Smoothie and juice bar prep and par sheet (free template)

At a smoothie bar, the rush is won or lost before the doors open. If the packs are portioned, the fruit is cut and the greens are washed, a blender order takes a minute. If they aren't, every order starts with a knife and the line backs up out the door.

This is the prep side of a smoothie and juice bar: how much to prep for each part of the day, how to build smoothie packs, and how to know how much juice a case of produce really gives you. The opening, closing and cleaning lists, and the FDA juice labeling rules, are in our juice and smoothie bar checklists.

This is general information, not legal advice. The food safety rules below come from the FDA Food Code. Your inspector and your local rules have the final word.

What you prep, and how long it keeps

Split prep into four kinds, because each one keeps for a different time:

The rules behind the right-hand column:

• Wash before you cut. Raw fruit and vegetables "shall be thoroughly washed in water to remove soil and other contaminants before being cut, combined with other ingredients, cooked, served, or offered for human consumption in READY-TO-EAT form" (§3-302.15(A), 2022 FDA Food Code).
• Cut melons and cut leafy greens need cold holding. The Food Code's definition of time/temperature control for safety (TCS) food includes "cut melons, cut leafy greens, cut tomatoes" (§1-201.10(B)). TCS food is held cold at "5°C (41°F) or less" (§3-501.16(A)(2)).
• Seven days at most for anything you prep and hold. Ready-to-eat TCS food kept more than 24 hours is marked with a use-by date, for "a maximum of 7 days. The day of preparation shall be counted as Day 1" (§3-501.17(A)). A cut melon pack made Monday is gone by Sunday, and most bars drop it much sooner for taste.
• Frozen fruit blended to order. Frozen TCS food is normally thawed in the cooler, under running water or as part of cooking, but the Food Code also allows "any procedure if a portion of frozen READY-TO-EAT FOOD is thawed and prepared for immediate service in response to an individual CONSUMER'S order" (§3-501.13(D)). A frozen pack that goes straight into the blender for one order is covered. A tub of frozen mango thawing on the counter for the afternoon is not.

The 2026 Food Code keeps the same rules on all four points.

Pars by daypart

A juice bar's day has shapes: a breakfast rush, a lunch rush, a slow afternoon, maybe a post-gym evening. One par for the whole day means the packs run out at 8:30 or sit in the freezer until close. Set a par per daypart, and prep to the next one.

Where the numbers come from: your POS's sales by item for the same weekday over the last three or four weeks, split by hour. A pack par is drinks sold in that daypart, plus a small buffer (two or three packs). Prep the morning and lunch pars before you open, and the afternoon par in the 2 pm lull.

Weekends get their own sheet. A Saturday at a bar near a park or a gym looks nothing like a Tuesday.

The smoothie pack build card

One card per smoothie, laminated, at the pack station. It's what makes pack 40 the same as pack 1.

Weigh, don't eyeball. A scale at the pack station costs less than a week of over-portioned mango.

The produce yield test for pressed juice

If you press juice, the cost of a 16 oz bottle depends on how much juice a case gives you, and that changes with the season and the supplier. Run a yield test when you change suppliers, and every couple of months anyway.

A made-up example: 10 lb of carrots as bought, 9.2 lb after trim, 52 fl oz of juice. That's 5.2 fl oz per pound as bought, so a 16 oz bottle of straight carrot juice takes about 3.1 lb. If tomorrow's par is 12 bottles, the prep cook needs about 37 lb of carrots out of the cooler.

Press only to your par. Our juice and smoothie bar checklists cover the label and warning rules for juice you bottle and keep.

The daily prep and par sheet

Print one per day. The opener fills in the left half before the doors open, and the 2 pm person the right half.

The last column feeds next week's pars. If the green pack is thrown out three days running, lower its afternoon par. If it ran out by noon, raise the morning one. Our food waste log covers what to write down and how to review it.

Where Mays fits

• A prep sheet per daypart, or per day. Under Inventory → Prep, make a sheet called AM prep or Saturday, and add a line for each item with its Target qty. Today shows the target, what's on hand and a Suggested amount for items you stock and count, and Print gives the station a paper copy with the date. See Prep sheets.
• The freezer count at close, from the phone. Add an Inventory Count task to the closing checklist with the packs, fruit bags and bases, each with a Min Stock and a Case Size. When something is under its minimum, Mays adds a Restock Order task for the managers, with how much to order rounded to whole cases, and sends them a notification. See Inventory-count and restock tasks.
• Cost per smoothie. A recipe in Inventory → Recipes is one serving, priced from your vendor prices with a Yield % per ingredient, so trim loss on pineapple or kale is in the cost. Put your yield test result there. See Recipes and plate costing.

What Mays doesn't do yet: a prep sheet line has one target, so dayparts need their own sheets, and packs you make yourself show the full target every time, because Mays doesn't keep stock of things you make. Use-by dates and pack labels stay on paper. And the restock task orders back to the minimum, not to a par, so set Min Stock to the amount you want after a delivery.

Prep to the rush

Pars by daypart, packs built from a card, and juice pressed to a tested yield. The line moves, and less fruit goes in the bin.

Start your free trial: 30 days, every module, no card needed. Or book a walkthrough and we'll set up your prep sheets and freezer count with you.