We recently connected with Bill Johnson and have shared our conversation below.
Bill , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
Problem-Purpose-Passion-Prosperity
These words represent the origin story of the idea of Paradise Smoothie Juice Bar. Ron Bolden, Co-Founder | COO, and I (Bill Johnson, Co-Founder | CEO) happen to be next door neighbors. Each of us have had an extensive career of business ownership, operations, and development. Over the course of our weekend conversations sitting on my front porch, an opportunity presented itself that checked the boxes of things we were both passionate about which is health, wellness, and economic empowerment.
Both of our families, upon meeting each other, aligned in areas of health and wellness and the fact that we were business owners in varying areas of industry made our collaboration a great match.
When I moved next door to Ron, my wife and I were the primary caregivers for my father. The journey of being a care giver for those that have been in this position reveals alot about you personally. It exposes emotions, ideas, perspectives you probably never thought to be attentive to but the beautiful thing about it is you realize you can’t unsee what you have seen. During this journey and being an advocate for my father in every aspect of his life during this time, I was able to see not only my life where I was at the time but also what the future had the potential to become. As I would take my father to appointments, or events, etc… I would also see others in his age range and like a fly on the wall observe the good, bad, ugly, of health, wellness, and economic impact.
One day during a porch talk with Ron, we spoke about these various experiences and he shared similar things he and his wife had experienced during their journeys as well and the light bulb clicked, there is a consistent economic, health and wellness gap across all communities especially as you age.
A bit of background, Ron is a military veteran 20+ years as a Marine, and one of his consistent statements is “Adapt and Overcome.” Ron also owns a staffing agency. My background consist of 20+ years of various business ownership areas consisting of real-estate, restaurants, vending, IT consulting, and franchising. My motto over this time is “identify a need and address it.”
So an opportunity was presented to me to purchase a smoothie juice bar that was going out of business that my wife and I would frequent. My restaurant background, allowed me to see what the unseasoned eye does not in this space and after discussing the decision to sell with the previous owner, trying to convince him of the value he was leaving on the table he decided to accept the offer of partnering vs selling. The vision I shared with him to change the trajectory of his business revealed areas that made this opportunity a worthwhile endeavor.
During another porch talk with Ron, I shared with him the opportunity which peaked his interest in collaborating on this venture and we have not looked back since. Ron shared his vision of what he saw in the business which aligned with mine and we formed a partnership with the previous owner.
Unexpectedly, the previous owner with in a few weeks of us coming to terms and taking over the location, he passed away. This created all sorts of situations, emotions, challenges, and opportunities. However, we soldiered through it all with the montra of “Adapt and Overcome”.
We completely retooled the business and this became the birth of “Paradise Smoothie Juice Bar” and our mission / purpose: “Enhancing the health of the communities we serve one sip at a time.”
In life, when you are blessed to identify your purpose it stimulates so much on levels beyond just your physical, emotional, and financial but when embraced that purpose turns to passion. Paradise Smoothie Juice Bar is our passion we have found that not only are we able to enhance health and wellness of others but we have been blessed to now scale to 4 store locations and a smoothie truck in 4 years and create a business system offering franchise opportunities with this platform.
We have proven that our business has the ability to address so many concerns in the communities at large that we serve and this purpose and passion can now generate a next level prosperity that we can share with others, what a blessing.
Here at Paradise, our drinks (smoothies, juices, shakes, and wellness shots) are actually meal replacements. Each drink we over is plant-based using whole fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, herbs, and spices. Every cup served consist of fiber, hydration, and replenishment of micro-nutrients/protiens/minerals consistent with a nutritions meal. We only use a plant-based nectar as our sweetner and we educate our customers on the value proposition we offer that differentiates us from others in our industry.
Ron and I love what we do and have a daily excitment of what we have to offer the world. Our motto is “Paradise Powers Performance” and we are doing everything we can to make this a fact beyond opinion.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Paradise Smoothie Juice Bar has one mission: Enhancing the health of the communities we serve one sip at a time.”
