How to Design a Juice Bar Floor Plan, Layout and Blueprint

Juice bars are a great way to bring fresh juice, with fruit, veggies, and greens into a community. But many states require you to submit restaurant blueprints for permits first before opening your cold-pressed juice bar. Restaurant floor plans are a smart and necessary step for your business.

Craft a memorable experience for your guests and employees (and meet all the legal requirements for your juice bar) with a detailed juice bar floor plan. This guide will help you to get started, setting your juice bar up for long-term success.

Key Takeaways

• Impact on Efficiency and Profitability: A well-planned juice bar layout enhances operational flow, reduces staff movement, and optimizes space use, ultimately boosting profitability. Consider staff workstations, kitchen layout, and POS systems to streamline operations.

• Guest Experience: Your floor plan should create a welcoming environment with intuitive service flow, ample space for guests, and easy access to seating and ordering areas.

• Employee Efficiency: A functional layout reduces clutter and ensures staff can work efficiently, particularly in prep and service areas. Proper staff areas like break rooms help keep the team organized and productive.

• Permit Requirements: Ensure your floor plan complies with local building codes and regulations, including ADA accessibility and emergency exits. Permits are required before opening.

• Elements of a Floor Plan: Key areas to include are the juice bar, prep stations, kitchen, ordering queue, seating, restrooms, and staff rooms. Consider using floor plan software like SmartDraw or hiring a designer to assist.

• Design Options: Flexibility in layout design allows you to adapt your juice bar’s theme and ambiance while optimizing for efficiency. Design options like outdoor seating or a service counter can enhance customer experience.

• Customer Experience: Design with accessibility and comfort in mind, ensuring the space is inviting, functional, and easy for all customers to navigate.

• Accessibility: Complying with ADA guidelines is essential to ensure equal access for all. Human-centered design enhances the customer experience and encourages community engagement.

• Best Practices: Design with accessibility and flow in mind, prioritizing guest comfort, efficient employee workstations, and adherence to local codes. A clear, intuitive layout reduces confusion and improves customer satisfaction.

• Importance of Clean Restrooms: Clean, easily accessible restrooms are essential for customer satisfaction. A poorly maintained restroom can damage your reputation and drive customers away.

What Is a Juice Bar Floor Plan?

It’s a map of the physical space of the store. Every single inch of space counts in your floor plans, both indoors and outdoors. Your blueprints and floor plans let you visualize how all the space of your small juice bar will fit together.

Floor plans require a little creativity and some focused research – the floor plan must balance your vision for the juice bar with the accessibility of the space. Remember that when you’re designing floor plans, you’re also creating the experience that your guests and employees have in the space.

Juice bar floor plans should include:

• The juice bar

• Prep areas

• The kitchen

• The ordering queue

• Dining and seating areas

• Staff areas, offices, and break rooms

• Your juice bar’s POS system and cashier stations

• Restrooms

• Dish area(s)

• Doors

• Windows

• Emergency Exits

• Accurate measurements of the space

Want to take a shot at designing it yourself? Don’t stress about not being an architect, artist, or designer – the good news is that there’s software preloaded with all the modern design elements you need to make designing your juice bar simple. SmartDraw, ConceptDraw, or CadPro are all reliable software that can create a custom blueprint for your juice bar.  

If you decide to hire a designer or studio, they can help you bring your vision to life in full color. While you’ll have to give them some direction, they’ll be able to develop a focused aesthetic for your space and perfect the guest’s experience.

Whichever option you choose, go into the design process with an idea of how you want the juice bar to flow. Where will the kitchen be? Where will guests place and pick up orders? Do you have a designated area for mobile orders? As you answer these questions, consider how all of your guests will access and navigate your proposed layout.

Accessibility Requirements for Juice Bar Floor Plans

Your juice bar’s blueprints and floor plans must comply with the codes for public buildings set by your state, county, or city. Complying with building codes guarantees that your juice bar is accessible to all guests. But, as architect Justin Alpert says, adhering to building codes is the bare minimum – think about how you might design a space that works for everyone, not just “the average customer.”

Employing the principles of human-centered design not only results in beautiful, usable juice bar spaces but can also lead to more customer engagement. As you start designing, answer this question – how can you engage all of your community with the design of your juice bar?

The answer will all depend on you, your community, and your vision of your dream juice bar!

