Staying Health with Fresh Juicing

helps through a pandemic (and year-round)

When the pandemic hit, Beyond Juice founder Mijo Alanis started listening. He listened to his employees, to franchise workers and, most importantly, to customers. One thing he learned through those conversations was that the health value of his product was more important now, during the pandemic, than ever.

“We did know one thing: You need a strong immune system,” he said. “If you need a strong immune system, how do you get your immune system stronger?”

So Alanis decided to order plenty of vitamin C, and included it for free as a booster in smoothies and juices as a way to help people stay healthy, and also to “let them know that our community means a lot to us.”

Beyond Juice serves made-to-order fresh-pressed juices, smoothies and healthy wraps and sandwiches featuring fresh, nutrient-packed ingredients like cucumber, beet, carrot, apple, kale, spinach, lemon, wheatgrass, cucumber, celery and ginger. Vitamin C was just an extra boost to an inherently healthy product. The company also sells an array of cold-pressed bottled juices.

Juicing—whether cold-pressed or fresh-pressed—is a great way to get the natural benefit of fruits and vegetables through a tasty beverage. The liquid extracted in the juicing process retains the phytonutrients in the fruit and vegetables, according to the Mayo Clinic1. Cold-pressed juice, because it is not pasteurized, may retain more nutrients than fresh-pressed.

Alanis had already been thinking about immunity back in November 2019 when Beyond Juice developed the recipe for the “Hero,” a juice with apple, ginger, turmeric, lemon, black pepper and zinc. The recipe was designed to fight the flu. As the flu season waned in early 2020, sales of the drink began to taper off and Alanis planned to put the drink on hiatus for the year. But then the pandemic hit, and he realized there was a group that truly needed it: front line workers, whom he calls the “true heroes” of the pandemic.

In March, Beyond Juice made its biggest purchase ever to restock the Hero, to support its customers and front line workers alike in staying healthy.

“We’ve sold more of that juice than we ever had and donated around $10,000 worth of juice to our front line workers and firefighters,” says Alanis. The Hero is still a top-seller at Beyond Juice.

During the pandemic, Beyond Juice also began selling make-your-own- smoothie kits and coloring books to help people cope with the transition to stay-at-home life. They also started delivering curbside and selling staple groceries—any way to help support their customer communities while keeping staff employed.