Hi Square Sellers! This week's interview is with Super Juiced in Oakland, CA. The owners discuss their community-focused business, current adjustments for the Covid crisis, and upcoming evolution from juice bar to a health-forward bodega.
Tell us about your business.
It started as a personal journey for us in 2012. We had some ailments and low energy and after a lot of exploration pinpointed it to our foods. We got into juicing and we started to feel amazing. We decided we wanted to share this with our community members, so we started to do little pop-ups around Oakland.
The response was super strong. Each pop-up was received really well. Friends started pushing us to start something. In 2015 with the help of word of mouth within our community we learned that the space in Swan’s Market became available. We jumped in and immediately started to raise some funds. A lot of our female mentors were already in the marketplace so it felt really right.
We signed the lease in May of 2015, our daughter was born in June. We come from social justice backgrounds and had worked in non-profit management. Previously we didn’t have the business background to get any traction with commercial leases. We had applied unsuccessfully to 5 locations before this opportunity finally arrived.
So we did the build out on a shoestring. We got a $10k grant from the city of Oakland, took out a couple of personal loans. We were really passionate about it.
We opened in November of 2015 but with limited hours for the 1st 6 months. July of 2016 was our grand opening. We built a really dedicated customer base. From the beginning we integrated discounts for Oakland unified school districts and subsidized donations for local cancel patients. We struggled really hard to pay the bills. We buy the very best ingredients, we never compromise on quality and it hurt in the beginning but it has paid off long term. We also make all our own nut milks which no one is doing in the East Bay.
We started building out our catering department and linked into some great events and community partnerships the Afro-tech health summit, Pixar’s Black Business Fair, Bryant Terry’s 100 Honoree’s Brunch, Google’s International Womens’s Day Event, Sunset Magazine, Mill’s College, Clif Bar and many others. It was inspiring to see how the larger community responded to our product and the brand.
Tell us about your approach to employees.
We employee primarily queer, POC employees. We wanted to be sure to provide opportunities for local folks. Typically we have a staff of 12. We are truly invested in the leadership development of our team so that they can take the skills they learn at Super Juiced and continue to build on them.
What are you doing to adapt to the Covid Crisis?
Initially we did a small fundraiser to help with employee retention. We’ve applied for a lot of grants but those are moving slow. We started with a 1 day a week pre-order pick-up and marketed it on Instagram . It was pretty tough to organize and manage logistically so we just launched our Square Online Store. That was a big milestone for us and we had great support getting it live.
Curbside
With the online store we’re now able to be open 3 days a week comfortably. Our customers pre-order off the site and when they arrive for pick-up we carry it out to our outside courtyard and have a system for keeping it contact-less. No one comes into the shop.
Donations
We started a weekly donation for Covid frontline workers and added the donations link on our online store. We’re actually bundling our juices and immunity shots along with masks and some other goods from local seller friends.
Health-forward Bodega
Because of the crisis, we’re now working to reimagine ourselves as a health-forward bodega concept. We’re still mapping it out but we’re expanding a lot of our offerings but being sure it’s still cohesive to our business. We don’t want to start selling TP or random canned foods. We source almost exclusively from local companies with high integrity supply chain practices including our produce purveyor Veritable Vegetable.
New product offerings
- CSA-style organic produce boxes
- Recurring juice subscriptions
- Make-at-home smoothie kits
- Start bottling our fresh nut milks
- Grab ‘n go salads, frozen soups, vegan cashew cheesecake
The Future of Juice Shops
We’re going to continue to strengthen the tools we didn’t have in place yet. It’s vital we continue to provide our community with work opportunities as well as organic, healing, immunity boosting foods. We built that into our business from the very beginning. It’s an essential part of our mission and why we are in business.
Thank you Rana + Eman!
