Eco Smoothie Cafe

May 27, 2016

Serving Up Healthy Flavors With a Retro Flair

Ryan Nelson started doing restaurant work when he was 14 years old, snagging a youth work permit so he could take a job at the Flapjack Family Restaurant in Petoskey. That was the start of seven more years of restaurant work for the ambitious Nelson, who continued in the food industry through college in Ann Arbor, working at country clubs while he studied engineering at the University of Michigan. So how did an engineering student become a smoothie cafe founder? Nelson said it’s all about “utilizing innovations in materials that need a marketplace,” whether those materials are car parts or beverage ingredients.

TOUGH TRANSITION

“My engineering studies are definitely part of this story,” Nelson laughed. “Engineering isn’t necessarily your vocation; it’s a mindset to think, problem-solve, research and innovate.”

After college, Nelson worked at Visteon, a Michigan-based global automotive supplier, where he was an efficiency engineer helping innovate the steering systems of Ford cars. He was laid off, along with 1,500 other people, in 2000.

“I hadn’t been at Visteon that long, but I was laid off with guys who were third and fourth-generation Ford workers,” he said. “Seeing that was tough.”

He decided to get out of the Midwest for a while. He traveled around the U.S., interviewing with a range of engineering companies. “But the automotive industry layoffs had trickled down to everywhere,” Nelson explained.

He finally found a position recruiting for law firms in Washington, D.C.; his second day on the job was Sept. 11, 2001.

“That put an end to that local economy,” he said. “The whole place was in shock.”

He lost his job and found his way to interning at the U.S. Capitol, where he worked on Capitol Hill. As an intern, he had to find a less expensive apartment; he also ended up working at a nearby gym cafe to pick up some extra dollars.

ECO EPIPHANY

“In addition to the gym, there were apartments upstairs, so they had a chef there making really good food,” Nelson said. “On the other side of the cafe was a smoothie-making setup; I started making smoothies for people and I just loved it immediately. The biggest thing about food service is that you have to have empathy; you look at someone’s reaction to what you’ve made and, if you can tell they didn’t like it, you work to make it better.”

The people he worked with, he added, while great co-workers, were “not the best” at making smoothies. “Plus, we did like most places, serving them in plastic or Styrofoam,” he said. “With my engineering background, I knew there must be something better. I even sketched the logo back then for what would become Eco Smoothie.”

Nelson moved back to Michigan, first to Detroit, then back Up North in 2008, where he worked a number of jobs, but the smoothie cafe idea was still in the back of his mind, so he set off on a trip to investigate further.

“I visited Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona,” he said, “visited smoothie shops everywhere I could find them and just learned.”

He returned to Michigan with all the knowledge he’d acquired and opened Eco Smoothie in downtown Petoskey in May of 2012 with a very distinctive and, yes, wellengineered plan for his new cafe.

CHOCOLATE TO TROPICAL

“The point of Eco Smoothie is to be a place that offers something healthy to the community,” Nelson said. “That’s a niche that is not filled here full time.”

It’s also common, he said, to overhear people walk in arguing whether they should get a smoothie or go elsewhere for ice cream.

“A lot of the time, especially in the summer, ice cream wins,” Nelson laughed. “Smoothies just haven’t been part of the culture here, but it’s amazing to see how many people in northern Michigan have actually never had a smoothie, and we get to serve them their very first one.”

Nelson also believes people have a misconception as to what a smoothie is.

“Some think that a smoothie is ice with some flavored powder in it,” he said.

The doesn’t use ice at all, Nelson confirmed; they just freeze most of the ingredients that go into their smoothies, from the fruit to the kale.

The menu, a refreshing change from the local standards of ice cream and fudge, includes a wide range of smoothies, from the university-themed M Go Blue (blueberries, banana, peanut butter, carrot)

and Go Green (banana, mango, kiwi, spinach) to the Green Monster (spinach or kale, banana, pineapple, lime juice, ginger), which Nelson said is already a favorite of people familiar with smoothie culture. The solid, frozen ingredients are blended with liquid bases including unsweetened almond milk, coconut milk, soy milk and apple juice. Two customer favorites include the Cocoa Beware, with peanut butter, banana, protein powder and raw cacao (“People say, ‘that’s too good; it tastes like a milkshake, how can this be good for me?’” Nelson laughed) and the Sneaky Beach, a fiesta of tropical flavors including banana, pineapple, mango and peach in a base of coconut or regular milk.

SMOOTHIE COMMUNITY

The second part of Nelson’s plan was to make his Eco Smoothie Cafe a place where northern Michiganians would be comfortable hanging out, the same as they would in any other cafe or ice cream parlor, and he started with how the smoothies are served.

“We use PLA (polylactic acid) cups, which are compostable in commercial composters,” he said. “Our customer spoons are made out of potato starch and we use sugarcane bowls and plates instead of paper or plastic ones. So we can talk both about the benefits of the smoothies themselves and have conversations about sustainability.”

Next up was the ambiance of the cafe itself, for which Nelson chose a quirky take on the Up North cottage feel.

“The point of most businesses up here is that people go Up North to be reminded of what they had in their childhood,” he explained.

The Eco Smoothie Cafe building was constructed in the 1890s, Nelson said, and was near where the steamships used to drop people off.

“We’re on the corner where all the touristtrap type shops used to be,” he said. “It’s special to be in this building. It reminds me of the general stores at the state parks here — the wooden floors, the doors slapping shut and that very distinctive atmosphere.”

Nelson has outfitted the Eco Smoothie Cafe to recapture some of those memories. It’s painted in bright cottage colors, from a pale lime green to a pastel blue; a 1948 Kenmore Coldspot refrigerator holds bottles of Faygo pop and the cafe’s “Blender Museum” features several dozen vintage blenders on the wall.

“We spin vinyl and play cassette tapes,” Nelson said. “It’s fun. It just feels like you’re Up North, in a cottage kitchen. People keep telling us we should open one of these downstate, but it needs to be here, serving this community, because there’s nothing else like it here.”

The Eco Smoothie Cafe is located at 200 Petoskey Street in downtown Petoskey. They are open from 9am to 6pm. Find them online at facebook.com/ecosmoothie.