Yes, You Can Grow Your Own Juice Bar

Earlier this year when GC Editor-in-Chief Molly Beauchemin was in Vancouver, she happened upon Living Produce Aisle and was thoroughly impressed by their innovative approach to juicing. Unlike most juice places, which buy their ingredients fresh each morning (or at least, you hope they do), Living Produce Aisle grows their ingredients on site, using Urban Cultivator’s indoor, completely self-sustained growing systems. The space looks a bit like something out of a futuristic sci-fi film, all bright lights and clean glass facades.

As a company, Urban Cultivator does have a certain utopian flare about it: they’re all about “living fresh” and concretely realizing the [easyazon_link identifier=”1550174819″ locale=”US” nw=”y” tag=”gardcoll03-20″]Zero Mile Diet[/easyazon_link] (which advocates leading a life where you grow your own organic food year round). Urban Cultivator offers both commercial and residential growing units that specialize in growing microgreens, which can have up to 40 times the nutrients of mature plants.

At Living Produce Aisle, the menu is stacked with interesting greens like pea shoots, nasturtiums, sunflower shoots, and mustard shoots; customers are also welcome to take a flat of greens home with them. Options range from the unusual (flax, beet tops, fenugreek, amaranth) to the more familiar (kale, arugula, watercress). Urban Cultivator has been expanding across North America and Europe, and their hope is that more and more table-to-table juice bars can begin popping up in major cities. With such immediacy and freshness built into the product, it’s now possible for customers to eat their greens and drink them, too.