It’s no secret that our founder, Lisa, has a deep-rooted passion for creating delicious recipes with ingredients straight from the garden. Garden of Flavor is truly Lisa's joy and dedication translated into a line of organic, cold-pressed juices. We wanted to share our story from her point of view:
A Growing Love for the Garden
As a child, my favorite thing was to spend time in the garden. I would come home every day from school and pick fresh strawberries. My mom and I grew very close because we loved growing things in the garden, always eager for vegetables and berries. Berries were a staple; we even had aronia berry bushes—that was my first introduction to aronia berries and their rich benefits.
Later in life, my mom developed cancer. And as a daughter, I wanted to help her heal. Juicing was something my mom had done off and on throughout her life. So, taking into account our shared love for gardening, I started learning more and more about the benefits of juicing. We began visiting different wellness centers in places like Mexico, California, and Germany. No matter what the treatment was, the one thing they all recommended was juicing. They stressed the importance of getting plenty of kale, spinach, and cucumber, which are all very alkalizing for the body. This is also when I learned about the importance of eating organic when possible. My mom found great relief in juicing those organic greens, it made her feel better from all of the medicines she was on. Even though my mom passed away, my love for juicing and the benefits stayed with me.
New Chapters
When I was at a turning point in my life and looking to heal myself from the hurt I was going through, I began juicing even more. Not long after, I was juicing for the neighbors and taking my juice to the farmer's market. Soon, I opened a juice bar in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. It was totally based on the honor system—I would juice one recipe per day, fill up the refrigerator, customers would grab their juice and leave money in the mason jar.
We have a local grocery store called Heinen's, and I called them one night... actually the day before Thanksgiving as I was driving by their corporate headquarters. I just said, "Hi, I make this really great juice. I'd like to talk to somebody about selling it in your stores."
The woman on the phone was just a delight! She put me in touch with a manager, who said “Anybody willing to call me at four o'clock the day before Thanksgiving can come on in!”. At first, he thought I was a little crazy but within a few weeks he learned more about the benefits and growing popularity of cold-pressed and asked me to come back. He gave me my start in terms of learning what a UPC was, how to make nutrition facts, etc. That's when Garden of Flavor started selling our juices into grocery stores. We were in Heinen's for a couple of months, before we started selling to our local Whole Foods grocery stores. Soon, we spread into the mid-Atlantic region and continued to grow from there.
To keep up with grocery demands, I had to open up a manufacturing facility. That's when we decided to go all-in and refrigerate the whole process. This would allow us to keep the juices fresh and delicious. Since then, our process really hasn't changed! We still bring in full bushels of fresh produce every morning and send out pressed juice by the evening.
Growing in Uncertainty
During the pandemic, we expanded our production capabilities. We added another 5,000 square feet of refrigerated production, which allows us to produce even more juice to keep up with demand!
Now we deliver our cold-pressed energy juices all the way on the west coast, and we’ve grown our website sales so that our customers can order our juice from anywhere in the US.
Our goal is to continue to grow while making only the purest product possible. We don't believe in cutting corners because our mission is based on a true love for juicing. This is about me juicing for you—and every single one of my individual customers. It's the same philosophy as when I had my juice bar.
Making organic, small-batch cold-pressed juice is how we've grown and will continue to grow. Watch the video version of this article on our YouTube
