Middleburg’s Values Represented in its Juice

By Chelsea Rose Moore

Photos courtesy of Middleburg Juice Company

Walk down the aisles of any major grocery store, and you’ll see it. Stroll through your neighborhood farmer’s market, and you’ll see it there too. Flip through the pages of any health magazine, and you’ll read all about it. What is “it,” you ask? The answer is juice.

Our society is crazed by juice, and it seems everyone wants in. Grocery stores have devoted entire shelves to brightly colored juices, boasting of its health benefits. Small juice shops are popping up in urban and suburban communities, and magazines tout the healing powers of juice cleanses. And amidst all of the noise, there’s Matt Cahir, who fits none of the above categories.

Cahir doesn’t own a brick and mortar shop or a grocery store. But he’s making a juice that’s different from anything you’ll find on grocery store shelves. He even takes it a step further by delivering it to your door. With a goal of creating and serving the best green juice possible, he calls his brand the Middleburg Juice Company.

“It’s so Middleburg,” said Cahir. “It represents Middleburg in so many ways and is focused on all the things that really impact Middleburg people.”

The juice is comprised of 10 ingredients, each of which is included for a specific purpose: pineapple nourishes skin; lemon and ginger help the gut; mint strengthens hair; celery and cucumber aid digestion and hydrate, and kale and spinach provide energy. Unlike most juices, Cahir’s is 90 percent vegetables and 10 percent fruit. He said grocery store juice is usually the same number but reversed (90 percent fruit and 10 percent vegetables). His ingredients are organic and non-GMO, and he’s looking to source ingredients from local, organic farms.

His passion for juice began recently, but his journey began many years ago. For the last 15 years, he worked in investment banking and software for Goldman Sachs and watched his health deteriorate. As a self-described two-steaks-a-day man, he was 260 pounds, and he struggled with multiple health issues, including gout, Lyme disease, and acne. After seeing a photo of himself at last year’s Middleburg Christmas Parade, he realized he needed to start prioritizing his health.

He began working with a nutrition expert to create a green juice recipe. Together, they spent hours developing a well-balanced drink, unlike anything he might have tasted before. The end result was “something that was pretty spectacular.”

Cahir has made a conscious decision to keep each stage of his process pure and organic. As a former consumer of mainstream juice from the grocery store, he discovered the juice he was buying was not what he thought he was getting.

“Green juice is effectively the equivalent of flavored water, because the good stuff is gone,” he said. “What I was after was a juice that did all the good stuff. It had to have the nutrients, without the sugar.”

Once his recipe was finalized, he began drinking it alongside his breakfast, and then it soon replaced his breakfast. His results were astounding. He lost over 50 pounds, his skin cleared up, his energy was restored, and his hair was healthy again.

Each bottle of juice is packed with all the nutrients required for a person’s daily intake of vegetables. “The reason it’s best in a juice is that it’s already broken down,” he said. “You drink the juice, and it’s like mainlining it straight into your body. That’s why it’s best on an empty stomach.”

Cahir knew he was on to something when his daughters started drinking the juice he had made for himself, and his friends began requesting he bring juice to their houses instead of wine.

He’s reached over 200 subscribers since his launch in late January, with no chance of things slowing down anytime soon. He even has a few corporate accounts choosing to fill their company fridges with his juice, instead of sugary drinks. He continues to receive the same positive feedback: Older customers with arthritis have found their pain much more manageable; teenagers on medication for acne have developed clear skin and stopped their medication; and everyone, young and old, feels an incredible energy pulsing through their bodies throughout the entire day.

“It’s going to do different things fordifferent people,” he said.

He hopes to be delivering 1,000 bottles by the end of summer or mid-fall, and he’s in the process of negotiating on a building in Middleburg for creating the juice. It will not be a retail space, as he is firmly a home-delivery service.

Unlike many juice sellers, he’s not planning to extend to a full line of juices or nut milks. “I want to be 100 percent juice,” he said. “I’m not being uber commercial. As soon as you start going into the other colors [of juices], you are pandering into the mass market of sweet. I’m just after something that’s really nutritious.”

Subscribing to the Middleburg Juice Company is simple. Visit the website, www.middleburgjuicecompany.com, and select the number of bottles you want delivered each week. (There is a minimum of two bottles per week.) Delivery is available to Loudoun, Fauquier and Fairfax Counties, and at checkout, you can select the day of the week your juice is delivered. The subscription can be stopped and restarted at any point, a convenient perk for when subscribers are away on vacation.

Finished with your juice? Leave the empty bottles on your doorstep, and like the old-fashioned milk man, Cahir’s team will pick them up and replace them with fresh bottles. After the bottles are picked up, they are sanitized and then reused, a principle rooted in their zero -waste policy.

Cahir believes in the importance of
using glass bottles and stainless-steel lids. “It’s a completely different experience than drinking from plastic,” he said. “You are supposed to tantalize their taste buds, their ears, their mouth… the smell and the feel of it in their hands. That’s why I’ve gone for the highest quality of everything, with the lid and home delivery.” ML