How to Create a Blueprint and Floor Plan

This guide will give you an idea of how to start the design process to create a world-class, accessible guest experience.

Floor Plan Software

• SmartDraw

• ConceptDraw

• CadPro

Whether you're creating your floor plan on your own or collaborating with a professional, it's important to keep these best practices in mind.

Best Practices For Designing Your Juice Bar Floor Plan

• Design accessible spaces with your customers in mind. Consider both your guests’ and employees' needs as well as local building codes.

• Include ample space for your guests while they wait in line.

• Create an intuitive flow of service so that customers aren’t confused by how your juice bar functions.

• Factor in where your employees will be working. This includes identifying where POS systems will exist to efficiently conduct transactions and communicate with the kitchen.

• Consider how the floor plan works with the design theme and ambiance of your juice bar.

1. Juice Bar Floor Plan

Put your employees first when planning your design. Think about how you can design the layout strategically so that it’s an efficient workspace.

When a workspace is too cramped, everyone suffers. Design accessible countertops, sinks, and workstations so that anyone can use them. 

Below is a solid example from Main Squeeze Juice Bar of a juice bar’s ideal workflow.

Image source

2. Kitchen Floor Plan

Many juice bars operate in a small space, with cafe-style kitchens or kiosks. Be economical about your kitchen space so that you can house storage for fresh fruit juice  and greenery, alongside the equipment needed, like juicers, bar counters, and etc, to produce sandwiches and salads.

Below is an example from rental-plus.com of a juice bar kitchen floor plan that includes space for goods receiving, inventory management, dry storage, prep, and dishes. 

The kitchen area is set up in a rectangle, and the space is open, so employees can communicate with each other while preparing orders. 

The best kitchen designs minimize the chance for employees to bump into each other and will reduce the time it takes to run an order to where a customer will pick it up.

Image source

3. Staff Area Floor Plan

Staff areas (such as offices and break rooms) create space for administrative tasks, and for your staff to relax on breaks. An area for staff will also help to keep the shop organized, and provide space for you to post schedules and announcements.

Ensuring your staff is scheduled properly to match your juice bar's floor plan layout is crucial for maintaining smooth operations. With Toast Payroll & Team Management, you can easily manage employee schedules, track hours, and ensure compliance with labor laws, all while keeping your staff happy and productive.

In the example below from BrightHub, the staff quarters are right outside the dining room area and right next to the kitchen. The room is well located and has a door, so employees can easily have a quick, private conversation.

4. Entrance Floor Plan

Create an entrance that’s welcoming and memorable, to give guests a great first impression and inviting atmosphere. Prioritize a path to the ordering queue and leave ample space for people to walk-in and navigate. Place the ordering counter near the entrance or use clever architectural elements to guide customers through the experience.

Another thing to consider is the local juice bar culture and the location of your shop. Maybe your juice bar has a service counter that opens to the sidewalk so you can economize the interior space. Make creative design decisions that work best for your business.

5. Order Queue Floor Plan

Design an order queue that showcases your menu design and optimizes the space in your juice bar. Create lots of room for guests to wait and mingle while your employees serve other guests. Estimate how much space to use for an ordering queue by the average traffic you can expect in your location. 

6. Cashier and POS Station Floor Plan

The POS and order queue go hand in hand. Your POS station is the center of your juice bar, keeping track of inventory, sales, employee hours, and more. Place it in a strategic, central location where your employees and guests will come together to conduct transactions.

Ben Kaplan of Barbara Lynch Gruppo describes a restaurant’s POS system as “the heartbeat of your restaurant.” Similarly, the location of your POS can dramatically affect your restaurant business's efficiency. 

To minimize staff running back and forth between the payment station and their tables, you can implement handheld point of sales, allowing guests to order, pay, sign, tip, and even rate the restaurant experience at the table.

The example below is from designer Raymond Haldeman who worked with restaurant/lounge in Philadelphia, PA, where there are two POS stations at either side of the bar, so multiple bartenders aren’t bumping into one another.

7. Juice Bar Seating Floor Plan

It’s important to provide seating for guests who want or need it, even in the tightest spaces.

How Much Guest Space Should A Juice Bar Have?

To understand your floor plans, consider the industry standard for space. According to Total Food Service, it’s a 60/40 model – 60% of the space is used for guests and seating, and 40% is used for prep, the coffee bar, and the kitchen.

