Collar City Cold Pressed

I’m sitting here this morning planning for the summer @troymarket and thinking how insane it is that this is going to be my 15th season outside. FIFTEEN?! Just how. For anyone who thinks starting a business is a cute idea or something you deserve to succeed at or that your success should be proportionate or match your efforts all along the way, I gotta say, I disagree. Recently, I listened to my very successful, insanely hard-working friend @briannebaggetta talk about what success looks like, and how it usually includes a very long, kind of quiet, day-in, day-out non glamorous grind. I didn’t build my business with a brand or an aesthetic or the belief that I deserved anything from anyone, I built it (REALLY and truly) by always showing up. I’m doing this today for the same reasons I always have. I love juice (and food and Troy) and I require self employment, I need to be free. That’s it. I didn’t start with a vision board, I started with a product, and worked hard to make it the best it could possibly be and to sell a lot of it. Maybe that’s the long way, the hard way, the nonglamorous way. But building, growing, and becoming isn’t about money or IG or aesthetic or anything like that. To me it’s the work and what it makes of you, who you become because of it. Sometimes that’s the reward. I moved to Troy in 2012 at 28. I’ve lived on 2nd Street ever since. I fell immediately in love and became part of a community, a neighborhood, a tribe. One day, I was getting a juice with @briannebaggetta and said, “I can do that.” This isn’t a friend who lets you say shit like that more than twice without putting you up to the task. A week later, I bought a Nutrifaster 350 off Craigslist Alaska. It was $1100. I had $200 left, which was fine, because I was always working and could always find a way to make more money if I needed to. The craziest part? The guy who sold it to me had tried to start a juice + smoothie shop in Alaska but (go figure) no one wanted cold drinks. He told me he was going to pivot and use the $1,100 to start his new endeavor: a sled dog poop-scooping business. That time, he made it big. CONTINUED BELOW FOR THE PPL WHO STILL READ ⬇️

Ok here we go.A Shamrock Shake but make it real FOOD. Every March big food goes nuts for Shamrock shakes. Most of them are bright green, minty, and freaky. If you look at the ingredients… they’re usually not food. So here’s what’s NOT in ours (or anything of ours, ever): ❌ “MiNT FlAvOr”. Mint is a plant. “Mint flavor” is artificial flavor compounds, green shit, sugar syrup, and stabilizers. Basically perfume for food. Our version: Fresh mint leaves. Organic peppermint mint extract. Wild, I know. ❌ Green Dye. That glowing green color? Usually food dyes and synthetic coloring powders. Plants didn’t do that. Our version: Spinach + avocado. Because… plants are green. ❌ Smoothie Base. A lot of smoothies don’t start with fruit. They start with something called smoothie base. Ingredients like: fruit juice concentrate, corn syrup, “natural” flavors, and xanthan gum. So before any fruit or veggies even hit the blender, you’re already drinking sugar syrup. Our version: fruit. ❌ Flavor Powders: Chocolate “flavor”. Vanilla “flavor”. Pistachio “flavor”. Peanut butter “flavor”. Usually made with maltodextrin, artificial flavors, fake sweeteners or added sugar. Basically food cosplay. Our version: cacao, vanilla bean, peanuts…really. ❌ Shelf-Stable Avocado: if avocado lives in a pouch for six months, something has gone very wrong. These products contain: avocado puree, modified starch, heavy on the preservatives, and stuff I can’t bare to spell. Real avocado turns brown in five minutes and thats called being alive 🌱Our version: cut open an avocado. ❌ “Fruit Blends”: DON’T GET ME GOING!!! A lot of smoothie shops use pre blended bases that may include fruit but also add sugar, corn syrup, stabilizers, thickeners, and more. Our version: fruit, hard stop. SO what’s actually in OUR Shamrock? As always, real food only. Spinach, banana, avocado, fresh mint, cacao nibs, almond milk. That’s it. No powders, no dyes, no simulated food products - period! If you’re new here please know my rule: if it’s food cosplay, it doesn’t exist here. I won’t buy it (ask my friends!) so we don’t use it. No mystery mixes.Just food + and a blender. Works every damn time. ✌🏻

