Fresh-Squeezed Veggie Juice Finally Comes of Age

NEW YORK — At midmorning, the line at Liquiteria is almost out the door.

Customers at the bright, cheerful juice bar can’t seem to get enough of owner Doug Green’s menu of smoothies and fresh-squeezed juices. Some of the drinks are billed as energy builders; others promise to burn fat, boost the immune system or detoxify the lymph system.

On the counter, a tabloid photo shows Natalie Portman clutching a bottle of Liquiteria’s signature cold-pressed juices (meaning the liquid is extracted by chopping and pressing, rather than spinning in a centrifuge). Beside the picture is a framed thank-you note from another actress, Rachel Weisz, “for all the juice.”

But New York’s hard-core juicers don’t need to trek to this trendy East Village neighborhood where Liquiteria has been serving a loyal clientele since 1996. There are dozens of juice bars all over the city, including 18 branches of the California-based Jamba Juice.

Once the drink of hard-core health nuts, fresh-squeezed vegetable juice — along with its far more popular sibling, fresh-squeezed fruit juice — has come of age.

Today there are more than 6,400 outlets across the United States that sell fresh juice and smoothies, ringing up $3.4 billion in annual sales, according to industry consulting group Juice Gallery Multimedia. It’s a far cry from the early days, when juice bars were often drab affairs tucked in the back of health food stores, emitting the grinding, horror-movie sounds of fibrous beets and carrots meeting industrial-strength blades.