Juicy Data: 5 Numbers You Need to Know

Running a juice bar is equal parts creativity and numbers crunching. You can make the best-tasting recipes in town, but without understanding your daily numbers, you’re juicing blind. Successful juice bars aren’t built on intuition, they’re built on data.

 

Why Your Daily Numbers Matter

Every day, your juice bar generates valuable data: sales, labor, inventory, waste, and production costs.

When tracked consistently, these numbers tell a story. A story that reveals what’s working and what’s silently draining your cash.

Instead of waiting until the end of the month to “see how things went,” daily insights allow you to:

• Spot problems early (like overproduction or price creep)

• Adjust recipes and pars before waste adds up

• Identify your most profitable items

• Keep your cost of goods (COGS) in check

• Build historical knowledge that improves forecasting over time

The 5 Core Numbers You Should Track Every Day

1. Total Sales

Track both gross sales and net sales (after discounts or refunds). This gives you a baseline for the day and helps identify patterns by day of the week, weather, and events.

Pro Tip: Pair your sales data with production logs to see if your output aligns with demand.

2. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)

Your COGS represents what it costs to produce what you sold that day including juices, shots, smoothies, food, and supplies. If your juice bar’s COGS is consistently over 30–35%, you are most likely losing money due to overproduction, shrinkage, or inaccurate portioning.

Pro Tip: Track COGS daily, not monthly. A single bad week can erase an entire month’s profit.

3. Waste and Spoilage

Juice has a short shelf life. Every ounce of waste equals lost profit. Record what’s discarded, why it happened, and what day it occurred. Over time, you’ll begin to see clear patterns like weekends always having leftover green juice or Mondays being short on citrus blends.

Pro Tip: Use this data to adjust your par sheets and reduce overproduction. If you aren't using a par sheet yet, you can download our free par sheet here.

4. Labor Cost Percentage

Labor is most likely your second-largest expense after COGS. Daily tracking helps you understand productivity in real time. You can use labor to analyze how much revenue you generated per labor hour. Many timekeeping apps have a place for you to enter your actual daily sales. If you use a timekeeping app, use this tool because it is super easy and is essential to scheduling and controlling costs. If this tool is an upgrade, it is well worth it. If you are doing it by hand, the formula is Total Labor Cost divided by Total Sales = Labor %.

Pro Tip: A healthy target labor percentage is: 25–30% for most juice bars, including a production kitchen, or production staff.

5. Average Ticket Size

This number tells you how much the average customer spends per visit. Track it daily and look for trends. Are certain promotions increasing ticket size? Are staff upselling add-ons like wellness shots or boosters for smoothies? Placing protein bars or your house made energy bites near the register is a great way to capture an impulse buy and increase your ticket size.

Pro Tip: Small increases in average ticket = big profit gains.

Connecting the Dots: Making Decisions from the Data

Data is only powerful if you act on it. Once you have your daily numbers, use them to make informed adjustments:

• High waste? Reduce production through using your par sheet. Consider extending the shelf life on juices with ginger, turmeric, citrus and other natural preservatives. Be sure to thoroughly test your decision, but an extra day or two can really help.

• High COGS? Review juice recipes, weights, and especially supplier pricing. Review the line and look for pour-overs. When tracking supplies with JuiceCrafter, I once noticed smoothie cups kept going to the stores, but no lids. Upon an audit, I saw almost every smoothie was over and customers were receiving an additional cup with another free smoothie portion! We were going through cups twice as fast as lids. We tightened up the training, and problem solved! 

• Low ticket average? Add lower margin food items, special combos or discounts on multi-bottle purchases like cleanses or bundles. JuiceCrafter is especially good for pricing bundles and cleanses with a margin goal. Watch this video to get an idea of how to price your bundles.

• High labor %? Stagger shifts based on peak hours and make sure your staff is working hard for you. Can you assign prep work onto staff during down time? 

Each decision compounds over time, which will lead to a more predictable, profitable business. The bonus is you start to really understand your business and it's operations.

Why The JuiceCrafter Method Works

When you understand your numbers, you move from being reactive to being proactive. You stop guessing how much to make, when to staff up, or whether your prices are right, because your data provides a road map of where you are going and what to do.

That’s what separates thriving juice bars from the ones that struggle: They don’t rely on luck, they rely on systems, processes, and numbers. And JuiceCrafter is the system that puts these numbers front and center.

Your daily numbers are the heartbeat of your business. They show you where your juice bar stands today and where it’s headed tomorrow.

Once you make it a habit to track and interpret your numbers, you’ll gain the confidence and clarity to make every decision count. The good news, is JuiceCrafter is the app that does it all for you. And we will be with you every step of the way.

Feel free to reach out to schedule a demo or a free 30 minute consult to discuss your needs, what we can do for you, or just to talk juicing!