The Food Service Industry Has A Juicing Problem

Everybody loves lime juice. 

It’s not just us saying that: the lime market in the United States alone is a billion-dollar industry. Every bar in America has to have fresh lime juice on-hand - after all, what kind of bar can’t make a margarita? 

But the lime juice space has serious problems. Here are a few of the major challenges facing the industry - and what can be done to solve them.

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The Shelf Life Problem

As a rule, lime juice has to taste fresh. It has to have that tangy citrus bite to it. 

The problem is, that bite doesn’t last very long. Once limes are squeezed, enzymes begin to break down the natural sugars in the juice, resulting in a loss of flavor. Exposure to oxygen speeds up this process. 

This makes lime juice a product with little shelf life to speak of: juice squeezed one day is all but useless the next. This means waste, losses, etc. 

Naturally, there have been attempts to solve this problem. Right now, the most commonly used alternative to fresh lime juice is High-Pressure Pasteurization (HPP). The HPP method utilizes a high-pressure environment - sometimes up to 90,000 psi - to eliminate microorganisms that lead to spoilage. 

But this method has its own issues. The intense pressure of the HPP method doesn’t just interfere with harmful microbes - it also disrupts the natural citrus compounds that give lime juice its flavor. The result is a juice that tastes bland, chalky, and unappetizing. 

Even so, the fact is that it’s cheaper and lasts longer compared to in-house juicing. This has made HPP juice a widely used alternative, especially in places where fresh limes are scarce. But customers can tell the difference, and this preference is reflected in drink pricing. 

So in-housing juice has no shelf life, but HPP juices aren’t as good. But that’s not the only problem facing the juicing industry. 

The Cost Problem

Shelf life isn’t the only concern in the lime juice space. 

Many bars and restaurants juice their limes in-house, which is to say that they buy fresh limes from a wholesaler or other provider and manually squeeze them in their own facilities. 

As you can imagine, this is not an especially efficient way of doing things. For one, food service businesses pay more on a per-kilo basis for these smaller, by-the-box orders. Once a box of lime reaches its destination, it’s likely passed through the hands of numerous middlemen.

On top of that you have the labor. Although barbacks and prep cooks aren’t exactly the nation’s highest earners, it costs money to have someone manually preparing quart after quart of fresh lime juice. The time spent juicing limes in-house could be spent on other things. 

This comes on the heels of a major crisis for the bar and restaurant industry: the lack of good bartenders and barbacks. In the wake of the pandemic, when many food service businesses were closed, many bartenders had no choice but to seek alternative means of employment. When businesses reopened, many of these bartenders didn’t come back. 

This scarcity means that bars are paying more for labor, which makes those hours spent juicing all the more costly. The conclusion is clear: in-house juicing is costly, both in terms of purchasing the fruit in small quantities and paying higher labor costs for the process itself.

So where does this leave us? With in-house juicing, bars and restaurants are struggling to turn a profit on their most popular cocktails. But with HPP preparations, businesses lose out on quality - and margin. 

What’s needed is a cost-effective, shelf-stable lime juice, a middle ground between in-house juicing and HPP juices. 

Farmfolio and its new partner, Pratt Standard, have set out to solve this problem. Pratt Standard’s proprietary juicing process conserves freshness and flavor while maintaining a longer shelf life - the perfect middle ground between the industry’s two most common methods. 

Farmfolio will be providing further information about this partnership - and how you can benefit - in very near future. Stay tuned!

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