• Daria Bishop
• Vermont Juice Company owner Jehan Dolbashian with a tahini mocha smoothie

The Vermont Juice Company offers packs of bright green, orange and red cold-pressed juice with aspirational names promising immunity, abundance, energy and strength. They're not cleanses, though. They're plans.

"Because plans change," Jehan Dolbashian said. Hers certainly did.

Dolbashian, 31, was the first employee Hannah George and Matt Guba hired at their Burlington juice bar when it opened at 77 Main Street in 2014. Then a senior at the University of Vermont, Dolbashian dreamed of working in social and environmental justice nonprofits. Almost a decade later, she was still working occasionally at the store while pursuing a master's degree in public administration when the company's founders told her they were ready to move on.

"I couldn't say no," she said. "I've had a connection to this place since day one."

In April 2022, Dolbashian became Vermont Juice Company's owner-operator. The shop — and its core lineup of cold-pressed juices — has been "super consistent" over its 10 years, she said. Now, she's expanding its local partnerships, sourcing ingredients from women-run businesses and farms such as Burlington's ALKAME CO and Charlotte's Head Over Fields.

• Daria Bishop
• Cold-pressed juices

Dolbashian is also reflecting on the business' role in the often-fraught health and wellness industry, where people can feel excluded or intimidated and a focus on diet culture can be harmful. Instead of targeting a specific demographic, she said, "we're for everybody with a body."

The language change — from "cleanse" to "plan" — is a big part of that. Dolbashian said she supports customers who want to follow the ritual of a juicing plan, spending a day (or three or five) consuming just raw fruit and vegetable juices in hopes of releasing toxins and restoring nutrients. But personally, she doesn't do them anymore. They don't make her feel good.

If you set out to spend the day drinking juice and your body tells you that you're hungry, "You should eat," Dolbashian said. "Changing our relationship with food and beverage is so vital, and it's a lot of undoing."

Juice is still the shop's focus, but under Dolbashian's ownership, Vermont Juice Company has started offering more snack items, including housemade vegan desserts such as PB&J cups, cheesecakes and tahini cups. The latter ($5) inspired me to double down on tahini-filled items when I stopped in on a recent rainy day, after navigating past construction on lower Main Street.

I paired the sweet treat — which Dolbashian said nods to her family and Armenian heritage — with a tahini mocha smoothie ($13). The combo of oat milk, Lumus Bread & Coffee cold-brew, ALKAME CO mushroom chocolate, banana, Vermont maple syrup and cocoa nibs with a tahini-maple smear around the cup was on the savory side of sweet. It reminded me of the peanut butter-banana smoothie I drank for months straight when I ran a coffee shop in New York City. That drink, from a cart outside a busy subway stop, often made me late for work.

This one gave me the boost I needed to meet a deadline — early, in fact — and reminded me that the cheery shop is worth a stop.