Beet Jar, est 2014
In 2013, Beet Jar was created by two vegans: a visual artist and a freeform drummer. They believed that eating animals and consuming animal byproducts is about as antiquated as sending telegraphs, using fountain pens, and curing coughs with heroin.
Before opening the Ohio City location, they introduced and exposed the Beet Jar brand by doing juice pop-ups throughout 2013…and these other WTF things:
They camped outside on the sidewalk in front of a Vitamix store for 18 hours in order to obtain their first two Vitamix blenders. The store was hosting a promotion before the opening of the Solon, Ohio store. They had some pillows, pretended they didn’t know one another, and both scored a new blender and some sore bones.
During buildout, they paid construction workers in home-cooked meals, like pierogi and kale chips, since they didn’t have much of a budget. It’s no secret that Beet Jar nearly didn’t happen because of lack of funding. Joseph had to change his last name in order to distance himself from identity theft (from his father!). Rather than pressing charges, he was reincarnated.
For the first four months of being open, they juiced by f*#@ing hand – literally on a manual citrus press using arms, shoulders, full body weight, and imminent tears. They finally had enough money to obtain the juicer needed at the time (Norwalk). They’ve since moved onto Good Nature; that’s a whole other modern fable.
Fun Fact: a used Honda Accord equals two commercial refrigerators. Joseph sold his only means of transportation to obtain the first two Beet Jar coolers.
It’s all about the sacrifice and the scrap in you. To open the doors of Beet Jar, it took a year of tough decision-making and endless hours of taking a beating in the proverbial mosh pit.
a rad semi-underground Cleveland travel guide by Thomas Sawyer