Sad news to report out of Mount Juliet. We were leaving Jonathan’s Grille a few weeks ago when we drove by one of our favorite spots, Planet Smoothie. I say “favorite spots,” but really we only went there like three times. Still, it was good. I’ll tie that in later. Anyway, as we drove by, we noticed a sign in the window saying that a new poke restaurant was coming (never had it – seems cool, though). I was devastated…as devastated as a human who just found out his “favorite” smoothie place that he went to twice was closing could be. It got me thinking about our societal relationship with the smoothie, how it’s changed, and where it was.
When I was a younger man, getting through college and coming back to Mount Juliet on the weekends and in the summertime, we had a spot called Keva Juice in Providence. Now, you’ll find Cori’s Doghouse there. But then…then, back in that summer of 2006….Keva Juice was like paradise. It was our meeting spot. Providence was pretty centrally located for those of us on the Gladeville side to meet with our friends who were more on the Lebanon Road side of Mount Juliet. It was a hangout. We’d get a fresh smoothie, we’d pick up a board game, and we’d hang for a little bit before we got into the evening’s plans.
Smoothie King opened up, but it was a tiny spot. There was nowhere to sit….nowhere to build community like Keva Juice had. I think we had a couple of good years of building our afternoons around smoothies. Eventually, Keva Juice closed. There was still one open in Knoxville when I went up there in 2008, but it has since closed as well. Now, it’s nothing more than a memory. Smoothie King is on to its second location in Mount Juliet…but it’s in a bank….there’s nowhere to sit around with your friends anymore. It sure seems like we don’t have any options to congregate by a smoothie anymore.
Now, the same is happening for our (kind of) beloved Planet Smoothie.
Are people just over smoothies? Or, are enough places offering them nowadays that you don’t need a specialty shop for it? Is the smoothie becoming little more than a relic of our past? These are desperately important things to consider. Like I mentioned early, even I, a man that loves a good smoothie, forgets they exist sometimes. I’m guilty – oh my….am I actually a bad person? Maybe it was all just a trend like those gross cupcakes in the early 2010s that were like 20% cake and 80% icing. I don’t know. Regardless, something needs to be done about the status of the smoothie in our society. It’s something you can build community around and it’s quite refreshing – we can’t lose sight of that. Maybe if we actually like smoothies like we say we do, we need to start supporting our smoothie people more. Or, maybe we just need to bring back Keva Juice.
Image courtesy of Doug Bagg on Unsplash.
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.
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