One major component of earning Healthy Profits is being able to juice efficiently. Taste is critical for attracting and retaining customers who absolutely love fresh citrus juice, but juicing fast and efficiently is critical for Healthy Profits.
Here at Citrus America, we have learned that juicing speed and efficiency is driven by five critical factors:
- The speed of the juicer
- The amount of stoppages required
- Cleaning time
- Ease of operation
- Additional efficiency features
Citrus America has done quite a bit of juicing with different equipment over the past few years and has received a lot of feedback from industry professionals. Our research led to focusing on CITROCASA equipment for citrus juicing due to their incredible attention to detail in addressing the 5 points above.
Once an operation starts juicing boxes of oranges every day, or other citrus fruits such as lemons and limes, the most efficient and most profitable way to juice will be with an automatic citrus juicer that fully takes care of the cutting and juicing of the fruit. For an operation juicing between 5 and 50 boxes per day, speed and efficiency is absolutely critical.
In addition, if the machine is displayed nicely and kept clean, it works like a billboard for fresh juice and can help you sell more.
COMPARISON OVERVIEW (Testing November 2013)
• Semi-automatic juicing (manual cut): 4-6 fpm (fruit per minute)
• Low volume (slow) automatic juicer: 10-14 fpm
• Medium volume (medium) automatic juicer: 15-20 fpm
• CITROCASA 6000/7000 Series: 22 fpm
• CITROCASA Fantastic Series: 30 fpm
• CITROCASA 8000 Series: 40 fpm
What does that mean for a grocery store?
A grocery store juicing 10 boxes of oranges per day with a juicer at 10 fruit per minute, and encountering various stoppages due to fruit jams, may need something like 45 minutes to juice just 3 boxes of fruit.
We’ve found that such customers switching over to a CITROCASA 8000 Series need under 12 minutes to do the same work with very few stoppages, other than the normal loading of fruit into the machines and removing juiced peels. Therefore, to do all 10 boxes, one store, juicing at 10 fpm, might need 150 minutes (2.5 hours) versus the other store, juicing at 40 fpm, requiring only 40 minutes for the same amount.
That’s a difference of 110 minutes each day, or more than 660 hours over the course of a year, or 16 work weeks that employees could be doing something else, such as making fresh salads, squeezing other amazing juice creations, or working on additional merchandising programs. What would your produce or bakery department do with an extra 660 hours of labor throughout the year?
What does that mean for a restaurant or a cafe?
At 30 fruit per minute an operation needs 2 seconds per orange, so to juice 3 oranges for a normal 8 oz. serving, you would require just 6 seconds, which is similar to a normal soda fountain, or pouring from a pitcher. At 10 fruit per minute, you would need 6 seconds per orange, requiring 18 seconds just to fill one glass of juice on-demand, which is significantly longer.
If you have 10 customers in line ordering juice for breakfast, this would slow your operation down by 120 seconds, or two minutes. That’s a long time for some of your on-the-move customers.
If this same operation juices 3 boxes of oranges per day, the difference between 10 fruit per minute amounts to 20 minutes per day in lost labor, or 120 hours of work your staff could invest somewhere else in the business over the course of the year. That’s 3 weeks of labor!
Select the right equipment and feed it with the right fruit. Help your operations deliver the best citrus juice experience to your customer, quickly and efficiently, and you help drive your HEALTHY PROFITS.
ABOUT CITRUS AMERICA, INC. – Citrus America, Inc. is focused on delivering the highest quality on-demand and on-location citrus juicing solutions to the grocery, hotel, restaurant, and bar segments. Citrus America is based in Boca Raton, Florida. Contact: 561-367-4027 | www.CitrusAmerica.com
Source: Citrus America, Inc.