After a vibrant 12-year run, Squeeze Juice Works, a beloved health-focused beverage business, has officially closed its final St. Petersburg location. But don’t fret, health enthusiasts! Owner Kelly Lessem isn’t throwing in the towel; instead, she’s squeezing new life into the space, transforming it into a wellness co-working space called Soul Purpose.
The last Squeeze Juice Works location, nestled at 675 30th Ave. N., served its final juices on January 20th. Lessem, the visionary founder who started the company in 2012, is eager to embark on this new chapter.
Squeeze Juice Works started as a personal quest for Lessem, who sought treatment for an autoimmune condition. “When you get sick, you are just searching for someone to help,” Lessem explained, recalling her journey navigating various Western and alternative medicine approaches. This sparked the idea to create clean, fresh-pressed juices, and in 2013, Squeeze opened its first brick-and-mortar location.
Over the years, Squeeze expanded its menu, offering various health-boosting juices, coffee, food, and smoothies. At its peak, the company operated three locations in Tampa and St. Pete, along with a plant-based cafe in St. Pete’s Round Lake neighborhood. However, Lessem noted that rapid growth brought unforeseen challenges.
“We just saw opportunity, and we never really kind of wrote out a business plan for how the business was going to develop,” Lessem admitted. Despite a strong culture and dedicated team, the company lacked the necessary structures to manage its growth effectively.
After closing the Tampa location in 2019 and the Central Ave. location in St. Pete in 2024, Lessem decided to shift gears. “After the three hurricanes this past year, it became really evident that that was not a good direction for me anymore,” Lessem explained. “I decided to close Squeeze, liquidate it and just try to move forward towards what I really want to do with my life.”
Now, Lessem is channeling her energy into Soul Purpose, a supportive environment for practitioners and clients alike.
“I really missed that part of my life, and I wanted to get back to that, to use everything that I had learned in the past 13 years of Squeeze and to bring that back to help support people that are going through chronic illness, and to support the community,” Lessem shared.
Soul Purpose aims to be more than just a workspace; Lessem envisions it as a “wellness guild,” offering treatment rooms for rent by the hour or month. This setup allows independent practitioners to offer their services without the complexities of managing a traditional spa.
Lessem hopes to create a space where individuals dealing with health complications can find guidance and support.
“At one point, I wrote a list of how many different like people I had gone to see, and it had over 114. I want to create this place to help guide people because chronic illness is really lonely,” Lessem explained.
Looking back, Lessem sees her Squeeze journey as an invaluable learning experience.
“I felt like what this gave me was almost an MBA [Masters in Business Administration] in real-time with real money,” Lessem said with a laugh. “So I feel like the education that I received, both in learning about how to work with people with their health and also my own health and how to run a business, has brought me back to a simpler way of using my energies towards working with supporting people with chronic illness.”
Soul Purpose is set to open soon and is currently seeking practitioners to join its community. Lessem also plans to host workshops and a weekly segment interviewing local therapists, further solidifying Soul Purpose as a hub for wellness and connection.