Jamba Juice opens near campus

By Kristin Martin

January is cold, but for some it may not be too cold for a smoothie.

“Not from Jamba Juice,” said Samantha McKeough, a mechanical engineering freshman. Jamba Juice, a smoothie shop, opened at 7 a.m. Monday in Center Court on South Upper Street, joining more than 700 other locations across the country.

Jamba Juice offers 34 types of smoothies in three different sizes, breakfast wraps, oatmeal, bagels and pretzels. It will soon offer California flatbreads and more.

The Razzmatazz contains mixed berries, bananas and orange sherbet.

It’s franchise owner Don Marquess’ favorite smoothie, but he said there’s a reason to love them all.

“It’s all natural, no preservatives, no additives and everything is fresh,” he said. “So when you order a mango-pineapple smoothie, we have real mangoes and real pineapples, and that’s all you get in there.”

Marquess said the fruit and vegetables are shipped after being flash frozen — a process that freezes produce within seconds to lock in nutrients and flavors.

Billy Korinko, men’s programming specialist at the VIP Center at UK, ordered the Razzmatazz on Monday during his first visit to a Jamba Juice.

“It’s refreshing, light and I’d definitely come back,” he said.

The calories are posted on the menu, and Marquess said neither the calories nor the prices are too high.

“If you’re coming in for breakfast, you can get coffee and a wrap for under five bucks,” he said. “If you get a 32-ounce smoothie loaded up with everything, it’s around six bucks.”

After looking at several locations, the franchise owners chose the former J. Gumbo’s location.

Marquess said it’s sad that a business closed and people lost jobs.

“For us, though, it opened up a fantastic location,” he said.

Marquess said students from out of town who had seen Jamba Juice elsewhere started calling him, because they were excited to see something that reminded them of home.

McKeough is also no stranger to Jamba Juice. She’s from Illinois and has been to one there.

“I actually, like, jumped up and down, literally. I was so excited,” she said, describing the moment she found out about Lexington’s Jamba Juice opening.

Marquess said students are welcome to sit and eat or study, and Jamba Juice will have free Wi-Fi.

“We’re one of the only Jamba’s, when you look around, that has seating inside and will have seating outside,” Marquess said. “Most of the Jamba’s were created originally as a smoothie shop and we’ve just started adding food in the last year to year and a half.”

After experiencing Jamba Juice in Houston and Hawaii, Marquess and his wife, Emmy, wondered why there wasn’t something like it in Kentucky.

Marquess connected with his former colleague from the food business, John Speaker and Speaker’s wife, Mary, to begin the yearlong process of opening the franchise.

He said they plan to open a minimum of seven Jamba Juice locations in the Kentucky, southern Ohio and southern Indiana area. The next one will open in Fayette Mall this March.

“Opening up your own business, you’re going, ‘What if we open the door and nobody’s there?’ That fear is always kind of there until you get going,” Marquess said.

However, Zach Rose, a psychology and kinesiology sophomore who works at Jamba Juice, said a lot of people visited it on opening day.

Jamba Juice is open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m Sunday.