If you’ve wandered through a local farmers market in San Luis Obispo, chances are you’ve spotted a little booth with vibrant bottles of juice that almost glow.
That’s RAD Juice, the 3-year-old organic cold-pressed juice company that has quickly become a local favorite. Behind those colorful bottles is a serious passion for wellness.
Founder Jason Plough didn’t start in the juice business. For nearly a decade, he traveled the world as a professional filmmaker, capturing motocross and extreme sports.
“Towards the end of that chapter, the travel got a little ruthless,” Plough recalled. “I was eating terrible food … and realized I wanted to live much longer.”
His pivot?
Healthier living and a love affair with raw, cold-pressed juice.
RAD Juice began in the Plough kitchen with his then 4-year-old son and wife, Lindsay.
“We’d make juice for friends and family, and it just kind of took off,” he said.
What started as a family experiment soon grew into a full business rooted in community.
Today, RAD Juice serves hundreds of weekly subscribers and can be found at local spots like SLO Food Co-op, Bread Bike, Lincoln Deli, and other neighborhood cafés and shops.
What sets RAD Juice apart is the process. Cold-pressed juice is labor-intensive but straightforward: Produce is slowly ground and pressed under 2,000 pounds of pressure, and the liquid extracted retains up to 90 percent of nutrients and enzymes.
“Your body doesn’t have to work to break down any of that produce, you’re just injecting it straight into your system,” Plough explained.
The result is a nutrient-packed drink that delivers what he calls “high-octane fuel” for the body.
Plough and his team experiment constantly with seasonal ingredients, carefully balancing taste and health benefits. Favorites include the Greenest Green, a pure vegetable juice with raw spirulina; the immunity-boosting Bodyguard, featuring carrots, celery, beets, lemon, ginger, turmeric, garlic, and lion’s mane; and RAD Power, a coconut-water-based electrolyte drink with 1,000 milligrams of electrolytes.
Plough said he sometimes mixes sweeter juices with carbonated water to make a natural soda, and some customers even use them as mixers for cocktails.
Jason and Lindsay’s son, now 6, is still the ultimate taste-tester, and their 4-month-old daughter is already on the path to joining the family business in the future, Plough said with a laugh.
“My son, he even just like on his own will grab our Greenest Green juice, which is a pure green veggie juice, and he doesn’t think anything of it,” Plough said. “He’s really part of the business and has a taste for these nutrient-packed drinks.”
RAD Juice uses glass bottles, runs a take-back system for bottle returns, and sends leftover pulp to a local regenerative farm in Pismo Beach, where it’s used for compost and animal feed. About 70 percent of bottles are returned and reused, helping the company maintain low waste.
“We try to have no waste and reuse as much as possible,” Plough said.
“We think of ourselves as the modern-day milkman,” the company notes on its website. Subscribers can sign up for weekly delivery straight to their front door. Farmers markets, local shops, and wholesale accounts complement the delivery system, and a new SLO Ranch Market kiosk opening March 1 will give locals another location to taste RAD’s latest seasonal flavors in person.
Three years in, RAD Juice is thriving, but Plough says the most rewarding part remains the family element and the community response.
“Everyone should grab a bottle and treat their body to some goodness,” he said. “Whether you’re under the weather or just want a daily boost, it’s a simple way to fuel yourself with high-octane nutrients.”
Fast fact
• Join the Cozy Winter Reading Challenge with SLO County Libraries. Readers of all ages can stop by their local SLO County library to pick up a free bingo card with different reading challenges in each square. Once five squares are filled, readers can win a prize. But fill out all the squares, and readers can enter a grand prize drawing. The challenge runs through Feb. 14. Unique bingo cards for kids, teens, and adults are available at all 14 SLO County Library locations. ∆
Reach Staff Writer Chloë Hodge at chodge@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jan 15-22, 2026.