Project Juice Opening Hayes Valley 'Test Kitchen' Location with Expanded Hot Food Menu

Project Juice is opening its sixth Bay Area location in Hayes Valley in early October, but this one’s with a twist. The cold-pressed juice company is calling the new location its Project Juice Test Kitchen, and for the first time, it’s expanding its offerings to include hot food. “We’ve been doing the juice thing for a while and feel like we have a good handle on it. So it was like, ‘Okay, what else can we do and what are our customers asking us to do?’” co-founder Greg Malsin explained to Eater. That’s when he and his team set out to create a menu that fits into the company’s “eat clean” ethos. “Juice is a great part of a balanced diet, but it definitely involves more, and we want to be the ones to be able to provide it,” Malsin said.

The new menu includes make-your-own acai, oatmeal and kale bowls (which at $10.95 each are a “meal for sure”), a custom Nana Joe’s granola blend, Jane gluten-free pastries, hot soups, Sightglass coffee and Samovar tea drinks mixed with Project Juice’s housemade cashew milk and Health-Ade kombucha mixed with Project Juice juices. The idea is to test the products out at the Hayes Valley location and then slowly roll out the most successful ones to other stores (though Valencia Street is also getting some bowl action). “We have a pretty solid pipeline of new ideas that we may rotate on a weekly, monthly or even daily basis,” Malsin said. “We’ll set customers’ expectations and really let them know we want feedback because some may not work and some may work really well.” Malsin anticipates the Hayes Valley test kitchen to open in the first or second week of October.