie King, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, as well as Jamba Juice.