A few years ago, my friend and I passed a juice bar and he asked, “What’s the deal with juice bars? I can get juice at the grocery store, or make it at home. Why do people go to these places?”
It was a valid question. You can buy “fresh” fruit and vegetable juice in grocery stores; yet it may have been sitting there for a week. Some people obviously think there’s enough of a difference in quality to patronize specialty juice bars. A host of them have opened in our area in the past decade, and more are on the way.
To figure out who is buying these fresh juices, and why, I posed a question to Hayden Slater, founder and chief executive officer of Pressed Juicery (www.pressedjuicery.com), a chain that started in 2010 and now has 23 locations. Are people drinking the same amount of juice they did years ago, but buying it from specialty places? I expected him to claim that juice was the wave of the future and an ever-expanding market. I was surprised when he replied that he wasn’t sure.
“Juice has been around for thousands of years; it’s nothing new or revolutionary, but the [juice industry] has evolved and people want a product that is better and fresher,” said Slater, who left a career in television in 2007. “I think what’s happening in the juice [industry] is what happened with coffee, how it went from buying ground Folgers or instant crystals to specialists. Starbucks created this retail formula and it started a demand for the artisanal form. In a way we’ve gone backwards; people used to juice their own oranges, and then came convenience products like frozen and pasteurized juices, even powders like Tang. We’ve brought back the cold-pressed, fresh and raw category that brings back the flavor and nutrients, and it’s making noise in this area.”
This would be a satisfying answer if modern juice bars were selling mere artisanal versions of commodity products like orange or apple juice. But these establishments also offer items that are blends of fruits, vegetables and herbs that only need booze to be called a cocktail. I pointed out that while drinking juice may be traditional, the concoctions sold by modern juice bars are unlike any traditional beverage on Earth. Who, I asked, had the idea of mixing beet or carrot with orange juice, or any of the other outré ideas that are now available at most juice shops? Hayden thought a moment and then mentioned David Otto, who founded the Beverly Hills Juice Club (www.beverlyhillsjuice.com) in 1975.
Otto’s road to juicing started differently compared to most other nutritional health advocates. He didn’t start juicing because he was personally unhealthy and seeking a cure, because he had a philosophical or religious reason to lead a pure life, or because he thought he figured out a secret about how the digestive system worked. He changed his diet, his life and the way Americans drink their vegetables because a giant angry bull he was hallucinating told him to. Otto had dropped acid and ordered a steak in a restaurant (in 1967 this kind of decision wasn’t as odd it would be now), and as he cut into his T-bone the spirit of the bull appeared in front of him. Otto “had a mental communication with this creature,” and decided he would stop eating creatures. This started his journey into vegetarianism and evolution from a talent booker for local bands to a juicing and natural foods guru.
I called Otto, who at 79 years old is still at his shop on Beverly Boulevard, and mentioned that Hayden told me he incited the juice bar craze. Otto was modestly unwilling to claim credit.
“That’s very nice of him. It is the general perception in Southern California that I started doing this in 1975, but there was one juice bar that was in business before I was, at the Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles. It was called La Hood’s…. There was another guy in Redondo Beach named Bruce who also had a juice bar back then, but he was kinda irregular — if the waves were good the store was closed and he was out surfing. There were also health food stores here and there that made fresh juices, but [Bruce’s Juices and LaHood’s] were the only places that specialized in juice. The guy who really should get the kudos is a guy named Norman Walker, who wrote books about the health benefits of juice. He died at about 100 years old after a lifetime of promoting juices. That’s where I got a lot of my information.”
I’ve been unable to find out much about Bruce the juicer, but Norman Walker has an interesting history. Walker was a pioneer of juicing fruit and vegetables for health, and his 1936 book, Fruit and Vegetable Juices: What’s Missing In Your Body? was the first to champion juice as a cure-all. His theories about the functioning of the human digestive system were definitely wrong and he repeatedly inflated his credentials, claiming to be a doctor despite a lack of any degree.
Nevertheless, the diet he invented fits modern ideas about nutritionally balanced vegetarianism. It worked for him, since he lived to be 99 and was reportedly physically and mentally vigorous into old age. Walker also invented one of the first mechanical juicers, though it is less efficient and harder to clean than those used today. This matters in the realm of juicing, since some advocates claim that the method and speed of juice extraction alters the nutritional content. Furthermore, juice bar proprietors are frequently partisan of different technologies. Hayden Slater rhapsodized about the merits of the system he uses.
“We use [the term] ‘cold pressed’ to compare with pasteurized or heat-processed juice,” Salter said. “We do use a different process from places where the juice is blended right there using a centrifugal juicer. That makes a tasty product, but the way it is extracted starts it oxidizing immediately. You have to drink it extremely quickly. If you take it home or consume it later, the flavors and nutrients are lost. Our juices are made with the entire vegetable fruit or vegetable turned into a pulp, then subjected to 10,000 pounds of pressure in a refrigerated room. Some studies say that you get 90 percent more nutrients and enzymes that way. Our shelf life is longer for that reason.”
I was curious about the change in juicing technology, and in the meaning of ‘cold pressed’ since I had never seen a competing product that was called hot pressed. So I asked Otto about it. He explained that juicing technology was a lot more primitive and unsuited to mass production when he started his business.
“I built my own press because I couldn’t find one that was big enough and did what I wanted,” he said. “Every press that was made back then was extremely slow. Back in 1975 I put the words ‘cold pressed’ on the side of it, and that’s the buzz word everywhere now. I don’t know what it means, I just made it up. Maybe it came to me because we pressed it in a cold room.”
There certainly is a difference in flavor, and probably one in the nutritional value, between supermarket juice pressed days before consumption and the fresh products. As time goes by, the water in the juice begins to separate, the bright, sharp flavors are lost to oxidization and any citrus pulp in the mix begins infusing its bitter flavor.
Beverly Hills Juice Club, Pressed Juicery and other local producers all offer exotic blends that include fruits, vegetables, nuts and greens. Menus everywhere seem to be getting more baroque. Grocery stores and big chains like Starbucks now offer their own juice products. Fresh juices have moved beyond the core group of health enthusiasts and, for better or worse, are now part of the American mainstream. Better, because all modern products are healthier than the powders and concentrates they replaced. If there is a downside, it’s that the new business climate might make it hard for young entrepreneurs with a juicer and some fresh ideas about health and flavor. That is ever the fate of pioneers like Dave Otto, who create a world in which they must compete with their own ideas gone mainstream.