When a customer approaches Jamba’s robotic kiosks in Dixon or Downey, California, one of the first things they do is pull out their phone and start recording. As Jamba president Geoff Henry says, it’s pure entertainment to see that initial time the robotic system makes your customized smoothie.
At the Jamba by Blendid kiosks, guests can place their orders via the attached tablet or on Jamba’s phone app and get all the same ingredients they would find in a traditional store. From the artificial intelligence and machine learning-powered kiosk, customers can customize their orders, adding in fruit or boosts to preferred levels, and even choose the time they want their meals to be made and picked up.
As a contactless solution, the robot weighs every ingredient, keeping track of each macro, and blends smoothies within two to three minutes.
It’s still the early days of Jamba’s robotic technological innovation, but current trends indicate the kiosk is a winner, Henry says. Jamba first became a market leader of what AI in foodservice could look like when it unveiled its first robotic kiosk in Dixon in late 2020. Henry says the brand was one of the first smoothie concepts to pilot robotic kiosks as standalone units.
The second Jamba and Blendid unit arrived in the Stonewood Center in Downey in October, offering seven plant-forward smoothies along with Jamba’s popular boosts. Henry says it’s a way to grow the business and move into types of locations Jamba couldn’t have entered before, like malls, gyms, hospitals, airports, and college campuses.
“For a brand like Jamba, convenience and access to the brand are critically important,” Henry says. “So we see this as a breakthrough opportunity to get the brand into more places, to get closer to our guests.”
When Henry came onto Jamba’s team roughly three years ago, the brand was experiencing significant transformation. Pre-COVID, Jamba was heavily investing in digital launched the Jamba app, third- and first-party delivery as well as a new loyalty platform. The brand saw order-ahead sales that once were only 1 percent of mix grow to north of 20 percent in any given week or month over the span of a little more than a year.
In conversations with Blendid’s CEO, it became obvious to Henry the prototype Blendid had begun to commercialize fit well with Jamba as a brand. The kiosks can blend 45 smoothies in an hour and nine smoothies at once, boasting practically labor-less productivity and delivering on Jamba’s quest to reach customers where they are with non-traditional units.
In all, Jamba wants to expand its growth trajectory eastward, building upon the 800 or so units it has domestically. The Blendid partnership is one element, enabling market tests in hospitals, airports, theme parks, university, malls, and more.
To date, about 90 percent of Jamba’s locations are streetside, but with this new technology underway, that could change quickly.
“We think this opportunity may help us, if it’s successful, accelerate our performance in the non-traditional space even faster than we were initially anticipating,” Henry says. “I think it’s a potential opportunity to just enhance portfolios for our franchisees overall, where they can have a combination of street side locations and non-traditional locations.”
The robotic kiosks can operate for almost 24 hours a day, too, meaning there will be more orders coming in late at night that would not be at the traditional Jamba that closes at around 8 p.m.
“I had a lot of confidence going into this partnership that they were on to something strong and that we would only make it even that much more stronger,” Henry says.
As a fully contained front- and back-of-house solution, the kiosk units can be assembled within two days. And operation is possible within only 4 to 5 days of receiving the unit, rapidly accelerating Jamba’s potential for unit growth.
All of this doesn’t mean there haven’t been hiccups along the way. With every new launch, Jamba learns more about how best to have the robot pour smoothies. One TikTok video went viral showing the Jamba robot failing, spilling the smoothie onto the counter.
That was a good learning opportunity, Henry says, and it enabled Jamba to jump into the conversation with customers.
As they put it, like any worker, the robot was nervous on his first day of the job, and there was still training and coaching to be done.
“There’s no doubt that we’re first to market with this,” Henry says. “So we’re learning, and we’re not afraid to experience mistakes along the way. That’s only making us stronger. Just like any typical software, every iteration gets stronger every time they do a new release.”
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