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North End is located at 718 N. Cleveland St. in the Museum District. (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
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Acai bowl, smoothie and chia pudding from North End (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
After being closed since October, Museum District smoothie and juice bar North End Juice Co. will reopen Saturday, June 20, as North End, with new owners and spouses Patrick and Stephanie Murtaugh at the helm. Regular patrons of the original spot, the duo saw the vacancy as an opportunity to bring it back.
Stephanie Murtaugh, a Hanover native and event professional, says they didn’t want to reinvent the wheel; rather, they wanted ensure the popular walk-up concept continued. “We’ve always lived in the Fan and in the city; I used to live around the corner. We’ve come here since they’ve opened, and then when we had kids, we’d come on the way to school, we’d walk up on the weekends,” she says.
The Murtaughs officially took over in mid-January and have been spending the months since prepping the space.
Originally opened in 2016, North End Juice Co. abruptly closed in October after its staff collectively resigned, citing concerns about new ownership and the undisclosed criminal history of an employee. At the time, founder Channing Miller refused to comment on the allegations, and following the mass resignation, the juice bar sat vacant for months.
Among those who left was longtime manager Brogan Rogers, who is now branching out with a venture of her own. Her smoothie and juice pop-up, Somewhere Good, will make its inaugural appearance June 20 at the Midlothian outpost of Westwood Athletics from 3 to 7 p.m.
Stephanie Murtaugh says they reached out to a few former North End Juice Co. employees, many of whom had worked at the business for years, prior to reopening to share their plans to revive the business. None of the original staff plans to return. She acknowledges those tenured employees for helping to build the business’s reputation and longtime success.
“We were here all the time. What they were doing was good, and that’s credit to the employees that were running it,” she says.
The Murtaughs say they were mindful of the business’s history when they decided to take over and envision this new chapter. “Obviously, we’re trying to stay sensitive because we want to respect what the employees felt and what they went through, but also make sure people know [that] that’s not this,” Stephanie says.
While talking with friends about North End Juice Co.’s closure last year, the couple began discussing whether they might be able to make it happen themselves. When someone encouragingly said to them, “I could see you all doing this,” the wheels started to turn.
They reached out to the owner. “It was a long journey,” Stephanie notes, “because of the way they closed. We eventually worked out an agreement.”
Because the lease was separate from the business itself, the Murtaughs structured the deal as an asset sale, purchasing the equipment, digital assets and other property associated with North End Juice Co. rather than acquiring the business outright.
One of the most common questions the pair has received is why they’ve chosen to keep the name (though they have dropped “Juice Co.”) of a business that had a highly public closure. Stephanie says, “It’s the same space, same concept, same smoothies. For us, we felt like the reputation of what North End [Juice Co.] brought to the community was bigger than that. It felt inauthentic to change the name. We’re out to do a good thing, and that’s just gotta be our story, that people know it’s new ownership.”
Stephanie and Patrick Murtaugh are the owners of the rebranded North End. (Photo courtesy Stephanie Murtaugh)
A face patrons can expect to see daily is Patrick, co-founder and former head brewer of Hardywood Park Craft Brewery, who stepped back from day-to-day operations of the beer business last year. He says the move has given him the opportunity to pursue a different kind of food and beverage project.
Stephanie adds, “He did it for a long time, for a long time, and loved it, but when we go on vacation, he’s always cooking, he’s always the one blending drinks, always in the kitchen, and he was ready to do something different.”
Much of the shop’s menu has been preserved, including familiar staples like the blueberry-banana-peanut butter Blue Suede Shoes. Other smoothies have been given new names and slight tweaks, such as the Cocoa Cabana, a riff on the Elvis that swaps almond butter for peanut butter.
A new item is The Northie, a “kid-approved” option with strawberries, pineapple, mango and coconut water. The Blue Jean Baby combines peaches, pineapple, banana, avocado, dates, vanilla collagen, almond milk, sea moss and coconut cream into an Erewhon-style creation that resembles the company’s Coconut Cloud Smoothie, while the Rad Chad (essentially the Arnold) features spinach, peanut butter, vanilla whey protein, raw oats and almond milk but adds coconut cream.
Juice options have been slimmed down to the Greengo (spinach, apple, cucumber, celery, ginger, lemon), Awaken Well (orange, grapefruit, lime, Medicine Man shot, Fuego shot, over ice) and Mr. Brightside (kale, spinach, apple, pineapple, lemon).
The wellness shots — Fuego and Medicine Man — have carried over, along with a handful of smoothie and acai bowls. For coffee, they have partnered with local roaster Blanchard’s, serving hot drip coffee, iced coffee, a honey-matcha latte and a salted brown butter oat latte on tap that is a nod to Patrick’s brewing background.
Stephanie says they consulted with Jason Alley, former chef and co-owner of seminal Southern restaurants Comfort and Pasture, on menu updates. Food fixtures such as avocado toast with cherry tomatoes, sesame seeds and microgreens; the hefty four-egg breakfast burrito; and the tuna poke bowl with yellowfin, edamame, seaweed salad, pickled cucumber, red onion and ponzu dressing remain.
New eats include The Ritual Cup, featuring vanilla greek yogurt, almond milk and chia seeds served with a tart cherry compote, crispy quinoa crunch granola and a drizzle of honey; a smoked turkey sandwich — sliced in house — with avocado, pickled onions, Dijonnaise and marinated tomatoes; and weekends-only protein waffles.
In the coming months, Stephanie says, they plan to open the adjacent building, formerly home to North End Gelato, and offer indoor seating and a cooler stocked with grab-and-go items. She also envisions holding events there. For now, they’re focused on reintroducing the space.
She says, “Everybody kept saying, ‘I was hoping someone would do something with it.’ We want to keep the same energy — do wellness, be approachable, keep it fun, and get back to this being a neighborhood spot where someone can say, ‘I’m going to get my Blue Suede Shoes.’”
North End will be open Thursday-Monday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
