A few things we’ve done in the past month, since PVD Juice co launched

• Sold out to a wonderful, juice-tastic crowd at Foo Fest…
  Check out this article on Providence Daily Dose

• Made hundreds of new friends in India Point, down town, on Hope Street, and in Lippett Park.
• Got married. Juicemaster and Juicemistress are now husband and wife.
• Received awesome coverage by Providence Monthly, the Providence Journal, and a number of independent blogs.

A few things we’ve learned

• People are wonderfully adventurous when it comes to juice. Long time juice initiates and newbies alike are marvelously willing to try cucumber basil juice, plum ginger juice, and all manner of vibrantly, eerily green smoothies. Who says the American public doesn’t like real food?
• Ginger juice should be made first, when prepping and getting the truck ready for a juice session, then stored in the fridge and added to fresh drinks by the teaspoon. This saves the drama of having to scrub out the juicer every time a ginger-inclusive recipe is made, and allows us to challenge friends and strangers with the prospect of doing a one ounce shot of ginger juice straight. (No one has yet taken the challenge, which is sort of a relief as I don’t really think the results will necessarily be positive.)
• Apple cider can and should be made in a mobile setting. We’re experimenting with presses and with the best mulling recipes, and will be offering hot, local, organic cider by the time the cool days really roll around.
• We need more power! To answer the demand that has already been whipped up for juice and smoothies, we need to be able to run a bit more wattage through the truck. Hopefully next season some of that power will be harnessed by solar panels, but until then we’ll be taking a higher quality generator on board.
• We need another appliance! That’s right. If we’re going to keep making every single drink fresh to order, and sustaining quick moving lines of happy customers, we need to add a certain something to the truck. What will it be? Next time you see us, you’ll find out!

So. In order to incorporate all of this knowledge, recover from the excitement of our recent nuptials, and replenish the produce stocks from all of our sold out days, we’ll be taking this coming week off. We’ll be doing maintenance, making improvements, testing a few new recipes (I know, it’s not fair… WE get all the juice even when we stay home) and also working on a schedule for the fall.

Please keep up all of the emails and comments. As we develop our fall schedule (which may continue on into winter if you all make it known that you want winter juice) we are inviting input and requests. Have a location where a group of friends or co-workers would like us to appear, or a special event where we’d fit well? Let us know… there’s a good chance we’ll make it work!

Yes, folks, after all of your generosity through Kickstarter, your support on the nights when we needed recipe testers, and your awesome comments online, The Juice Truck is finally ready to roll!

Believe it or not, preparing a Mobile Juice Extravaganza for the road is pretty intense… I’m drowning in local, organic peaches and plums and celery, and Jay’s finishing our custom sign with Nate Nadeau. Suffice it to say, we’ve no time to write, but hear this:

WE WILL BE AT FOO FEST!

Tomorrow, Saturday the 14th, we’ll be joining AS220 and tons of awesome local vendors on Empire Street, making our debut on what promises to be an absolutely beautiful, cloudless day. We will have a really exciting menu; five juices and four vegan smoothie options, made from about 90% local (and all organic beyond that) produce! I don’t want to give everything away, but just as a teaser, my favorite recipe on the menu is peach basil with celery and lemon. (I know, it’s hard to imagine it, but it tastes amazing).

Now that we’re up and running, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter. It’ll be a fail-safe way to find us!

Mega-super-custom signage for Le Truck! Juicemaster Jay is also a welding and painting master...

PVD Juice Co is almost ready, and raring to get on the road.

We have purchased and upgraded the Juice Truck. We have had the Juice Truck inspected and been given the green light by ye olde board of health.

We have juiced and blended ourselves silly, developing recipes as exciting as peach-basil juice and as reassuring as apple-ginger. We have perfected our smoothie skills with daily rituals, and worked out a solid recipe for vegan waffles.

We’ve developed and distributed our business plan, and secured parking for the Juice Truck. We’ve set up our local purchasing through Farm Fresh RI, and our organic purchasing through Alberts Organics. We’ve even established relationships with local farms so that our rinds and pulp may become useful compost.

So what now? So far, we’ve funded this entire project out-of-pocket. No grants, no debts. We’re pleased to have done this, but we need a little help. It’s time to purchase the industrial juicer, upgrade our blender, and paint and vinyl wrap the truck. Once that’s done, we’ll be on the road, in full effect. And wouldn’t it be great to be in full effect as soon as possible, now that this great, summery and juice-fabulous weather has arrived?

To help things happen in a timely manner, we’ve applied and been accepted to Kickstarter, the website that helps independent projects find funding.

By visiting our project page here, you can donate (with rewards, of course!) to the Juice Company, see how we’re progressing with funding and how many backers we’ve got.

Kickstarter projects have rules and limits; the opportunity to fund us will only last 30 days, and if we don’t get pledges for our full requested amount or more, we won’t get anything. So please visit, and most importantly please spread the word!

Thank you all for your support. See you on the streets so soon!

