Welcome to goodsugar
My name is Marcus, and I started this company the moment my exit agreement with my previous venture was signed. I built Juice Press from 2010 to 2019, and when I sold my interest, I went straight into goodsugar. By 2021, I had developed massive amounts of artwork, website content, menus, training, and operational systems. I found our first location on East 69th Street, made a deal with the landlord, and started building.
The core concept was radical for our industry, the complete elimination of single-use plastic from our packaging. I was terrified customers would reject glass as inconvenient or fragile. But I had to do it. Serving premium products in toxic plastic made no sense to me.
The plastic shift started in 2017. Customers at Juice Press complained constantly about packaging waste. Then came COVID. I walked the beach near my neighborhood weekly with my family, picking up trash. Within months of lockdown, the plastic vanished. The beaches filled with seals resting quietly on the shoreline, and seabirds from around the globe tripled in number. That alone answered the question I'd been asking for years. Why are we still debating this?
Plastic is poison. It's slow poison in some cases, fast in others. It destroys landscapes, highways, beaches, parks. It ruins natural beauty. And that's just the beginning of the argument.
Here's the reality. Plastic isn't going anywhere until something commercially viable replaces it, and knowing humans, that replacement probably won't be better. Industry uses plastic because it's strong, light, moldable, cheap, and does what no other substance can. Consumers are addicted to it. Suppliers are addicted to it. But single-use plastic is debaucherous and treacherous. It demonstrates a complete lack of awareness from consumers and a complete lack of care from vendors. In countries where it's banned, society adapted. We can too.
At goodsugar, we use glass and kraft paper. We stock 2.5-ounce shot glasses, 8, 12, 16, and 32-ounce jars, and two different lid types. It sounds simple. It's not. We order and store five different sizes in bulk quantities large enough to keep costs down. We have an advantage, though. Our produce vendor stores our glass palettes and delivers fresh product alongside fresh packaging. Clean solution.
People worried glass was too heavy or fragile. They were wrong. Our product is so good they wanted it regardless of packaging. Plus, the product looks glorious in glass. In plastic, it looks cheap, like it's been sitting on a shelf too long.
In three-plus years, we've prevented approximately 750,000 single-use plastic items from entering the waste stream. From plastic straws to plastic bags, plastic lids, wrappers, bottles and clam shell containers. Plastic over. Stop taking pictures of a designer smoothie in a plastic cup with plastic lid and straw. Sorry, it's far from cool anymore.
About 25 percent of our packaging gets returned for credit. Another 25 percent, I'd guess, our guests reuse at home indefinitely. The remaining 50 percent enters the waste system where glass gets pulverized into dust and recycled, either by nature or industry.
What I'm creating right now is a word, Plastikarma. The cycle of causes and effects that single-use plastic has on all living beings. Only humans benefit from it temporarily. Whatever good we think we get, we're paying for with our health and the accumulation of filth on the planet.
I'm grateful people are choosing goodsugar. I'm grateful glass is working. We're the first retailer in all of New York to remove single-use plastic from our packaging, and that's a legacy I'm proud to leave.