April 6, 2006

Last weekend Donna Lynn Johnson opened Main Squeeze, a juice bar and home-brewing supply store located in Kieth’s Alley in the former Organic Grocery space.

By Diane Chiddister

Donna Lynn Johnson loves a good smoothie. And she’s a purist about ingredients — she’ll only use fresh fruit and frozen fresh fruit, not the concentrates that, she says, have snuck into products at smoothie chains.

She’s picky about juices, too — the more freshly squeezed, the better.

“You get pineapple juice here, it means we cut up the pineapple and juice it,” she said in an interview Monday. “There’s nothing like fresh pineapple juice.”

Last weekend Johnson began offering her freshly squeezed juice and top-flight smoothies at Main Squeeze, her new juice bar and home-brewing supply store, which is located in Kieth’s Alley in the old Organic Grocery location.

Patrons who used to frequent the OG may do a double take when they walk inside the new store. Gone are the many shelves and refrigerators, and in their place is a more spacious, gaily colored space. Centering the store is a long shiny wooden counter surrounded by stools, the handiwork of local contractor Carl Schumacher, with festive Mexican colors painted behind and tiled lamps hanging from above.

In the far area of the store, once the domain of frozen organic food, local artist Pierre Nagley has painted a rain forest motif in deep blues, creating what Johnson called a “chill-out” space. And in the entrance of the store, which contains products for home-brewing beer and wine, Nagley created murals of barley and grapes.

Johnson said she wants people to see her store as “a fun place to come, relax and drink healthy drinks, and maybe learn about making wine and beer.”

Johnson and her ex-husband, Brian Johnson, who is helping out with the store, know a thing or two about home-brewing beer. They have been doing so for years, said Donna Lynn, who is a nationally certified beer judge and a microbiologist who wrote her undergraduate thesis on yeast. She opened Fermentation Frenzy, a home-brewing supply store in Los Altos, Calif., which, she said, is still going strong.

Main Squeeze offers everything a home-brewer needs, from several varieties of roasted malted barley to malt extracts, flaked wheat and barley and a variety of equipment and kits for different kinds of beers. People who like good beer, the kind that sells for about $8 a six-pack, will find they can make at home a product that is just as good for about half the price, Johnson said. And as well as saving money, the home-brewing process is fun, she said.

In addition to providing equipment and ingredients, the Johnsons look forward to providing new home-brewers with know-how, Donna Lynn Johnson said.

“The important thing is that we will be able to help people and tell them about it,” she said. “People can call us up anytime and we’ll give advice. And if we don’t have something they need, we’ll get it.”

Main Squeeze also offers kits for making wine and cheese. And along with a wide variety of smoothies, from Strawberry Splendor and Peach Passion to Bulldog Blues, the store offers bee products to add to the drinks, which offer enhanced energy and vitality, Johnson said. She also will offer wheatgrass juice and cream cheese and bagels, and plans to sell her homemade falafels in the future.

Johnson, who also sings and plays the guitar in the band Paul’s Apartment, moved from the San Francisco Bay Area six years ago when she accepted a job overseeing food safety at a Dole plant in Springfield. She decided to take the job when she discovered Yellow Springs, which, she said, she considered “a little mini-Santa Cruz,” and decided to live here.

Her background has been largely in the field of food safety and manufacturing, and until six months ago she worked as director of technical services for a produce business. When she was laid off, she first considered taking a lucrative job offer in Nashville in the same field, she said, but decided against it because she didn’t want to be a long-distance mom to her son, who is a student at McKinney School.

So she decided to “create my own job” in Yellow Springs, Johnson said. She saw the need for a juice bar, and decided to fill it. And she took the opportunity to include home-brewing supplies in the business, a product that she believes will attract shoppers to Yellow Springs because, she said, “people will travel to get to a good home-brew supply store.”

If her grand opening last weekend was any indication, people are ready for Johnson’s freshly squeezed pineapple juice, strawberry smoothies and wheatgrass juice. She had a good crowd all weekend, she said, and although opening a new store means long hours, it also means having fun.

“It’s a lot of hard work but I like it,” she said.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com