Saint John Entrepreneur Starts Pickup, Delivery Business With Fresh Juices And Produce
SAINT JOHN – Miriam Westin has launched a fresh produce and homemade juice and smoothies business, inspired by her desire to provide healthy, affordable food in her community.
Westin says she came up with the idea for LifeDirt after leaving her position last summer as manager of Catapult Café in Saint John.
“My boyfriend and I were talking about different ideas that could be beneficial to the community … and really meet a basic need, so we started talking about the idea of the grocery store,” said Westin.
During the fall, she created a business plan as part of the Enterprising Women training program offered by the Saint John Community Loan Fund. Her ideas began to evolve and she decided to start with fresh produce and homemade juices and smoothies.
“I wasn’t having a good fall and was feeling pretty down,” she said. “It felt very healing to be making these juices that have fresh fruits and vegetables.”
LifeDirt did trial batches of juices in January and was officially incorporated on March 7. She now has juices and smoothies that can be ordered online and picked up at Ethel & Mary’s on Princess Street uptown. The produce packs can be ordered online and picked up at Stirling’s Farm Gate Market on Rothesay Avenue. There is also a delivery service for the produce.
LifeDirt’s food packs include as many fruits and vegetables as possible from local growers and farms, including Evergrow’in Produce in Roachville, Elmridge Farm and Noggins Corner Farm in Nova Scotia, and farms from Sussex and Montreal.
“One of the things that I really wanted to do with this was to connect people with nature and I think that there is a way to do that through food, through having some sort of connection with what we’re putting in our bodies every day,” said Westin.
Westin wants her food to affordable for everyone. Her business plan includes having some of her food packs subsidized for people who can’t afford the regular prices and offering opportunities for people to donate money to buy food packs for other people. She also plans on working with uptown businesses and local non-profits involved in food security initiatives.
Westin says her passion for social justice, and desire to do good with, and for others, led her to cultivate a more empathetic perspective to doing business.
“With the abundance of fruits and vegetables that grow on our Earth, it doesn’t make sense that not everyone has access to it,” said Westin. “I’m just trying to figure out how to make these things and how to make food accessible to people, and also be sustainable.”