Our Juice company started in the kitchen of our restaurant. We purchased a juicer at Wal-Mart for $35.95 and a Blender for $21.00 and some change and decided to make our juices RAW. As restaurant owners it was customary for our mornings to start at 5:00 am, so at the crack of dawn everyday we would make our way down to the Miami Market right there on 12th Street.

"We wanted juices that kids would love and that would appeal not only to the health conscious."

Our Caribbean influence set the stage as we routinely juiced our beets, carrots, cucumbers and without fail tried to get the cranberries fresh so we could run them through our hand made strainer! The concept was natural, no preservatives, or sugar added. We wanted to have juices that were earthy and focused directly on nutrition but at the same time should taste great. We wanted juices that kids would love and that would appeal not only to the health conscious.

Quite honestly beets by themselves can be quite insipid and that goes for cucumbers and cranberries so we researched fruits and vegetables that had enough water and sugar from both families that would be able to sustain the products. Our aim was to take the "yuck" out of natural. Even though my partner and I grew up on separate continents (he in Kingston , Jamaica and me from Manchester, England,) we had a lot in common stemming from our grandparents. As a child, my mother swore that beets were the answer to curing that horrible disease hypertension and would juice them every morning without fail.

After coming up with our unique juice combinations, we decided to sell them in our restaurant but decided to tell the customers that we were carrying the line for another company. We did this to get a true feedback as to how they felt. If we did it the other way around, they would feel obligated to say they liked them, when they really didn't.

The juices were a hit! The unique combination flavors were always a conversation piece. Even though the company makes no health claims, most of our customers have reported that these juices have helped them with nausea, hypertension, gout, and even urinary tract infections. As more and more of the restaurant business turned to the popularity of the juices, in August 2008, we decided to sell our restaurant and open a juice establishment. Shortly thereafter, we formed RAW Foods International.

In September 2008 (the same year we incorporated) we decided to venture out and take our chances by entering our juices in the Western Hemisphere Premier Food & Beverage Show in Miami. This decision was quite impulsive so we had no time to make labels, not to mention the costs involved with such an ordeal so we decided to make them ourselves.

Our labels were "not waterproof" so while the juices were tasting great, our labels were wet, some fell off the bottles--might I add, we were totally embarrassed, but I must tell you, my partner who is very charismatic showed up with a Styrofoam cooler filled with juices and a big smile!! Two weeks later however, we received a phone call telling us we were First Place Winners in the category of “Best Non-Alcoholic Beverages in the Americas,” and was presented with an award. "Did I say in the Western Hemisphere?"....Yes!

Since winning this award, we were featured in the March 2009 edition of the Beverage Industry Magazine and thereafter were contacted by major players in the industry. We were also featured on NBC 6 and had joint venture proposals thrown at us. Our ambition is to go national and of course international, we know we cant do this as lone rangers, but we will do it with a team of people who believe in the brand and know what we stand for!

We have since contracted with the best Aseptic bottler who flash pasteurizes our juices per FDA regulations, but I promise you, they taste just the same...RAAW!