That one sip may well turn your life around. Paradise Smoothie Juice Bar is a Metro-Atlanta based company that offers unique and highly powerful wellness shots as well as delicious smoothies, juices and shakes — all using nothing but whole fruits, seeds, nuts, vegetables, herbs and spices that make delicious meal replacement drinks. Each drink brings all the nec-essary components of a complete and balanced nutritional meal — the fact that it tastes great is a bonus!
The company’s slogan is “Paradise Powers Performance” and we are devoted to helping cus-tomers enhance their health and improve their diet. Everything on the menu is all-natural, veg-etarian and vegan. Juices are rich in anti-inflammatory compounds that boost the immune style and helps provide more energy. We have a variety of health and wellness shots aimed at improving different conditions including:
◼︎ Vividration: A multivitamin shot that detoxifies the blood and body, reducing inflammation, cholesterol, blood sugars and boosting the immune system. It’s a great pre/post workout drink.
◼︎ Mucus Buster: A multivitamin shot that helps expel mucus and minimizing the breeding grounds of non-beneficial viruses and bacteria in the body.
◼︎ Paradis: A multivitamin shot that consist of more than 100 minerals, vitamins and nutrients.
Juices are also an important aspect of Paradies Smoothes Juice Bar’s commitment to health and wellness and include Parasite Remover, Weight Loss, Skin Cleanser and Detox. Shakes pinocle those rich in Omega 3 and those perfect for after the gym. In addition, each drink may be supplemented with ingredients such as sea moss, soursop, hemp seed, turmeric, pumpkin seek, and limes.
Founded by health fanatics, series entrepreneurs and neighbors, Bill Johnson and Ron Bol-den, the pair bought a neighborhood smoothie bar and turned it into the plant-based health oasis that it is today. Currently there are four locations in metro Atlanta: New Chastain Cor-ners and Macland Pointe Station, both in Marietta, Greenbriar Mall in Atlanta and The Village at Mableton in Mableton.
However, within the next five years there should be a minimum of 40 franchise units across the country in addition to those company owned. “We have key differences between other smoothie places,” says Johnson. “We provide services that others don’t. For instance, we welcome you to try your drink before you buy. Our products also are blended so that with each sip you get the fiber, hydration and replishiment of the micro nutritions, minerals and pro-teins that your body needs. Every drink is plant based and you will notice the texture be-cause we don’t blend our components so it’s not really pulpy or heavy in texture.”
Adds Bolden, “Our drinks work and we came up with the recipes and the wellness shots. It’s all about enhancing the health of our customers.”
Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?
Leveraging social media is key to engaging with new and exisitng customers. There are challenges with the existing platforms due to their terms and conditions that can intentional or not disrupt / limit your engagement at times. We decided to invest and create a phone app that is used as a loyal rewards platform for discounts, coupons, annoncements, online-ordering, etc.. Additonally, the Paradise Smoothie Juice Bar app provides our own private social community as we continue to scale and bolster our customer engagement. Now we are able to communicate with our customers directly and collectively. This has proven beneficial in various ways and allows for a more innovative and creative customer experience.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Though our initial entry to owning our smoothie bar began as a partnership, due to a situation outside of our control we had to completely retool, rebrand, and restructure our business with 4 weeks of opening. This situation created significant cost, unexpected efforts required to pivot from our initial strategy to a completely different one.
As mentioned previously, we had entered in to a partnership with an existing operation to leverage existing expertise and client-base, but due to a tragic unexpected event we had to basically scrape that plan and build a new business from scratch. But we turned this event into an opportunity vs a challenge / circumstance.
What we learned from this experience is that mindset is critical in all that you do. When you align your mindset with your spiritual beliefs of omnipotent capability then you always have a chance to achieve what you believe.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://paradisesmoothiejuicebar.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/paradisesmoothiejuicebar
- Facebook: facebook.com/paradisesmoothiejuicebar
- Youtube: youtube.com/paradisesmoothiejuicebar