Fresh Juice Vending Machine Debuts Downtown

A raw juice vending machine—Juice Cold Pressed—has recently opened in downtown Minneapolis, a concept developed by twenty-five-year-old CEO and co-founder Kamal Mohamed as his undergraduate senior project for the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.

Located in the Retek Building skyways, the kiosk opened on January 7. Customers walk up to the machine with their own container, swipe their credit card, select the type of juice they want and the machine dispenses it by the ounce. Options include "red juice" (beet, carrot, orange, ginger root and coconut water) or "green juice" (kale, apple, cucumber, pear, wheatgrass and coconut water), or a combination of the two. The juices end up costing about $0.43 per ounce ($6.99 for 16oz.).

Mohamed wanted to focus on raw juice because the pre-packaged juices Minnesotans buy often travel from California and New York before reaching the Midwest.

"When something sits in a plastic bottle, like a raw juice or organic milk, light oxidation affects not only the flavors but some of the nutrients," Mohamed said.

His machine solves this problem by making the juice fresh every time. Mohamed says he is in talks with two Fortune 500 companies to bring the machines to their campuses, and he hopes to have several more kiosks pop up in high-traffic areas in the skyways—200 locations in the Twin Cities and 10,000 in the U.S. within the next three years.

The kiosk will be in the Retek building for the next two months as Mohamed and his business partner LJ Stead work on securing more investors, demo the machine and locations for the vending machines.

—Urmila Ramakrishnan

· Juice Cold Pressed Official Website

[Photo: Urmila Ramakrishnan]