Amidst the current restrictions, restaurants have become creative with pivoting business models and offering new products or services to keep business alive. The wellness industry in particular has an opportunity since people are looking for more immunity-boosting products to stay healthy during the ongoing pandemic. One of Boulder’s first juice bar’s — Wonder Press — just opened a new location in Commons Park that offers bone and vegetable broth, homemade baked goods and more to-go items in addition to its cold-pressed juices and smoothies.
Photo Courtesy of Wonder Press
At first, the concept of Wonder Press was an experiment, according to co-founder Robyn Knowlan. She’d been working in the hospitality industry for several years and noticed that there was a lack of focus on using real, organic ingredients in many restaurants at the time. “There were often incredible chefs whose foods I wanted to eat but there wasn’t an element of health. They’d be cooking with canola oil or including sorbet in their smoothies and I didn’t want to put that in my body,” said Knowlan. She began to witness the craze of cold-pressed juices in New York and LA and wanted to see how it would do in Boulder since it is such a health-conscious, active city. “We wanted to see what it would be like to be 100% organic, use only ceremonial grade matcha, and use ingredients like coconut oil,” said Knowlan, “It was more of a proof of dream than a proof of concept.”
After Wonder Press “greased the wheels” with the Boulder store, the team decided it was time to take their product to the Denver market. The new Denver space is larger in size and offers a larger selection of to-go items including cold-pressed juices, bone broth, salads, soups and new items like pesto and harissa spreads that are made in-house. “It’s exciting to be part of that movement that is bringing superfood to people’s plates,” said Knowlan.
Photo Courtesy of Wonder Press
Wonder Press offers 15 flavors of cold-pressed juice, 11 smoothie options, four nut milk blends, six wellness shots, four flavors of broth and three broth tonics — your choice of broth blended with cleansing herbs, adaptogens and superfoods. The new location also offers a full espresso bar serving traditional coffee drinks along with wellness drinks like a golden latte with turmeric, ginger, honey, cardamom, shilajit and black pepper oil and a drink called The Mayan with house-made ganache, cinnamon, cayenne, maca, mesquite and lucuma. In addition to the delicious drinks, Wonder Press also serves tasty toasts like the Left Coast ($9) with avocado, radish, microgreens, olive oil, chili flakes, lemon and mineral salt and the World Traveler ($7) with beetroot, Greek yogurt, feta, house-made chimichurri, and microgreens.
One of Wonder Press’s big differentiators is its commitment to sustainability. Wonder Press is able to reuse most of the pulp from the cold-pressed juices in baked goods like pastries and savory pub crackers. Also, the glass bottles can be brought back to the store for the team to sanitize and reuse. “We reuse as much of our waste as we can,” Knowlan explained.
The Denver location also has a CSR program — one of only a handful of Colorado restaurants that does. The program mirrors a CSA program that many local farms use and allows customers to purchase a membership upfront that acts as a credit for them to use at the store throughout the year. This supports the restaurant’s upfront expenses to hire workers and purchase supplies and gives the customer more for their money in return. Wonder Press is currently offering CSR memberships at three different pricing tiers — $280, $640 and $1,200. Each tier gets you the same amount back in store credit plus an additional 15% bonus to spend at the store. Members also get special perks like free juices.
With so many to-go options, Wonder Press is a great place to stop for a drink, snack or lunch. It’s exciting to see another health-conscious and sustainability-focused restaurant join the Commons Park area, especially in a time when being healthy is so important.
Wonder Press is located at 1540 Platte St, Denver. Open Monday – Friday 8 a.m. – 4 p.m. and Saturday – Sunday 8 a.m. – 6 p.m.