KimmyeBohannon1
Lexington, KY - Kimmye Bohannon was looking for a health boost, but it didn’t take long for her to recognize a new business opportunity.
Bohannon, who had become familiar with the benefits of drinking vegetable juice at trendy juice bars in New York, wanted to add the healthful beverages to her daily regimen. Squeezing the nutrients out of fresh veggies such as kale, carrots and beets can be a labor-intensive process, and she began last fall by pooling her efforts with a neighbor. Soon more friends were asking if they could share in the fruits of her labor, and within months, what began with a few friends had grown to a customer base of 100 weekly subscribers for her fast-growing Lexington business, The Weekly Juicery.
Bohannon, who most recently has worked as a private consultant after spending 14 years working in financial management with JPMorgan, got the idea for her juice-delivery business after reading an article in a yoga magazine about a soup-delivery business in Vermont. To share the health benefits of her vegetable juices, Bohannon decided she would make it convenient by signing customers up by the week and delivering her drinks right to their doorsteps.
“People really are looking for an easy way to be healthy and make healthy choices,” Bohannon said. “If you just do it one time, you don’t really get the benefit of juicing.”
The response has been greater than Bohannon expected. For $35 per week, customers receive a morning delivery of glass bottles filled with 16 ounces of fresh and mostly organic vegetable juice for four days, from Monday through Thursday. The company’s local delivery zone includes both homes and businesses in downtown Lexington, along with the Chevy Chase and Ashland Park neighborhoods and parts of the University of Kentucky’s campus.
“It’s sort of like the milkman of days gone by,” Bohannon said. “Delivery is a lost art in business. It’s tricky to make work, and a lot of people have abandoned it, but our customers really appreciate the service.”
The selection is the same every week. Monday brings a green lemonade made from a head of romaine lettuce, 12 stalks of kale, cucumber, lemon and ginger. Tuesday’s sweet beet punch is extracted from fresh beets, half a head of romaine and a pound of carrots, among other ingredients. On Wednesday, clients can choose from a spicy carrot cider or Bohannon’s carrot juice with a twist, both of which are made from roughly three pounds of carrots. Thursday’s cool kale energy drink wraps up the week with more kale, cucumber, beets and ginger.
Bohannon stays connected to her customers through an online blog. She also sends regular emails to her clients with information on the health benefits of their drinks, including a tally of the vegetables that went into the making of their beverages.
In addition to its daily deliveries, The Weekly Juicery also makes some weekly deliveries to as far as Jessamine County and even transports frozen juices for monthly subscribers at a yoga studio in Murray, Ky. As a result, Bohannon’s business uses an ever-growing heap of produce.
“We’ll buy whatever we can locally, just as long as we can keep up with demand,” Bohannon said. “We use a lot of vegetables. We juiced 1,422 carrots on Wednesday. We use 96 heads of romaine a week, 80 pounds of cucumbers at least, and 90 pounds of kale.”
Buying produce in such large quantities has been challenging, Bohannon said. She uses organic, local produce whenever possible, but sourcing some ingredients that way, such as lemons and limes, is not possible. She is currently working with Elmwood Farm in Georgetown, Ky., to supply her company’s need for fresh vegetables during the upcoming growing season, and she plans to reach out to other local farms as well.
In addition to a fresher taste, Bohannon said she can get more use out of her vegetables by sourcing them locally. Beets picked locally, for instance, can be delivered with still fresh and pliable, vitamin-rich stalks and roots, parts which usually have to be discarded before the vegetables travel long distances. During the winter, she has been buying her ingredients through the wholesale company Creation Gardens because of their wider network.
And The Weekly Juicery’s growing popularity has also caused a need for new space for its business operation. The company was previously borrowing space at a local commercial kitchen, but Bohannon plans to move The Weekly Juicery into its own newly established location on Lexington’s Old Vine Street in May. The new location will include retail space where customers can order custom-blended vegetable juice beverages a la carte, along with wheatgrass shots and other healthful options, but Bohannon still expects regular juice deliveries to be the backbone of her business. She hopes the increased visibility will introduce more Lexingtonians to the value of adding fresh vegetable juice to their daily diets and expand her subscriber base as a result.
“Juicing in general, it was considered a very granola, earthy practice,” Bohannon said. “Now it is becoming very mainstream.”
It’s not about keeping up with the latest diet trends, Bohannon said. The key is simply to make it easy for people, and to help them make the practice a natural part of their regular routine.
“You are going to get a healthy result without a lot of gimmicks,” she said, “if you just keep making the right choices.”