BC Business
Nectar Juicery co-founders Lara Kozan (left) and Tori Holmes.
Juice on tap is like the new water cooler, says Tori Holmes, co-founder of Vancouver’s Nectar Juicery. When she and Lara Kozan, who also co-founded YYoga, launched the company in February, their first client was Hootsuite.
Tori and Lara had originally planned to sell their cold-pressed juices to young, health-focused women or yoga practitioners, but Tori, who once worked in the tech industry, approached Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes (the two are not related).
“I saw him as an innovator,” she says, “and it was his recommendation to do juice on tap.” Since then tech companies Mobify and Sophos have signed up for juice on tap, with more companies coming on board this fall. Two-thirds of the Nectar Juicery business is corporate, both on tap and bottled; the remaining sales are retail.
Providing juice on tap allows Tori and Lara to focus on inspiring and educating people about healthy living. “If, in a year’s time, people think of us as a juice company, I will have felt we have missed the mark,” says Tori. “For us juice is just the springboard to helping people recognize that we want to nourish possibility—most people don’t know that it’s possible to feel better.”
Tori and Lara discovered juicing through health issues of their own. In her early 20s, Tori had rowed a 24-foot rowboat unassisted across the Atlantic from Spain to the Caribbean, leaving her understandably drained. In her search to recover her energy, she studied holistic nutrition.
Lara had gone through a difficult childbirth. The two met at a conference where Tori was speaking about her rowing adventure and the pursuit and power of the mind, and Lara was in the audience. “As women do, we met in the bathroom, and it was somewhat love at first sight,” says Tori.
Now they advise others on what juice can do for them: “We do the thinking, they do the drinking,” says Tori. Once a month, companies receive a menu outlining what will be on tap, and when the juice is delivered, nutritionists are on hand to give advice. Menus on each tap explain the ingredients, which are 100 per cent organic and predominantly locally sourced. Designed by naturopaths and holistic nutritionists, each juice has a function. In October, one juice will be a tonic aimed at flu prevention. In November, juices will fight inflammation that could lead to prostate cancer.