Nutrition For Profits

It could easily be argued that nutrition is more than half the battle. However, most members don’t recognize the benefit. Why? It’s really quite simple. There is so much misinformation on the topic of nutrition that people don’t know what to believe. Consequently, members make the wrong food choices, resulting in them achieving minimal performance goals. Ultimately, frustrations are increased and memberships are not renewed. It’s a lose-lose situation.

Nutrition boils down to two things. Deliver the healthiest food options possible and teach your members why healthy eating and the timing of nutrients is critical to their success.

All this can be achieved at the juice bar. Turn your juice bar into a nutritional general store of good choices, healthy grab-and- go snacks, natural meal replacements and “Recovery Shakes.”

Educate your Members If we can educate people to begin eating sensibly and at the proper time, they are bound to break their plateaus and obtain performance goals faster. Push your customers to understand this, and you will have those customers for life.

One of the biggest misconceptions that I continually witness is that people believe they need to starve themselves immediately following workouts. Convincing them to throw calories back into their systems is difficult, but it can and should be done. What your members need to understand is that the clock is ticking following a workout. There has been a small window of time that has been opened due to the usage of stored carbohydrates during exercise.

The body simply needs to be refueled quickly during this window so that all that hard-earned muscle isn’t broken down for glycogen replenishment — Gluconeogenesis. If members don’t replace what they’ve burned within 30 minutes of a workout, their body begins cannibalizing its own muscle tissue for energy — completely diminishing their efforts in the gym. Eventually, members end up with a smaller version of themselves with a higher fat-to-muscle ratio than when they began.

So, the truth is we need to get members to replenish quickly. What better place is there than at the club’s juice bar, minutes following the last rep.

See, that wasn’t too difficult to explain. This kind of information is out there and is well documented. It just needs to be shared.

Create a Nutrition Zone
Create new habits. Get your members to begin looking each week for the next nutritional tips. If you install a “Nutrition Zone” where folks can access important nutritional information, your juice bar will become a place where people access products and advice.

In this world of fad diets and misinformation, a juice bar is a great place to help your members access sound, nutritional information, along with ingestible nutrients after a hard workout. Put it all together and you will help your members achieve their performance goals.

Focus on Education and Sales
Remember, you have a finite number of people to whom you can sell so you will need to reach a greater penetration to make your juice bar profitable. Make sure your juice bar venture focuses not only on sales, but on education. You will find that the two go hand-in-hand. Your customers will appreciate the guidance and they will thank you by buying. You already have interested customers, they are all concerned about taking care of their bodies, if not they wouldn’t be there. So, serve them “Recovery Shakes” as their next meal, and then teach them why they need it.