Another failure, another trip to Bali, another California homecoming. He returned to California in 2007 and launched Blissfull, a restaurant and juice-delivery service in San Diego. When that flopped he jetted off to Bali, Indonesia, then followed a loop around surf spots in the Pacific for four years-Australia, Fiji, Hawaii-supporting himself by cooking at restaurants and serving as a private chef for vacationers. called Raw Food Guy, while living at a pro surfer's house nearby. Homeschooled for the first half of high school, Ethans lasted two years at Golden West College before opening a raw-food restaurant in Encinitas, Calif. Things have come a long way from Ethans' original concoctions. And the upcoming Essentials, a slight nutritional step-down, will cost $3.99 a bottle. The less radical Elements, nine flavors at $4.99 a pop, are snacks or supplements. The Classic retails for $8.99 a bottle a set of six different flavors (yes, nearly $54) can replace an entire day's worth of food in a so-called cleanse. Today Suja makes three lines of juices from fruit, vegetables and exotic ingredients. "I don't think anyone here thought this was going to be as big as it is," says Ethans. This year it's poised to do $50 million in sales. In a little more than a year and a half, Suja Juice, tucked away in an office complex among scrubby hills outside of San Diego, has expanded from minimal revenue to $18 million in 2013, its first full year of operation. A surfer dude and self-taught chef teams up with a law-school dropout turned yoga instructor to create one of the fastest-growing organic juice makers ever. You can stop talking now."īut it's a nice little story. "This one," he says, nodding at his lunch companion Annie Lawless, 26, "really pushed me to make sure I could maybe provide for a family one day." Lawless laughs, "Noooo.
![suja juice suja juice](https://cdn.sujajuice.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/suja-power-greens-lg-2.jpg)
Dressed in a wrinkled black T-shirt and gray jeans, he's squeezing lemon over a bowl of freshly scooped avocado, reaching up to brush away a stray lock of hair, bleached by the sun and salty with the tang of the Pacific Ocean. "I was into just making really healthy food, living a pretty relaxed lifestyle, surfing and doing a lot of yoga," says Eric Ethans, 30.