How Dom’s Kitchen & Market Is Diversifying Its Better-For-You Drink Portfolio

Dom’s Kitchen & Market provides a wide array of juices and related better-for-you drinks, including items made in its two Chicago stores.

The store-made juices are processed in a temperature-controlled environment and include single flavors as well as combinations such as celery and carrot or pineapple and orange. Dom’s also makes lemonade ranging from plain to blueberry ginger, according to Lauren Bijur, Dom’s senior category manager, perishables.

[Read more: "Fresh Juice-Based Beverages Move Into Mainstream"]

In the flavors it offers, Dom’s puts juices and other drinks on a par with the organic produce and organic free-range chicken it also features, as well as adventurous gourmet foodservice items such as Zucchini and Ricotta Pizza and White Oak Vegan Chorizo Tofu Bowl.

Dom’s own drinks combine clean-product profiles and pure juice wellness benefits with additional constituents such as turmeric and ginger that have grown increasingly popular for specific health benefits. However the beverages are formulated keeping in mind the need to create new taste profiles consistent with the direction that foodservice has taken in recent decades and that CPG companies are beginning to explore in earnest.

In addition to store-made drinks, Dom’s works with a cold-press juice operation in Chicago to make bottled juices. The store-made beverages constitute 70% of juice sales, while the bottled own-brand drinks constitute a further 15%. The bottled juice flavors range from the familiar to the more adventurous. The cold-pressed juice line takes product names from the Chicago subway system and loops together various juice combinations. Thus, the Pink Line includes watermelon, lime, lemon and beet juices, as well as mint; the Green Line combines celery and lemon juices, with the Sweet Greens collection including kale, apple, lemon and wheatgrass juices; and the Mean Greens portfolio offers cucumber, spinach, dandelion, lemon, lime and cilantro juices.

Not only does Dom’s juice business address the desire among Chicagoans for new, healthy and exciting flavors, it also supports and reflects the concept’s overall positioning.

“One of our tenets is what’s in the store should be natural and clean label,” says Bijur. “We really try to adhere to that. So, when you look at any of our brands, between the cold-pressed juicery, Natalie’s, Uncle Matt’s Organic, Simply Juice and all the store-made juices, those are really high quality with clean-label ingredients.”