Today we’d like to introduce you to Angela Keen.
Hi Angela, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
So I graduated from California State University, Long Beach with a degree in history. I was accepted into Teach for America and was planning on moving to Los Angeles to teach and enter a master’s program at Loyola Marymount University. However, my sophomore year at CSULB, my uncle went into cardiac arrest and ended up in a coma for two years and then, two weeks after his funeral and my senior year of college, my father had a heart attack and then underwent a quadruple bypass. It was the heaviest year I’ve ever had to endure and I immediately switched gears. I would go to school, teach for the Supplemental Instruction program at CSULB, work nights at a restaurant and make juice for my dad while he was in recovery. I figured I needed to make something that gave him a dense amount of nutrients quickly and without him realizing it! So I bought a $5 Jack Lelain juicer at a garage sale and made him horrible tasting juices and say “Saludos a su Salud” or “Cheers to your health” when we gulped it down. I started taking my juice to the restaurant I worked at and fellow coworkers started requesting orders on days that I worked with them. It wasn’t until my friend Kevin said, “Hey, I don’t have any shifts with you next week but I’ll pay extra if you deliver it to me” that I realized I had something here. That I could start Long Beach’s first juice delivery business. So I sent out a group text to everyone I knew and started taking orders. I juiced in my 3rd story apartment and jarred them in mason jars with little twine labels on them.
Eventually, the General Manager of the restaurant, Steve Massis, decided he wanted to open his own restaurant and asked if he could put my juices on his menu. He had already been a huge fan and would order juice and leave notes in the jar when he was done on suggestions for taste profiles along with a five dollar bill. So I told him that if he ever opened a restaurant, I would have my juices on his menu. It was about a year later, he called me to tell me he had gotten the keys to his own restaurant, eventually known as the Attic on Broadway, and he was holding me to this promise! I instantly freaked because I had been “faking” this little delivery service and now somebody is trusting me with something bigger than I thought I could handle. I remember sitting at his restaurant before it opened and asking him how to write an invoice or how to properly charge him. Steve and his dad, a very blunt Syrian man who had a heart of gold but came off a little… rough, sat me down and asked me how much my produce cost, how much time it took me, how much the jars were, etc. At the end, they taught me how to calculate Cost of Goods and Labor Percentages and told me how much to charge for my juice. I will never forget, at the end of the lesson on invoicing and pricing, Steve’s dad turns to him and says, “she is too expensive. I would go with another juice company.” And he said it so matter-of-factly that I still can’t decide whether he was kidding or not!
Anyway, Steve helped me start up other wholesale accounts with other local restaurants, showing me how to wholesale and source larger volumes of products. I eventually moved into a commercial kitchen after lugging 50lb boxes of apples and oranges up three flights of stairs was no longer feasible (but I did do it for way longer than I should have!). My parents and a friend helped every Sunday. M dad and I would pick up the produce from the farmer’s market, drive it to the kitchen, unload the produce into the walk-in cooler, start washing and cutting all the produce, then about a 10 hour day juicing and bottling and then delivering. It was intense. I was using a very small household juicer at the time. Our oranges were each cut and juiced individually (my dad still has the mechanical juicer and boasts about how many oranges he’s juiced on it!) We worked like that for years until the health department got wind of our operation and informed me the entire thing was completely illegal! On one day in April of 2014, I went from having 16 wholesale accounts across LA/LB/OC to having zero. The health department had called every single account and informed them they were in violation of their health permit by selling raw juice wholesale. They also threatened me with a misdemeanor if I continued to sell my product wholesale and that my only options were to add some sort of preservation step (like pasteurization) or open my own brick-and-mortar and sell from under my own license.
There was even an instance where I was still selling to a coffee shop (who will remain nameless!) with unlabeled bottles and the health inspector came in and tasted the juice and said “this is a Salud lolita!” and I was in trouble all over again. So here I was, failing in my eyes. I was embarrassed. I failed all of my wholesale accounts. They thought I was “real” and I ended up being a fraud this whole time. So I took about a week of moping and then jumped right back into the game with a Plan B: open a brick-and-mortar. But I needed capital. So I went back to my friend Steve and asked for money. I had asked plenty of times before and he kept saying, “you’re not ready… when you can sell 17 juices a day maybe we can talk then. But you’re not ready” and I remember thinking “how the HELL am I ever going to sell 17 juices a day!” But this time was different. This time my businesses depended on it. So I begged and pleaded and assured him I’d work my butt off and pay him back every penny (which I did in the first six months of opening) and he believed in me and invested a very small amount of change to get the build out, first month’s rent and permits paid. He helped me find resources for my company like a payroll company and local family-owned produce company he had been using for years. I was in the middle of a crash course in business management, business marketing, leadership, problem-solving, you name it! I was thrown into every aspect of owning a business and extremely vulnerable.
Five months into opening our first location, the owner of a gym we used to have a wholesale account with visited our location and asked me if I was willing to open another location in his gym. Sleep-deprived, dehydrated, scared and underprepared, I said yes. We started construction and opened that store nine months after opening our first doors. I went from 6 employees to 10 and then to 15. I will never forget the fear, the exhaustion, the anxiety. But I will also never forget the feeling of satisfaction, the teamwork of my employees, the lessons I’ve learned. I’m most proud of myself for never giving up. After having Salud now for almost ten years, going through hundreds of employees, making hundreds of mistakes and now employing up to 30 LB residents at a time, I have found that my greatest skill is optimism and perseverance. I should have given up a million times but I never let that be an option. I push through any obstacle. No matter what. I’m a strong believer in anything is possible and there are opportunities in any situation. Always choose to be proactive instead of reactive!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I was shut down for not abiding by state law when selling raw juice. It should have been the end of my company but I pushed through and found an investor who believed in me and we opened a brick n mortar in 2015 and then another one the same year!
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We are a USDA certified organic cold-pressed juice company. We serve our organic juice in sturdy glass bottles, minimizing our plastic use tremendously. We specialize in quality juice, cold-pressed in our flagship facility on 4ht and Cherry in Long Beach, Ca and we are known for having a very welcoming, inclusive environment for all. We are in the business of happiness first. It is a bonus that our product is great, but we are determined to put a smile on everyone’s face when they walk in our door.
I am most proud of keeping such a high-quality product for our community. We are the only USDA certified organic juice bar in a large radius. We work really hard to keep our product consistent and top tier. Additionally, I am super proud of having such amazing employees who understand our mission to give our customers a little slice of escapism when coming into the shop. We want our community to feel relaxed and welcomed and stress-free for the small amount of time they get in our store.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
I really just want people to feel inspired to push and fight for their own dreams and aspirations. It might feel like you’re faking it or failing, but everyone feels that way and you just need to push through that feeling! I’m so happy to have created a space where my dream of helping others can be achieved daily.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.saludjuice.com
- Instagram: saludjuice
- Facebook: saludjuice
- Twitter: saludjuice
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5XQREK9rVW1tNrpeIsGlZw
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/salud-juice-bar-long-beach
