In August last year, the first Tribar opened in Hannam-dong. Tribar, the third F&B brand launched by JOH after Ilhochic and Second Kitchen. It serves properly brewed coffee and fresh juice with homely sandwiches.
Tell us a little about Tribar, the name.
In addition to the meaning of being third F&B brand of JOH, the name implies the tri-bar consists of coffee bar, juice bar, and snack bar. JOH has been name its F&B brands from the numerological motifs: Ilhochic (launched in Nonhyeon-dong in 2012) means either ‘Number one restaurants’ of JOH and the ‘good meal’; Second Kitchen (Hannam-dong, 2013) is literally the second restaurant of JOH, and hopefully, the ‘second kitchen’ for our customers.
We see so many juice bars nowadays. Is Tribar a part of that healthier juice trend?
Tribar has a different approaches from other juice bars in South Korea that emphasize being healthy. In fact, we don’t pay much attention to ‘detox’ or ‘cleanse’. JOH has long been trying to come up with ‘a new form of beverage brand.’ What we tried to do was to create ‘a frequented spot for JOH staffs’, just like we did for the most of our other brands.
Could you be more specific about it? .
We now have so many fancy places that serve beverages in Seoul. Yet, they tend to focus on coffee: if you feel like having a drink other than coffee, there’s few place to go. What if there’s a nice place that offers decent juice as well as coffee? It was where we come up with the idea of Tribar. It’s still fine to drink juice for one’s health, but what we tried to do was to create a place to enjoy in one’s daily life.
Then being healthy is not your main concern, right?
Being healthy is important, of course. However, we thought that we wouldn’t have to put special emphasis on being healthy. Everyone knows it is healthful to have freshly squeezed fruits and vegetables. Overemphasizing the health might be intimidating the customers who doesn’t want to look as if they worry about health too much, diet, or beauty. I think it is part of the reason why men are not attracted to juice bars.
We want to emphasize Tribar’s original juice recipes designed by professional mixologists.
I’ve heard that Tribar put so much works in developing its juice menu.
Developing appropriate juice menus for Tribar was the most important part of launching our first shop. Fortunately, we could make nice coffee since we had worked hard to understand coffee beans, roasting, and the machine for the beverage bar in Second Kitchen. Before we open Tribar the beverage team of Second Kitchen had worked very hard for months until they decided Tribar menus. They had tried almost 100 different juice recipes and the project team members sampled all of them to complete Tribar’s original tasted.
Not a single juice menu of Tribar is made of one ingredient. Usually three different kinds of fruits or vegetables are used in the juice. Therefore it took a long time to develop the recipes with perfect match of taste, color and fragrance. It felt similar with the process of developing season plates for Second Kitchen. However, the long and meticulous process resulted in Tribar’s original menus which are not likely to be available in homes or in other juice bars.
Which aspect have you put emphasis on?
We aimed to create a new kind of taste with vegetables that are not commonly used in juice: yam, avocado, and celery are the examples. Among others, we have spent the most time trying to decide the perfect blend of ingredients. Currently, one of the most popular menus in Tribar is Dr. Avo made of avocado. Our customers tend to tell us that they didn’t expect that the blend of avocado, lemon and apple would create such harmonized taste. Also, we have tried to create mouthfeels. We have tested our juice menus several times until we found a light, refreshing texture suitable for after-meal drinks. Also we had made some menus that contain pulps to give a feeling of fullness.
It is very impressive that Tribar has both juice and cocktail menus.
As a juice bar, we always have fresh fruits and use them to make unique cocktails not commonly served in other cocktail bars. For example, we squeeze a grapefruit whole to make a glass of Salty Dog, a vodka-based cocktail, upon the order. It made some customers of ours visit Tribar in order to experience unique cocktails. In fact, juice and cocktail share the essentially same process of blending various ingredients to maximize the taste, smells and the sight they have. Actually we have a former bartender among the mixologists who develop our beverage menus.
Tribar shows the price of each menu in details. How are they priced?
The prices are based on the flat costs of ingredients. The net amounts are the sum of specific amount added to the flat costs. Therefore, our pricing is flexible since the flat cost for fruits tend to fluctuate according to seasons. Some menus goes down in prices in certain season while other menus are sold in higher price. At first, we wanted to serve them at the price down to the single digit, but then the change would be a problem. So we have decided the price down to the double digit.
Tell us a little about coffee and sandwich menus.
We think coffee as important as juice menus. Tribar aims to be a place where you can enjoy a cup of coffee without burden.
Super Bites made of freshly-baked bread from Second Kitchen. The characteristic of the sandwich is its size as small as a smartphone: if a sandwich is too thick and heavy, you have to wrestle it with your mouth trying not to spill the fillings, which make it uncomfortable to enjoy the sandwich. Tribar sandwich is very thin with two slaps of flat-pressed bread, and wrapped in stiff package to make it neat to eat.
In its entirely open island kitchen, unique vigor and rhythm are created by our young male crews’ juice-making.
The space almost looks like a casual lounge bar.
From time to time, customers come inside and say they thought it must be a cocktail bar. We tried to avoid a conventional ‘good and healthy’ atmosphere, such as the ‘eco-friendly interior’ with off-white walls and warm, woody decorations. What we wanted to create was rather a wild, tough impression. Therefore we used black tone and steel finishing, placed high-top bar and stools to accentuate the modern image of the bar.
Have you ever been indecisive while designing the place?
I wasn’t completely sure about placing the large island kitchen in the middle of the space, since the room itself was not very spacious. However, it turned out to be a right choice. In this entirely open island kitchen, unique vigor and rhythm are created by our young male crews’ juice-making. Instead of putting tables and chairs inside, we decided to use the outside space. We set a sun shade to create a sense of belonging, and put tables and chairs along with H-beams which our customers can perch on. The open, extended sense of space is in harmony with Tribar’s concept.
Such a daring design for logos or menu plate.
Tribar, instead of being good and modest, tried to express an image of ‘Bad Juice.’ The design was carefully intended to show off the colorful, vivid image of our juice menus. Therefore we used black color, hand-written letters and bold texture here and there.
Any future plans?
Currently we’re developing a new season menus for coming autumn. Also, we’re trying to put menus consist of more kinds of vegetables, as customers’ responses to our first sets of menus have empowered us. We’re thinking about open branch shops outside Hannam-dong. The color concept of the store and the specialized menus may differ in each shop: Just as we have put some stress on the cocktail menus in the first Tribar in Hannam-dong, for example, other branches might specialize Bites menus or coffee. Further, we’re planning to run a brand partnership program to share our experience with much more customers.
