Great Barrington — When the warm weather leaves, it’s harder to sell ice cream but easy to sell organic juice.
SoCo Creamery is betting on that in its partnership with Oasis Juice Lab, opening Thursday (October 27) at SoCo’s soft serve shop on Main Street, formerly SoCo Too and Froyo before that. You’ll still be able to buy soft serve here, but now there’s a choice — you can also get fresh juices made on the spot, courtesy of the Sprout Brothers.
The Sprout Brothers are the children of the Sproutman. Ari and Noah Meyerowitz took over their father Steve’s sprout-growing and wellness business after he was killed in a two-car crash last year in Connecticut. Since then Noah and Ari have been juggling the work and travel demands of the busy Sproutman legacy with this new venture ever since SoCo CEO Erik Bruun approached them as a way to keep SoCo’s second store alive off-season.
Bruun said when SoCo Too opened this year it was “immediately obvious that we would need to diversify.” He said it was his customers who ultimately led to the juice bar idea, since they were often asking about the nutritional content of the store’s frozen yogurt. “That was the clue.”
He also said that a shop that sells only self-serve frozen yogurt offers a “terrible atmosphere” for customers. “It’s static. We wanted to add something more engaging.”
So the company, Bruun said, “decided to take a risk” and partner with “these terrific young men.”
On top of all his work for the Sproutman company and now Oasis, Noah, 17, is still in high school. “They give me lots of flexibility,” he said of his teachers at the Waldorf High School. “But I’m taking half days this week. I’m also applying to colleges.” He laughed a little nervously.
While Noah still does “operations” for Sproutman, Ari, 26, will continue to be in charge of new development and projects while seeing to the smooth opening of Oasis. He’s the “everyday visionary,” Noah said.
Ari said he’s good at trade shows, and Noah said, while he can also interact with the public, he is “happy to stare at a spreadsheet.”
“We decided to split our roles,” Noah said.
The Juice Lab will work like this: you go and get your “deconstructed juice” out of a fridge case. You can see all your veggies and fruits in the big jar. It’s all organic and local when possible. It’s all been tested and measured.
“A half-gallon jar of vegetables is 12 ounces of juice–that’s how concentrated juices are,” Noah said. “One pound of carrots makes 8 ounces of juice. You can get the nutrients of a pound of carrots but you don’t have to chew a pound of carrots.”
“Some of the juices are sweet,” Ari said, “and some can replace your lunch. The V8 is a whole meal.”
The V8 has celery, parsley, kale, cucumbers, tomatoes, lemon, tamari and garlic.
Then there are 2-ounce “Supershots” that Noah calls “ultra potent wellness boosters.” There’s a “flu stopper/cold crusher” with cayenne, ginger and lemon.
The brothers said they’ll also add or change out the juices based on feedback. “We’ll try to encompass every flavor and the whole gamut to appeal to everyone,” Ari said. “But for now, we’re keeping the menu simple and small so we can stay on top of it.”
They’ll also sell their father’s juice-fasting books at Oasis as well as other Sproutman sprouting products, seeds and books.
The Juice Lab has three juicers from a California company their father did business with as a practitioner of juice fasting and author of books on the subject. They’re called “therapeutic juicers,” and Noah explained that is because they don’t harm or heat the vegetables with friction.
“Most juicers can damage the fragile structure of the vegetable,” he added. “These spin as fast as we chew, just over 100 revolutions per minute.”
These juicers, Ari added, “were designed with the human mouth in mind. They work like teeth.” He showed me the gears and how they remove the fiber.
“The juice is the fastest way for the nutrients to reach the bloodstream,” Noah said.
“Vegetables become medicine,” Ari noted.
And, together, the brothers looked at each other and quoted their father: “Use juicing to turn your kitchen into your farmacy.”
Oasis will celebrate its grand opening on Thursday, Oct. 27, from 5:30 to 7p.m.
