Cold-press juice bar The Big Squeezy will open its second location next week inside Alexander’s Highland Market, setting the stage for a busy spring and summer for the Baton Rouge-based company.
Aside from opening the second location, the company will begin selling its juices wholesale to stores in about eight weeks, co-founder Kim Matsko says. The company is also working on a children’s line called The Little Squeezy and developing an all-natural juice-based energy drink in the LSU AgCenter’s Food Incubator.
“I’ve been working on it all for a long time. It’s crazy that it’s all happening at once,” Matsko says.
First, The Big Squeezy will open inside the café Thursday at Alexander’s Highland Market, 18111 Highland Road.
Matsko says she has been selling her products at the store’s farmers market and store executives wanted to sell her juices inside the store, but she did not have a wholesaler’s license. So they decided to give her some space in the store’s café area.
All the juices will be made at the original location near the Perkins Road overpass and transported to the market. Smoothies and wheatgrass shots will, however, be made on site, she says. They will also offer free tastings and samplings.
Matsko says Alexander’s opens a whole new market for the company. It’s about 10 miles away from the Perkins Road location, and Matsko says it will allow many of their customers coming from New Orleans to visit without enduring the worst of Baton Rouge’s traffic.
Lathan Alexander, owner of Alexander’s Highland Market, says this collaboration between the two businesses is a direct result of the farmers market they host once a month, and is a natural progression for both companies. It also furthers the vision for Alexander’s Highland Market, which is to feature local products.
“I think this is a unique partnership that seemed to be apparent for both of us,” he says.
At the same time, Matsko has been working to make the juices ready to be sold at stores. To be placed on store shelves, the juices have to be pasteurized to extend their shelf life. To do that, Matsko says they are using high pressure processing, a process to pasteurize the juice that uses cold pressure instead of heat like normal pasteurization.
“We’ve been working on it for about a year,” she says.
Only five juices—Sweet Green, Skinny Green, Root Awakenings, Crazy Eight and Sweet Tart—will be available on store shelves, Matsko says. This will make The Big Squeezy the first “farm-to-bottle” juice company in the state, Matsko says. All the produce is farmed at two organic farms in California overseen by The Big Squeezy partner Ash Shoukry.
Matsko describes the physical and product expansions happening underway now as phase two of her plans. She has even bigger goals for the future, including making a push to get the juices in California, open several more stores—including locations in Lafayette and New Orleans—and develop other products like all-natural cocktail mixes.
—Ryan Broussard
