I met the man who would eventually buy much of my equity and whatever was left of it by the time I exited in 2019. The first time I met Michael Karsch was at his two floor office on 59th Street, Karsch Capital. He wore a sharp gray suit, a powder blue shirt, good shoes, and had white hair even though we were only a year apart in age. He was tall, lean, serious, and immediately interesting. Classic me, I did not research him before walking into his office. All I knew was that he was one of Kenny Dichter's childhood friends and he was considering an investment in Juice Press.
He did not give me a hero welcome just because I was the founder. He was all business. That night there was a speaking event in his conference room with about forty people. I spoke about Juice Press. Afterward, Michael asked a simple question from the audience. How do you feel about plastic, he said. We used plastic everywhere in our packaging and I could tell it was a test. I answered that plastic was necessary because glass was not realistic for fresh food production. It was not clever, but it was honest.
Later I found out his compliance chief had me investigated to check for criminal history or bankruptcies. I thought it was a scumbag move. He could have asked me and I would have told him the truth. But that is what men with power do. They want leverage. I never investigated him and maybe I should have.
When Kenny asked Michael to buy out my partner Alain, he moved without hesitation and paid one point three million. Overnight, Michael became a major shareholder and suddenly we were in a real relationship together. The beginning was friendly, but the first clash came fast. A million dollar investment had hit our operating account at Chase, mixed with payroll, taxes, and automatic withdrawals. I called our CFO Carl and told him to open a clean account at TD Bank and move that million into it. I did not even need to be a signer. It was simply the smart move.
Michael found out and called screaming. He said I had no right. I said I did. I was the CEO. We went at it hard. It was our first power struggle and he showed me instantly that he wanted control over everything. The absurdity still stands. A man invests a million and a half dollars and still does not trust the founder to move money into a safer account. I was not hiding anything. I was protecting company capital. Inexperience made me slow to see what he was. A power player who needed dominance. Looking back, that argument should have put me into war mode. Instead I was still naïve. I was still a merchant learning business in real time.
To be fair, he brought sophistication we did not have. But suddenly the company was full of suits who spoke in institutional language and had never run a food business. I knew how to build stores, protect product, kill roaches, keep hair out of food, train staff, open at sunrise, fix doors and survive. He knew spreadsheets. We needed humility. We got ego. We tolerated each other and pretended to like each other, but I disliked him early and I am sure he saw me as a threat. Maybe we needed each other. Maybe it was greed. Maybe it was destiny. Maybe it was just business unfolding the only way it could.
My belief is that piece by piece Michael dismantled Juice Press. He stripped away what made it magic. It was a sacred brand in New York. Ask anyone who lived here when we had fifteen stores and they will tell you what it meant. We were not profitable yet, but that was because we were expanding blindly and learning through fire. We had momentum. We had cultural weight. We just did not have experience.
Series A brought in Ken Langone, Stanley Druckenmiller, and others. Heavy hitters. Our strategy was to take the money and build stores. No long range plan. No model. No blueprint. Nobody had ever scaled a fresh vegan raw based food concept with a one to two day shelf life. We were inventing something with no map.
After I left, he pasteurized the juice, changed the name, removed what customers loved, and made store branding inconsistent. Some signs said Juice Press. Some said JP. Some said Just Plants. Identity confusion is what happens when branding is driven by theory instead of instinct.
I remember standing in one store with him looking at the bottles. He complained about the small writing. The weird rants. The personality customers adored. A woman knocked after closing, saying she came from uptown for two juices. I let her in. She walked straight to the fridge and said she loved the tiny writing. It could have been divine timing. He removed it anyway.
The same thing happened with MILF, Mothers Interested in Learning Food. Men I Love Fruit on the back as a joke. He hated it. Minutes later a woman came in with two kids, grabbed two MILFs, and when he asked if she knew what it meant, she smiled and said it proudly. He still wanted it gone.
Patterns everywhere. The salad concept died. The ice cream died. Bubble tea died. Pizza died. Not because they were weak ideas but because they were starved on execution and commitment. Great concepts cannot live on theory. They need placement, time, refinement, presence. We did not have that balance.
I tell these stories because someone scaling a company needs to hear them. If you raise money, pause. Sit down in a calm room. Think with clarity. Build a strategy before real estate. Do not follow the leadership of investors who have money but no instinct for product. Capital can copy, but it cannot invent culture.
At one point Juice Press was valued at one hundred seven million. That number alone says everything. We just did not know how to convert lightning into permanence.
And that is where the next part of the story begins.