Juice Bars

Juice bars, a multi-billion dollar business, began modestly in 1926 in Los Angeles when Julius Freed opened a shop selling fresh orange juice. His real estate agent, Bill Hamlin, a former chemist, suggested an all-natural mixture that gave the orange juice a creamy, foamy consistency. It contained orange juice, water, egg whites, vanilla extract, sugar and ice. When Freed and Hamlin started selling the new beverage, sales soared from twenty dollars to one hundred dollars a day, and a name for the product arose from the way customers asked for the drink: “Give me an orange, Julius.” By 1929 Orange Julius had grown into a chain with one hundred stores in the United States and was the pioneer of smoothies.