Making healthy dietary choices just got easier — and tastier — in Plant City.
It’s hard to beat freshly squeezed juice when you want a drink you can feel good about, something loaded with vitamins and nutrients to help your body stay on top of its game. And if you don’t want to go to the trouble of finding fresh ingredients to blend yourself, Only Juice has you covered.
Only Juice was launched in January by Plant City residents Tamar Bettis, Kayvious Campbell and Roderick Henderson, who all wanted to create something healthy, delicious and sustainable. It’s a labor of love that has taken off in the last month and quickly become a popular option for those in and around the Plant City area.
“Especially with the pandemic, the average person is thinking about what they’re putting into their body a little more, trying to be more healthy,” Henderson said. “We’re trying to make our community more healthy.”
Henderson was making his own juices at home late last year and saw potential to take it further with Bettis and Campbell, whom he connected with the idea. Bettis, a Plant City High School classmate of Henderson’s, always wanted to open her own juice bar and give back to the community through her business. Campbell, the “mad scientist” behind the recipes, already enjoyed mixing drinks for their friends in his free time and took the creative side of the business to the next level. Once Bettis and Campbell finally linked up, it was a home run.
“We’re both very passionate people,” Campbell said. “Tamar’s passionate about providing a service that’s affordable to people, but you can still get your health benefits. It’s accessible and affordable. I like being creative and coming up with recipes. It just kind of clicked.”
What you see in the ingredients section is exactly what you’re getting. Only Juice uses nothing but fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs in all of its products. The ingredients are locally sourced from Plant City-area farmers markets in order to support the local economy, and the group worked out of The Corner Store on East Reynolds Street when it started making juice together.
With help from Henderson’s Innovative Academy, which helps young adults with disabilities and at-risk students find and train for career opportunities, the group gathers ingredients and presses all of the juice twice a week. The juice orders are then delivered to customers as soon as possible. Most of the sales are in the Plant City area, though Only Juice will deliver to Lakeland, Tampa and Hillsborough and Polk counties at large.
“We do the juice on Monday and try not to keep them too long,” Bettis said. “Then we juice again Thursday. We try to keep our juices fresh and get them to our customers as soon as we can.”
Customers can choose from 10 flavors of juice with prices ranging from $3 per four-ounce bottle to $5 per 10-ounce bottle. There’s also the option to get a $25 sample pack of all 10 flavors in four-ounce bottles if you’re feeling indecisive (or if you’re just that thirsty). Some of Only Juice’s most popular flavors include “CAP,” which is a blend of carrot, apple and ginger, the “Vitamin C” mix of strawberry, apple, ginger and cherry and “Sunshine Sunrise,” a blend of grapefruit, strawberry, orange and lemon. You’ll also find juices using ingredients like ginger, lemon, mint, blueberry, raspberry, cherry, turmeric, cucumber, pineapple and beets.
You can order online for delivery at onlyjuice.co. Only Juice is also currently on Instagram at @onlyjuicefl.