Provo—Utah is known for its love of sweets. There’s no shortage of ice cream or soda places around the Beehive State for anyone who wants to indulge. But for Ivie Juice bar co-founder, Ivie Gonsalves, delicious should also mean nutritious.
Gonsalves was a track and cross-country runner at Utah Valley University when she tweaked her diet to go further in her sport. A move to Orange County showed her a tasty solution of how to bolster her diet: juice bars.
“They have a ton of juice bars in California and I got in the habit of eating at [them] because it matched my diet for track. When I came back, I told my mom about it and she said we should just start one,” said Gonsalves.
It didn’t take long for the juice bar to go from fantasy to reality. Gonsalves chose a prime downtown location and she and her mother worked hard to open Ivie Juice Bar’s doors a few short months later, in October 2014. It wasn’t an easy road to success—Gonsalves and her mother opened their juice bar with no business experience whatsoever.
“The biggest thing was we had to find all the things out on our own. We didn’t have anyone’s help in the business world,” she said. “We had to figure out accounting, hiring, and the business day-to-day.”
Now that Ivie Juice Bar has been in operation for over a year, business is going well. The menu offers a wide variety of protein shakes, juices, smoothies, and Açai bowls. They also offer juices for one, two or three day cleanses, for those looking to do a juice-based detoxification program. According to Gonsalves, each menu item serves a purpose.
“[Protein shakes] are designed as a meal replacement or a post workout. You can also substitute it as a dessert,” she said. “Juices are to restore your sugar levels after a workout. The juices also have a lot of nutrients; you can get your fruit and vegetable servings by drinking them. [The smoothies] are a good snack. Açai bowls are like a meal replacement…They are really good with the granola, fresh fruit, and honey on them.”
Initially, their customer base consisted of people they knew—friends and family—for the first month. But business really began to pick up after a couple of bloggers covered and reviewed the juice bar.
“We were shocked at how fast we were able to get the word out that we were located there,” said Gonsalves.
And although Ivie Juice Bar’s menu is geared toward taste and health, the clientele isn’t limited to health nuts and athletes.
“We have a lot of high school kids, college kids—I even get grandparents coming. The main group is probably from 18 to 32 years old, [but] we can have kids come in here and get a smoothie,” said Gonsalves. “…Our biggest thing is we want people to be healthy and have healthy options. I feel like there aren’t a lot of places where you can eat things that will benefit you. We want to provide the healthy option for people. We have a wide variety of juices. We only use whole, real fruit and vegetables in our products. I know other juice bars will add sugars and other things in their juices and we don’t do that.”
Ivie Juice Bar is located at 45 N. University Ave. in Provo and 1273 S. 800 East in Orem.