What do you get when you mix such diverse fruits and vegetables as oranges, blueberry, spinach, kale and artichoke? You get juices. These healthy, customizable drinks have become all the rage among Millennials. Juicing is now a yearly $2.3 billion business, and cold-pressed juice is a $100 million market.
Forty percent (40%) of younger Millennials had a juice smoothie made for them in the last month, and that number is growing. Healthy, customizable, and becoming increasingly prevalent across the globe, Millennials are bringing juices to the same level as coffee and alcohol.
Healthy and Customizable
There are few products that seem so tailor made for Millennial taste as juices. First of all, many of the most popular juice companies use organic ingredients, always a huge plus for a demographic that doesn’t like GMOs. In addition, one of the key factors that gets Millennials interested in a product is customizability—and the nature of juice is inherently customizable.
So is it really a surprise that juices are so popular with Millennials when they represent everything that Millennials love in a product? 40% of Millennials state that they’ve become bored with standard fruit and juice flavors, so juice makers have wisely opened the doors to a wide array of experimental flavor combinations—and so far, these efforts have met much success.
From Bar Crawls to Juice Crawls
Now, Millennials aren’t giving up alcohol, what with their love of craft beers—but one traditionally alcohol-fueled activity, the bar crawl, has been remade by Millennials as a more sober journey. So-called “juice crawls,” where Millennials sample tiny cups of juice flavors instead of liquors, are now a popular activity. Participants in a juice crawl will go between three different shops and sample over 19 flavors in an average crawl.
Tickets for a juice crawl range from a low-end $15 to a high-end $50, and have become increasingly popular in places like Soho and the East Village.
Health is the Key
We know that Millennials care enormously about their health, and are energized by products that they consider both medicinal and fun. That’s why they’ve mainstreamed yoga, prefer supplements to prescription drugs, and drink juices as a healthy way to get in their fill of fruits and vegetables.
Heather Cyr, general manager of the Austin-based Juiceland, sees the growing juice market as part of a larger food movement among Millennials, who are perceived as actively taking ownership of their own health:
“Yes. Not only do we see this phenomenon occurring among our customers, I think most of our employees really enjoy working for us for this reason as well. So as a team we desire to better our own lives, and at the same time we are passionate about bettering the lives of everyone around us. Our employees really love talking to customers about what they need for their bodies and what makes them feel the best.”
The Bottom Line
Millennials love trying new things, love being healthy, and love customizing their food options, so the growth of new juice products that offer more exotic flavors (with less sugar content) has exploded among their ranks. Nekter Juice Bar opened its first store in 2010 and has since increased to nearly 40 locations. Bolthouse Farms has invested significant funds into purely vegetable-based juice products, and Starbucks offers a line of cold-pressed juices that they call Evolution Fresh.
Juicing has led to an increase in produce sales as well, with 27% of US consumers buying more produce specifically for the purpose of juicing. Anything that gets more people eating kale and carrots can only be a good thing, and for Millennials, juicing is the answer.
The G Brief is the digital magazine published by Urbaneer Creative. We’re a boutique consultancy focused on helping clients better understand and engage the Millennial generation. Reach out to see what we can do for you.