How was coffee made compared with this juice process?

ChaPanda's fruit and vegetable juice line, including wheatgrass Cat Grass Juice and the sweet pepper drink, has lifted store sales but pushed back-kitchen staff into heavy manual juicing. Stores use shaved ice machines instead of juicers, so workers knead and squeeze filter bags by hand to extract juice from thick puree. During peak hours demand outruns supply, and employees describe the workload as overwhelming.

The process differs from how coffee is made. Mandarin oranges are peeled and seeded, then juiced separately; sweet peppers, apples, and other ingredients are crushed together, and the filtered mix is stirred with mandarin juice and ice. Coffee instead relies on grinding roasted beans and extracting them with water, a process description of making coffee that needs no hand-squeezing of filter bags.

Tea Baidao recently launched its "Super Veggie" drink series, from the wheatgrass-starring "Cat Grass Juice" to the sweet pepper mixed fruit "Vitamin C Fast Burn Sweet Pepper," attracting a large number of consumers eager to try these novel combinations, which also drove store sales growth. However, the flip side of the product's popularity is the heavy manual juicing task facing back-kitchen staff. Because stores use shaved ice machines rather than professional juicing equipment, after fruits and vegetables are blended into a thick puree, employees must repeatedly knead and squeeze filter bags to extract juice. During peak hours, demand outstrips supply, leaving many staff members crying out in despair. This article takes you behind the scenes of this fruit-and-vegetable juice craze to learn about the real production process and the voices of employees.

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Recently, many beverage brands have been rolling out fruit-and-vegetable product lines. Tea Baidao successfully broke out with a "Cat Grass Juice" made from wheatgrass as the core ingredient, which not only drew a large number of consumers to place orders and try it, but also let the brand taste the market dividends brought by fruit-and-vegetable drinks.

Soon after, Tea Baidao seized the momentum to launch another new product, pairing everyday kitchen sweet peppers with various fruits to create a fruit-and-vegetable juice that netizens described as "explosive" — "Vitamin C Fast Burn Sweet Pepper." After the new product hit the shelves, quite a few curious customers gave it a try, and store sales rose accordingly.

However, as fruit-and-vegetable juice sales climbed along with consumer enthusiasm, the employees constantly juicing in the back kitchen, facing an endless stream of orders from the receipt printer, could not feel happy about it at all.

According to the official introduction, this new product involves quite a few ingredients. Besides sweet peppers, it also includes fruits such as mandarin oranges, pineapple, and apples. To ensure the finished product's taste, the sweet pepper juice preparation process is relatively complicated.

According to staff descriptions, the fresh mandarin oranges delivered to the store every day need to be peeled and seeded first, then juiced separately; sweet peppers, apples, and other ingredients are mixed and put into another machine to be crushed, and the filtered mixed juice is then stirred evenly with mandarin juice, ice cubes, and other ingredients in proportion — only then is a cup of sweet pepper juice considered complete.

Among all the steps, the one that employees complain about most is filtering and squeezing juice. From production videos shared by staff, it can be seen that Tea Baidao stores are not equipped with professional juicers, but shaved ice machines. This means that after wheatgrass, apples, and other fruits and vegetables are put into the machine and blended, what comes out is a thick puree with the ingredients completely pulverized.

So, whenever the shaved ice machine stops working, the staff member standing by must pour the puree into a filter bag and repeatedly knead and squeeze the bag with both hands, forcing out bit by bit the remaining juice from the residue. What is frustrating is that although employees fill the shaved ice machine to the brim each time they prepare ingredients, and squeeze the puree with all their might during filtering, trying not to let any moisture in the pulp residue go to waste, the final amount of juice extracted is always very limited.

Many Tea Baidao employees reported that once peak hours arrive, the juice prepared in advance often quickly runs out, forcing them to repeat the juicing process over and over in the back kitchen, gripping the filter bags until their veins bulge. One employee complained: "The Cleanse Wheatgrass has endless wheatgrass liquid to squeeze, and it's gone after making just a few cups." "Even after juicing three times the amount, it's still just that little bit. Every time it comes to filtering the juice, I go crazy." "Just thinking about having to get up and go juice makes me not want to sleep."

It can be said that the "Super Veggie" series created by the brand is a fresh experience for consumers, but for store employees it is nothing short of an unspeakable nightmare. Fortunately, this series is currently only available in some cities, so employees who do not yet have to chop peppers and wash vegetables in the back kitchen do not have to bear the pressure of "human juicing" like their colleagues elsewhere. But everyone has also spoken up, hoping the brand absolutely will not roll out the fruit-and-vegetable juice nationwide.

As for those employees mired in busyness because of the fruit-and-vegetable juice, after finishing a day's back-kitchen work, they probably all have the same thought — "Tea Baidao, stop launching new products."

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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