The managers at Bowdoin Dining Service have decided to embrace one of the hottest trends in the food world. If all goes according to plan, the bar in Jack Magee’s Pub & Grill will be transformed into a fresh juice bar as soon as the end of October. Upon opening, the bar will serve a menu of about 7 fruit and vegetable juices that will be made to order on a commercial centrifugal juicer.
On Wednesday afternoon, Manager of Dining Retail Operations Adeena Fisher, who conceived of and designed the project, held a tasting of a preliminary menu of juices behind closed doors in the Pub.
The initial hours will likely be limited to weekday mornings, but Fisher said she expects to expand to include afternoon shifts and possibly evenings as she gauges the student body’s response. Fisher said that the bar will offer only one size of juice, 16 ounces, which will be priced between $3.50 and $6.50 depending on the blend.
Facilities will conduct some minor renovations to transform the Pub’s bar into the juice bar during the weekend of fall break. The wood paneled wall behind the bar will be painted in bright colors, the placement of the television will change and a sign and chalkboard will be installed. Fisher said she expects the changes to add life to a currently dull space.
The bar has yet to be named but among the options in the running are “Jack’s Juice Cave”, “We’ve got the beet”, “Fresh Start”, “Just Juice it” and “Polar Press.”
While the bar will operate as a juice bar during the week, it will transform back into a pub bar and continue to serve beer on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
One aspect driving the bar’s creation is the minimal revenue from alcohol sales.
“We were sort of looking for a way to increase revenue in this area. The bar is only open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights so for a large period of time the bar is not in use,” said Fisher.
Fisher readily admits that much of the impetus for the bar is very personal. “The idea came about because I like to juice,” said Fisher. “The idea was noodling around in the back of my head and a student actually approached the administration and said ‘hey, how about a juice bar?’”
Fisher also noted that the juice bar fits nicely with Dining’s desire to be “veggie centric” and promote healthy eating. She acknowledged concerns that juice of this type contains very high amounts of sugar and no fiber (because the plant matter is discarded by the juicer) and said that, in the long run, the bar will be responsive to students’ demands.
“There are some people who like the fresh juice because it is absorbed instantly into your system. There are some people who like the smoothie juice where you grind up the spinach. That is not to say that the we cannot evolve into something like that,” she said.
Some students at the tasting were enthralled about the coming bar but other expressed concerns about quality of the current menu of juices. “No one should have to drink celery,” said Stephanie Sun ’18. Others expressed concerns that the bar would conflict with the cafe.
“The juice bar could be really cool but the cafe does almost the same thing and that’s confusing,” said Leah Alper ’17.