Side Dishes: Juice Bar moves inside
After months of slinging fresh juices on Burlington’s Bank Street, Steph Steeves and Mike Winters have moved inside for the winter. Their Juice Bar now holds court just inside the Church Street doors of the Burlington Town Center — and just outside Starbucks Coffee Company.
The placement comes with the opportunity to take on the coffee Goliath, Winters says. For the frigid months, the pair is offering powerful, ground, raw coffee beans, which they call “green caffeine,” as a supplement to their fresh juices.
Winters says the fine, light-green powder preserves much of the caffeine lost during the brewing process, solving the conundrum of those who feel torn between their morning juice and their morning coffee. “The body high is longer, and there is less of a crash. It has all of the caffeine you need or want,” he says of the beans, which he and Steeves purchase from Uncommon Grounds.
To approximate the coffee experience even more closely, Steeves and Winters can add the powder to their new roster of hot drinks: a Hot Ginger Pear Cider with fresh ginger and local pear and apple juices; and a Chocolate Apple — a juiced Champlain Orchards apple blended with ginger and raw chocolate from Holy Cacao.
Steeves and Winters had to abandon their solar-powered stand for a mall kiosk, which they’ll run seven days a week for the next five months — until, Winters hopes, they can take over a brick-and-mortar space downtown. “That will be the next step,” he says.