Another critical step is calculating the maximum occupancy of your space depending on local building codes. These will vary by the type and location of the building, but we suggest the following capacity per guest in these types of restaurants:

• Full-Service Restaurant Dining: 12-15 square feet

• Counter Service: 18-20 square feet

• Fast Food: 11-14 square feet

Let’s consider a juice bar a fast food business. In a 1,200 square foot juice bar concept, you might reserve 720 square feet for guests, but half of that will be an order queue, leaving 360 square feet for seating. If you give each guest 12 feet of space, you could have space for 30 guests.

Offering guests more space is usually a good idea. Spacing tables further apart and creating wide lanes for traffic is a great way to make your juice and smoothie bar accessible to people with disabilities. Plus, a study by Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration found that guests are more generous with their spending if they have more personal space.

8. Outdoor Seating Floor Plan

If you have the luxury of outdoor space, maximize it. A nice patio can attract a different niche of customers to your juice bar, and drive additional sales and profits. Plan your outdoor space carefully so that it’s easily accessible to both guests and employees. Make the space an eco-friendly asset to your business, not a burden.

Your juice bar may have an outdoor patio or outdoor seating on the street – if you do, great! Because a well-set-up patio can increase gross profits by an incredible 65%. 

The ideal location for a patio is close to the kitchen and dining room, so servers don’t have to walk very far in between. At Acapulco’s Mexican Restaurant in Denver, CO has a patio in the back of the restaurant, with round seating. The patio has seven tables and is close to the dining room and the bathrooms.

9. Restrooms Floor Plan

A clean bathroom signals a clean establishment throughout, and it shows that you care about your guests. In many restaurants, the bathroom layout — like the waiting area — is also an afterthought. But more than 80% of consumers say they would avoid a restaurant with a dirty or poorly maintained restroom, according to a survey by Zogby International. 

Make sure your bathrooms are easy to access — without requiring guests to wander through the kitchen or requiring staff to wander through the seating area to use them. 

The example below is from design software AutoCAD. In it, the bathrooms are tucked away in the corner, by the back office. And there are two, including one that’s large enough for wheelchair access.

10. Emergency Exits Floor Plan

Like all public buildings, juice bars must have a fire and emergency floor plan for the wellness of its guests. Design software can help you adequately map out emergency exit routes. Once your floor plan is completed, be sure to communicate the routes to your staff and clearly mark external exits for customers.

All juice bar floor plans must be created with emergencies in mind. Floor plan software SmartDraw gives the following example of a floor plan with its paths of egress marked in red.

How to Choose a Juice Bar Floor Plan

Once you craft your juice bar’s detailed blueprints and floor plans, it's time to start turning your plans into a reality. Plumbers, architects, electricians, designers, artists, and your staff can all assist you in building the juice shop of your dreams.

Consulting an interior designer can help you to achieve the specific ambiance and experience you want. They can guide you through painting, decorating, and purchasing furniture that’s functional for your space and suits your shop’s aesthetic.

Installing light fixtures in a commercial space should be done by an electrician to be sure it’s up to code – the same goes for plumbing and any structural changes you want to make. Trade professionals can ensure your shop design is up to code and safe for operation.

It’ll also be important to work with city, county, and state officials for all the proper permits. If possible, maintain good working relationships with the employees in the permit office – they’ll be sure that your blueprints and any changes get approved on time.

This all may seem like a lot of work to do. But your dream juice bar is worth it. So, don’t forget to have fun and be creative! Designing and executing the plans you carefully made for your juice and smoothie shop is exciting – pour all of your passion into the design process and your customers will appreciate it.

Map it Out and Change it Up

Once your new floor plan has been built and implemented, it's always a good idea to keep checking in with how functional it is. Changing things up is always an option, especially when it comes to seating arrangements. 

Test different layouts and talk to your regulars about what worked and what didn't to find the best floor plan for your unique restaurant.

Related Juice Bar Resources

• How to Open a Juice Bar

• Juice Bar Business Plan

• Juice Bar Names

• Cost to Open a Juice Bar

• Best Juice Bar Websites

• How Much Do Juice Bars Make

• Juice Bar Equipment List

• Juice Bar Ideas and Concepts

• Juice Bar Menu Ideas