Photograph by Corey Grayhorse (agrayhorsecaptured.tumblr.com)

Today Jay went out and represented PVD Juice Co in the Gloucester Grind mountain bike race. It’s unusual for him to race without me, but since my mountain bike is still floating somewhere between myself and a California warehouse, I had to gracefully allow him to be bashed around by the rocks and trees without me. After his start, I went out on my road bike and learned just how serious the hills of Rt. 101 can be. Which is very serious, certainly more serious than the church sermons that stand as another option for a challenging Sunday morning. Preach it, hills.

Jay did really well. I’m impressed as always. He came in covered in mud and moderately bloody, and placed 4th in his division.

As Jay and I get more and more competitive as athletes, our nutrition gets more and more crucial. Long gone are the days when I could subsist on Twizzlers and iced coffee indefinitely, until a cheap burrito and some whiskey crossed my path. Any of you who know us or follow us on Twitter know that we joyously consume vast amounts of food: raw food, vegan food, juiced food, live food. Every morning is an adventure with the blender as we start off with giant smoothies. Some of our recent favorites (which we will be selling from the truck fo’ sho’) include Kale-banana-pineapple-coconut, and chocolate-banana-strawberry-almond… all topped off with a little flax oil for the joints.

I’d love to say that Jay’s awesome race and my hill workout today were fueled by an uber-smoothie or a quart of amazing, fresh citrus juice. But the ugly truth is, this was one of those mornings where we essentially forgot to eat, and left the water bottles on the kitchen counter. That’s ridiculous behaviour… nothing could be more important than hydration to maintaining a body, and even a brain if you’re good.

With that in mind, this seemed like a good day to send a shout out to coconut water. You all know about coconut water, right? It’s the liquid inside of a young coconut, and it’s remarkable for hydration. One company or another is marketing it with the tagline “Nature’s sports drink”, and that’s a pretty apt summary. The stuff is has tons of essential electrolytes, more potassium than a banana, low acidity, and no fat. We’ve come to really, really rely on coconut water, whether as a straight up drink or as a base for some of those smoothies I mentioned.

You can get coconut water by breaking into a young coconut, which is pretty easy; they’re soft. Or you can get coconut water at the supermarket, flavored and presented by companies like Zico and VitaCoco.

Our recommendation; fill an glass almost to the top with fresh coconut water, and squeeze in the juice of an entire lime. Simple, delicious, and it’ll keep you upright, especially as the weather starts to get hotter. We’ll be selling this simple combo from the juice truck soon… but for now you can brave the hazards of getting a little citrus in your eye and make it yourself!

Now, a nap.

So, last night we went to the Cable Car to see Exit Through the Gift Shop. This in itself could provide more than enough material for a rambling post, but frankly I doubt that a juice blog is the right place to wax philosophical (and confused) about street art, hive mind, and what a complete dupe I am when it comes to detecting the difference between a documentary and a mockumentary. (That said, if you’ve seen the movie and have theories or insights on where the line between fiction and reality fall, I wouldn’t mind hearing from you.)

What’s relevant, here, is that while we were buying our tickets I saw a flier announcing yet another local addition to the healthy, non-traditional truck food revolution. This is the first we’ve heard of “Like No Udder”, but it seems they’re an all-vegan soft serve and treat truck that’ll be on the scene in Providence this summer. Their website reveals a lot of experience with and dedication to cuisine and lifestyles free of animal products… very positive stuff.

We’re psyched, and will certainly seek out the Udder Truck (though they probably don’t want to be called that) ASAP. They’ll be at the Providence Rock and Roll Yard Sale on Saturday, May 22nd for starters. I’m really encouraged to see the truck food movement growing here in Providence, and not at all surprised. Between the innovative DIY spirit the proliferation of festivals and outdoor parties (and FooFests and SoundSessions and IndieArts, oh my), and the adventurous and often progressive food culture we’ve got around here, it seems like fertile ground for a real scene.

This summer in Providence you’ll be able to get juice from our Juice Truck, cupcakes from the Sugarush Truck, soft serve from No Udder, and any number of things that you’ve never heard of before from the Chez Pascal truck. This is all, of course, in addition to the flourishing (if deep fried) mobile food scene that comes to life on Broad Street every night. In honor of what I hope will be our future, I thought I’d post some pictures of what happens when truck food REALLY catches on. The shots below are from the Street Food festival in Los Angeles earlier this year. Oh, the lines!

LA is one of a number of US cities where mobile food has completely arrived. There’s enough interest to support things as specific (and awesome) as a Grilled Cheese Truck and a Buttermilk Pancake Truck, and “food courts” have formed somewhat organically as trucks gather, making them easier to find for the customers and less of a drag for brick-and-mortars who they’d otherwise be parked near.

I don’t see any reason why Providence shouldn’t be the next spot for this kind of flexible, friendly culinary explosion.

Oh, and just for good measure, these are the founders of the LA Street Food Festival…