Nature's Garden Express is set to open a market stall and a juice bar at Krog Street Market in early December.
The Atlanta-based online grocery service, which was founded in 2009 by Michael Kirk and his business partner Scott Frishman, offers home and office delivery of natural and organic fruits and vegetables, free-range eggs, dairy products, grass-fed meats, breads, artisan cheeses and other products.
The company also launched its Nature's Garden Express cold-pressed juice in April, which is an important of the Krog Street Market concept, where in addition to produce, shoppers will find a variety of artisan food products, including gourmet pasta and sauces, Simply Seoul kimchi, Zocalo salsas and tamales, Simply Fresh ToGo meals and more.
“We’re really excited about it all,” Kirk said during a phone call this morning. “It’s been a long process, as you would expect. Kind of like hurry up and wait. But we’re aiming for opening the first week in December.”
From its beginnings as an organic produce purveyor, Kirk said Nature’s Garden has grown into sales of shelf stable items, such as coffee, granola and honey, and then introduced dairy, eggs and meat.
“Over the years, we’ve expanded our product line based on feedback from our customers,” Kirk said. “Krog Street will be a fun forum for us because we’ll get to test out how products do down there. Krog has a certain vibe and I think it will be good for us to showcase some more artisan products.
“This is our first sticks and bricks store. We’ve been in business for seven years, but we’ve been an online grocer that whole time, with no customer foot traffic, though we’ve been at some farmers markets to sell our cold-pressed juice.”
As for the juice, it’s 100% organic and raw, and comes in flavors such as Beet It, with beet, apple, lemon, celery, kale, spinach and ginkgo biloba, and Piña Verde, with pineapple, cucumber, jalapeño, lime, Granny Smith apple and cilantro.
“Being that we’re an organic produce company and we already have fruits and vegetables, herbs and super foods coming to us every day, we wanted to position ourselves as a local artisan juice producer,” Kirk said. “But we also wanted to create flavors that were thought provoking and nutritionally balanced, so we took a lot of time crafting the flavor profiles.
“We broke our flavors into notes, which is what chefs and sommeliers do. We have low notes, mid notes and high notes, and we identified all these delicacies within the flavor profile. Beyond being healthy, I think our juices are exceptional because of the flavor combinations.”
The Nature’s Garden juice bar at Krog Street will feature smoothies, wheatgrass elixirs and the full line of cold-pressed juices.
“The Krog Street location is an extension of our online delivery business but it also gives us a physical presence in the heart on Inman Park. It’s really exciting to create a place where people can pick up their produce boxes, if they want, they can grab a smoothie or a wheatgrass shot, and we can really get our juice out there.”
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