Artichokes everywhere + more more more ⚡️🧃⚡️Come to the corner of 2nd + Division in @downtowntroyny for Bagel Friday and get your @theplacidbaker bagel + spinach artichoke cream cheese + cold pressed juice or @aliascoffeeny for $TEN DOLLAR$ til we sell out. Friday only, 8:30-2 🥯😀

Don’t let this ☔️ get you down, we’ve got ☀️ in all forms. 🍓🍋🫚🤤

What’s a third space? The place that isn’t work and isn’t home. Where the presence of strangers becomes the presence of community. Where you accidentally stay an hour longer than you meant to. Where the person on the other side of the counter is also your neighbor and maybe your friend and knows your order. Where your kid runs into a friend, somebody holds the door, somebody tells you about a concert, a job, a breakup, a city council meeting. A juice shop. A park bench. A farmers market. A beautiful walkable street. It’s not just juice or coffee or somewhere to sit. It’s social infrastructure. It’s how neighborhoods become communities instead of just rows of big houses full of strangers. Cities need third spaces the same way people need sunlight. Not luxury, essential. We are lucky here to have so many, and even luckier to BE one. Long live our little cities, long live our downtown. There’s nowhere else I’d rather live, work, and play. 👭🌱☀️

We just don’t quit! 😀☔️ Come get the best in strawberry rhubarb, green juice, and ALL things local including the gritty spirit of everyone who shows up no matter what 💪🏻😛🌱🌷🍓

📍137 2nd St TROY, NY 🧃🥯🍋🌱🍓 #itsmejessicaiminhere

RITES OF SPRING cream cheese featuring the seasons first round of asparagus and ramps from @bulich_creekside_farm plus spring onions and foraged fiddlehead ferns just to be extra 🌱🌱💅 Come in for your @theplacidbaker bagel + juice for $10 from 8:30 and til we sell out cus a damn good 🥯 + the best🧃= FRIDAY❣️

We care we compost with @foodscraps360 ♻️🌎👏💪🏻 In one week we’ve created 96 lbs of food scraps made almost entirely of juice pulp, lemon + banana peels, coffee grounds, and one half of a bagel. It’s really easy and costs about $40 per week to keep this good stuff out of a landfill and return it right to mother earth. All of our food waste goes to @foodscraps360 and returns to us all as BLACK GOLD so our farmers can grow more food. If you are a local business (or home!) who wants to get in on this, let us know. We’ve been working with this amazing company for over a decade and would LOVE you to join us. Do the right thing (period) and compost your food scraps. (If you can’t, you can at least share this post and maybe someone else can.) Plus, you get a sticker. 🌎 ♻️🌷

It really is a wonderful life…especially for those 8 weeks where rhubarb is in season 😍😍😍😍😍 We scored this big batch from our friends at Cornell Farms on Saturday at the @troymarket . More strawberry rhubarb lemonade hits the cold pressed fridge tomorrow AM ~ come and get it!

WE ARE BACK IN THESE STREETS! Wanna know something? This is our 15th year doing the @troymarket and if that isn’t proof that we show up, what is? And if there’s any time to capture people’s true selves it’s 7am at monument square 😅 we are RAW and we are REAL 🤘🏻😜🍍🥭🍌🍎

FIRST OUTDOOR @troymarket of the year drops tomorrow at 9 in monument square 🎉📍We’ll be under our tent (2nd and broadway) with our first ever Strawberry Rhubarb lemonade (first stalks of the season❣️) a new Spring juice <<MINT CONDITION>>, cute new bags + merch, a NEW frozen lemonade (matcha mango) and all the usual suspects including our team members. See you on the street!! ☀️