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Originally and chiefly American English, the colloquial phrase the juice is worth the squeeze means: the benefits of an endeavour are enough to outweigh the effort of pursuing it.
The reference is to the labour-intensive process of squeezing fruit to produce fresh juice.
The phrase the juice is worth the squeeze occurs, for example, in the following from a review of Visceral, the debut album of Royal Bloom, a rock group from Ayrshire, Scotland, published in the Alloa & Hillfoots Advertiser (Alloa, Clackmannanshire, Scotland) of Wednesday 7th December 2022 [The Weekender: page 14, column 1]:
The Weekender has gleaned a little added insight from frontman Lewis Wise who gives us a Track by Track of Visceral…
Track 1—LIQUIDATORS
The title originally came from learning about what they called the men who cleaned up after the Chornobyl disaster and has no correlation with the actual song, it just stuck.
Liquidators was our final attempt at jamming out before we went to record the album. We knew there was one left in us, and it turns out the juice was worth the squeeze as we came out with one of our favourite tracks.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase the juice is worth the squeeze that I have found:
1-: From one of the unconnected paragraphs making up the column Diary of A Dairy Wife, by Louise Hill, published in the Merced Sun-Star (Merced, California, USA) of Friday 6th February 1959 [page 8, column 2]:
HOSPITALITY is that bit of something that makes a hamburger taste like a T-bone steak.
YOU ARE aging when you think twice—“Is the juice worth the squeeze?”
THE COMPENSATION for “leppy” (motherless) lambs is the happiness dancing from the eyes of the youngsters who adopt them.
2-: From The Evening Sun (Baltimore, Maryland, USA) of Friday 18th August 1972 [City and State Section: page C2, column 4]:
Local Schoolbus-Body Firms Score County’s Purchase From Indiana Company
By Jeff ValentineThe purchase of 168 Baltimore county schoolbuses from a Wayne, (Ind.) firm to replace those damaged by tropical storm Agnes has been termed “improper” by two local bus body companies.
James Synder, of the Hampstead-based Synder Bus Company, yesterday complained that the school system “never even gave me a shot” at the $1.2 million bus contract awarded last month without competitive bidding.
[…]
Because buses are regularly replaced only every 10 years, the large order of new buses now will hurt his business in the county for years to come, Mr. Snyder [sic] said.
“Frankly, there isn’t much anybody can do about it now,” the bus executive reflected. “I don’t think the juice would be worth the squeeze to go back now and rebid the contract.”
3-: From The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA) of Wednesday 3rd April 1974 [page 31, column 1]:
Uncapping independent wells termed answer
RUTHER GLEN—An oil company president here serving on a 12-member retail advisory board to the Federal Energy Office (FEO) says that crude oil supplies can be increased by uncapping oil wells of independent producers.
Oran V. Jarrell of Ruther Glen, president of Jarrell Oil Co., said that these wells in the United States were producing only 10 to 25 barrels of oil a day before they were capped.
“The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze,” Jarrell said for the small amount of crude oil produced by the independent companies, which also produce 60 per cent of the crude oil in the country. If the firms are encouraged to reopen the wells, he indicated, then supplies would increase and prices decrease.
4-: From the Green Bay Press-Gazette (Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA) of Saturday 5th October 1974 [page A11, column 8]:
Jobless Funding Could Begin Tuesday
By MIKE SHEMANSKI
Press-Gazette Staff WriterThe use of more than $129,000 in federal funds for on-the-job training of unemployed persons by 11 non-profit organizations throughout Brown County could begin Tuesday […].
[…]
[Brown County Executive Don] Holloway said […], “I do not have the enthusiasm for the program that some people have. It’s another form of welfare. I also object to it . . . because the money appropriated would put 175,000 people on the government payroll. […]”
Claiming the concept was good, Holloway said, “But in so many of these federally funded programs the juice is not worth the squeeze.” He later added, “If we have to put on two or three people to handle the paper work it wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. If it becomes a monstrosity just to implement, we will not get into it.”
5-: From The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) of Tuesday 9th December 1975 [page 1, column 4]:
Voters Will Decide Today On $48.9 Million Bond Question
By JIM GRAY“The juice is worth the squeeze,” Mayor Maynard Jackson and City Council President Wyche Fowler said Monday on the eve of a $48.9 million bond referendum that has been billed as a vote for Atlanta’s future.
The city’s 194,772 voters will be asked to approve a tax increase of 1.7 mills in return for a new downtown library and improvements to streets, traffic control, parks, the Grant Park Zoo, the Cyclorama and storm sewers.
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