The Joy of Wheatgrass

New owners at Beyond Juice

by Tony McReynolds

posted 3/18/2010

"No way am I going to eat four spinach salads," Maureen Policella says emphatically--not when she can get the same nutrients by drinking a glass of freshly blended spinach juice. "Depending on what you juice," she says, "one glass can give you all the nutrients you need in a day."

Policella started juicing nine years ago, when she was forty-two and had just had her second child. "I was harried, and it was quick," she recalls. She became a juicing convert when she discovered that in addition to quick, juicing was healthy and convenient. When her friends started asking for her juicing recipes, she decided to open her own juice bar. She and her husband, Michael Policella, took over the Beyond Juice location on East Liberty in early January. Original owners Bob and Sally Goldman, who opened the store in 2008, closed it in late 2009 because they were tired of the commute from their home in Birmingham.

"Beyond Juice is a license, not a franchise," Michael Policella says. "We have quite a bit of leeway to change the menus to suit our local conditions." The Policellas are discontinuing the Goldmans' made-to-order sandwiches to put a lot more emphasis on juicing, particularly on combining ingredients. You can still get Beyond Juice's signature "meal in a cup"--a low-fat, low-calorie, twenty-ounce blend of nineteen different vitamins, minerals, and amino acids combined with fruit, honey, and, occasionally, vanilla--but most customers just order a single fruit or vegetable juiced. The Policellas want to promote more blends, like carrots and celery, or apple and cucumber, because when you juice them together, Michael says, "you get very concentrated nutrients. And we have our own recipes, rather than people having to come in and figure out what to combine or what goes together." Those recipes include the Razzle Dazzle, a juiced blend of beets, kale, ginger, garlic, and apple; and the Whoo Haa, a blend of apple, lemon, kale, parsley, garlic, beet, dandelion, and carrot. Both cost just under $6.

Michael's personal favorite is juiced wheatgrass, and he does a shot a day. "One ounce of juiced wheatgrass," he says, "equals two and a half pounds of green, leafy vegetables."

Beyond Juice, 529 E. Liberty. 994-1111. Mon.-Fri., 9.a.m.-7 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. www.beyondjuice.com

Got a retail or restaurant change? Send email to tonymcreynolds@tds.net or sallymitani@gmail.com, or or leave voicemail at 769-3175, ext. 309.   

[Originally published in March, 2010.]