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24 Jul 2020

How Elfreshco - A Small Juice Bar is Captivating Us

Situated on Jalan Telawi Bangsar, next to the Subway outlet and slightly unnoticeable by passersby, Elfreshco is a neighborhood hidden gem that offers various reasons for people to fall in love with it.

Upon entering this small juice bar, you will be welcomed by the fresh smell of citrus coming from the lemon and orange peels that they have recycled from their juice-making process to replace fragrance diffusers. You will also notice a series of DIY and recycled decorations which makes this small cozy bar very unique.

If there’s a way to describe Johnson Lam, the owner of Elfreshco, he is a person who is passionate about the business and wears many hats. He's a health, and DIY enthusiast that has also founded the company called KakiDiY.

 “I took over the business because I believe in the product, saw the potential of growing with digital platforms, and didn’t want to disappoint the thousands of regular customers if the store were to be closed for good.” 

He started believing in the products after personally experiencing the change to his body upon doing the juice diet himself. Since taking over the business, he has maintained 80% of the menu to ensure that existing customers can still get their favorite juice fix at the same price.

 

 

 

What Inspired the Business

It all started with Elvin, the previous owner and founder of Elfreshco who wanted to keep a healthier lifestyle while having a busy schedule. Just like many other working adults, Elvin didn't have the luxury of time to exercise and to prepare well-balanced meals for himself.

That’s when he discovered and delved into juice diets which were an easier option to stay healthy and relied mainly on fresh fruits and veggies. 

He discovered many recipes from deep-diving on the internet, reading countless book recipes, experimenting with different types of juice combinations, and consulting with multiple food nutritionists for the best juice mix. 

After experiencing the result himself and losing 15 KGs from the juice diet, he felt the need to introduce and share his specially-curated recipes to more people. Ignited by this novel passion and goal, he resigned from his job and started the business.

Freshness Guaranteed

The name Elfreshco stands for Elvin’s Fresh Company because he emphasized ensuring freshness through and through the process of the juice preparation. 

At Elfresco, juices are made 100% from freshly imported fruits. They strictly control and monitor the quality of each juice in each step of the preparation process, with no water nor sugar added.

Fresh juice and vegetable juices Bangsar Malaysia

Image source: Elfreshco Facebook

Fruits and vegetables mix are carefully selected to complete a person's diet goals (Be it detoxing, slimming, energizing, or just purely for health purposes). When asked about his recommendation for new customers, Johnson Lam recommends the detoxing red and the tropical twist as those two are their current best-sellers. 

On the other hand, they also produce and sell almond milk made 100% without preservatives and ensuring its high consistency. From processing to the filtering, each part of the process is carefully carried out to ensure that it stays fresh for a longer period of time. As of now, their almond milk is popular amongst vegans as it is made only from almond with no sugar or milk added. 

Pure almond milk Bangsar MalaysiaImage source: Elfreshco Facebook

They gave us a sneak peek of the process and taste of the milk and safe to say now we’re in love with it! Now everyone can taste it too as they offer subscription delivery for people in the Klang Valley and other areas as well. 

Their business goals are simple and genuine. They want to share the benefits of the juices with more people and advocate for a sustainable diet as they only use fruits and veggies grown organically for their products. 

Why They Advocate for Sustainability 

What’s fascinating about the business was that we can see how they applied the concept of sustainability in different aspects of the business. 

Johnson Lam explained that by advocating on the juice diet, they want to reduce the need to go for meat-based meals which will ultimately decrease the demand for livestock farming thus reducing its carbon footprint to the environment. 

From a vegan perspective, this also helps reduce animal slaughtering for commercial and personal consumption. 

Since the start of the business, they have chosen to use glass bottles so that customers can come back with the same bottle for their next purchase and reduce as much waste as possible.

Recycled milk bottle Bangsar Malaysia

Image source: Elfreshco Facebook

They encourage customers to return the glass bottles to enjoy a discount on their next purchase. Recycled bottles will go through a thorough and sanitized cleaning process to ensure it is safe to be reused. 

Apart from that, they also emphasize on using the business to help the struggling community by selling and endorsing their products in the store. Some of their products are made by single mothers that are trying to generate some income from home. From vegan-friendly cookies to environment-friendly chap sticks, all of their products resonate with the sustainability concept. 

Vegan-friendly cookies

On the other hand, here’s a shout out to another great initiative that can help empower sustainability for food and beverage businesses. 

Team Recycler Malaysia, is a social start-up company that aims to provide premium-grade, quality biodegradable, and compostable food packagings to help food & beverage merchants reduce consumption of single-use plastics that are filling our landfills and contaminating our oceans.

Biodegradable takeaway and food packaging in Malaysia

Most of their food packaging products are made from sugarcane pulps (food containers), corn-starch (straws), wood (cutlery), and paper (cups and bags) and all of these biodegrade and decompose within 6 to 18 months when disposed of. 

How the Business is Going Digital

After taking over the business, Johnson also noticed the lack of online presence and efforts on digital marketing. It was then that made him realize the potential of going digital has to offer to the business. 

On the first day itself, Johnson had all the things that could be improved from the online perspective planned out. This primarily consisted of fixing the website, updating the Google My Business info to appear better in search results. He also emphasized on using SEO to help boost discoverability and visibility on search engines. His focus was to ensure all copywriting is informational, concise, and included keywords that are relevant to the business to make it easier for people to discover when they search for these keywords. 

Here is his advice on SEO for retail owners: 

  1. Make sure your company name, your website name and your product name is unique so that you can rank for these unique keywords with lesser competition 
  2. Use the same keywords that describe your unique selling proposition on your website, social media, blogs, articles that you are featured in, and all other relevant content. 
  3. Always try to organically rank at least third on SEO

In their efforts to get the business to go digital, Fave was the first customer loyalty platform and e-wallet that approached the business when it first started, with that, Elfreshco became one of the early merchants to sign up for FavePay and it has been a great experience. 

“Fave taught Elvin something important that a lot of people may have missed out. This was customer loyalty. So whenever our customers paid using FavePay, they would earn Cashback and that made them come back. This has helped Elfreshco remain as the top juice on Fave for quite a period of time and that has helped many more customers discover us.”

Johnson Lam pointed out that now they are blessed with the returning customers, and now they are in the midst of working on online strategies, fixing the website, and focusing on marketing on different channels. 

Getting to know this small business has truly brought us great experiences that we are proud to share with more readers. It has definitely helped motivate us to keep doing what we do best to contribute our part to the community.

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