Business Spotlight:

For La Jollans Carol and Jonathan Goldwasser, eating healthy isn’t just a lifestyle, it’s a business model that enables them to share their passions with the community. And now the owners of Juice Crafters and Parakeet Cafe have decided to rebrand their juice bars this month with the name Joose Lab.

“It’s still Jonathan and me behind the brand,” Carol Goldwasser said. “We just wanted to renovate the image. Everything people love about Juice Crafters will stay the same; the essence is staying.”

Juice Crafters is “more than a juice bar, we’re a healthy lifestyle,” Goldwasser said. “We offer juices, smoothies, acai bowls and wellness shots.”

The Goldwassers began opening their food businesses seven years ago with the first Juice Crafters in La Jolla. Seven years before that, the younger of the Goldwassers’ two daughters battled cancer as an infant, a struggle that shaped the family’s desire to promote healthy eating.

“She had to undergo chemotherapy when she was 6 months old,” Goldwasser said of her daughter. “So I became very aware of the health benefits of food and how much impact the food she ate had on her health.”

Goldwasser said she could see, via weekly blood draws, “how whatever we fed her would change her blood chemistry. I found a little pathway to help her through food, so I started learning whatever I could about food.”

The Goldwassers’ daughter is now a healthy 14-year-old; their older daughter is 16.

Goldwasser said feeding her family became “a passion of mine” and drove her “to share, to make this purposeful, to bring healthy options to the community.”

The Goldwassers brought Juice Crafters to San Diego through a partnership with the originators of Juice Crafters, which is based in Los Angeles.

In every Juice Crafters product, Goldwasser said, “the most important priority is the quality of the ingredients.” The business sources “the highest-quality ingredients we can get from local farms that use sustainable and organic practices.”

Juice Crafters then uses the ingredients to make products that “help your body function to its best ability,” she said.

Joose Lab, formerly Juice Crafters, offers juices, smoothies, acai bowls and wellness shots.

(Courtesy)

“You wouldn’t want to drink a green juice made of conventional greens,” Goldwasser said, “because then you will be ingesting pesticides. Quality is very important when it comes to juicing. You want the nutrients; you don’t want the pesticides.”

Goldwasser and her husband opened three more Juice Crafters locations in Little Italy, Coronado and Carmel Valley.

“It was our vision to go as big as we can,” Goldwasser said. “The motor behind everything is spreading healthy good around, to reach as many people as we can.”

After the success of Juice Crafters, the Goldwassers opened Parakeet Cafe in La Jolla and expanded it to the same other neighborhoods as Juice Crafters.

Running the Juice Crafters and Parakeet Cafe locations is Goldwasser’s “dream and my joy,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere. We’re only improving and making things better for our customers while maintaining the same quality and awesome drinks they have always loved.”

For more information, visit jooselab.com.

— Business Spotlight features commercial enterprises that support this publication. ◆