Keva Juice marks new beginning for Douglas coach

As a road-bound basketball and soccer coach, Johnson Lane resident Steve Walsh has patronized Keva Juices throughout Northern Nevada.

"We always stop the bus and let the girls go to Keva Juice," said Walsh, who coaches both freshman girls basketball at the high school and girls club soccer in the spring.

As an entrepreneur, Walsh has made the new Keva Juice in Gardnerville his first franchise, and, more importantly, his first small business.

"I could have been a pizza guy, or a sandwich guy. There are a thousand things I could have been, but this was the closest thing to being a true entrepreneur," Walsh said. "The kids and I researched franchises on the Internet, and, honestly, Keva Juice was our favorite place."

For the last 25 years, Walsh has worked in retail, but not at Pizza Hut or Subway or Keva Juice. He started in building materials and stayed in building materials for more than two decades. From 1997 to 2003, he was the sales manger of BMC West in Johnson Lane. He later went to manage sales at a Yerington lumberyard, but found himself in uncharted territory when the housing slump hit.

"For the first time in my life, I was unemployed," he said.

Far from giving up, Walsh decided to reinvent his career and seize on something new.

"It's the only one in Gardnerville," he said, referring to the Keva Juice he opened between Starbucks and Round Table Pizza about two weeks ago. "My kids helped me with the selection process. We learned that in a big city, you want to do something that's already established, and open it close to others where you can share advertising and ride their coattails. In a small town, though, you want to find something that no one else is doing."

Use to managing hundreds of employees, Walsh now has nine part-time employees running Keva Juice. The team consists of his son Lonny, 18, daughter Kelsey, 15, and a mixture of his basketball and soccer players.

"I kind of had the pick of the litter with the kids," Walsh joked. "Dealing with my athletes, I can write the work schedule around our basketball and soccer games. The kids can't complain that their boss doesn't work around their schedules."

Walsh is in the process of training employees and setting up the details of the franchise. Given his background in construction, he was allowed to renovate his own storefront. He said Keva Juice is very flexible with its franchise operators.

"They have recommended vendors with contracts that give us favorable pricing, but I could just walk over and get a lot of the stuff from Scolari's if I needed to," Walsh said.

However, he said the company does require that owners stay true to the product: 33 kinds of smoothies, not to mention a secret menu with more than 15 other combinations.

"Really, there are unlimited combos," Walsh said.

He said the Strawberry Squeezer, Orange Obsession and Keva Kolada are the franchise's most popular smoothie varieties. The only solid food item on the menu, Chicago-style stuffed gourmet pretzels, are popular as well.

"We're getting a lot of foot traffic in the morning, and I'm thinking of expanding to offer more breakfast-flavored pretzels, like apple, cinnamon and blueberry," Walsh said.

He also boasted about Keva Juice's healthy aspects, such as vitamin and supplement boosters, and the use of nonfat yogurt in the smoothies instead of low-fat yogurt.

"The smoothies typically have 50 percent less calories than those of an equivalent store," Walsh said.

But he advised that success hinges on more than just the quality of products: delivery of those products plays a significant role.

"The hardest thing is just working your tail off," he said. "We were working 12- to 14-hour days getting the place open, and there was a sense of relief when we did open. We felt we could relax a little, but now there's a whole new can of worms. Writing the schedule is tough. We're open seven days a week, roughly 14 hours a day, and someone's got to be here."

So far, the hard work seems to be paying off.

"The company gave us some expectations of how stores usually do opening at this time of year. With maybe two exceptions, we've doubled those numbers every day," Walsh said.

However, he's still taking a grain of salt with every gain.

"It's still scary as heck," he said. "It's too early to say if we're going to be successful or not."

Keva Juice is located at 1327 Highway 395, suite B. Store hours are 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday.

Call 392-0460 for more information.