What is Juice Core?
Stetson Drive is known for dinner. The Southbridge block between Scottsdale Road and Marshall Way has been one of Old Town’s best restaurant rows since the late 1990s, and most visitors only see it after dark. Juice Core is the reason to be there at seven in the morning: a shoebox-size organic juice bar in Suite 10 at 7137 E Stetson Dr, pressing raw juice daily in small batches.
It is a family business. Mother and daughter Katie and Patty Flanigan started by juicing in their garage, sold cold-pressed bottles at farmers markets around the Valley, and opened the Stetson Drive shop in 2013. The method has not changed. Produce goes through a hydraulic cold press that uses pressure rather than heat, the juice is bottled by hand straight away, and nothing is pasteurized or high-pressure processed. Everything the shop sells is organic.
The trade-off is honest: raw juice keeps only about three to five days, so this is a shop for people who will drink what they buy, not for stocking a fridge for a fortnight. The counter has grown well past bottles. There are organic smoothies and bowls, wellness shots, salads, overnight oats and chia bowls, functional lattes and organic coffee and espresso, plus a small retail shelf.
It is not a café to linger in. Order, take the bag, and walk thirty seconds to the canal. The building it shares with The Ends faces the water, and on a cool morning the promenade on the south bank is the best free breakfast table in Old Town.
How to use Juice Core
Go green first. The green cold-pressed juices are the core of the menu. When Phoenix Magazine profiled the shop in 2018 it singled out Mother Earth, a smooth blend of kale and other leafy greens with ginger and lemon that stayed on the menu year-round. If you want something sharper, ask what is pressing that day; the blends follow the produce.
Make it a meal with a bowl. The smoothies and açaí bowls turn a juice stop into breakfast. Phoenix Magazine’s write-up noted smoothies blended with house-made almond milk, which suits anyone avoiding dairy; ask at the counter what goes in today.
Order ahead if you are busy. The website runs a full online menu for pickup and delivery, which is the easy way to collect a juice cleanse kit or a bigger order. Cleanses are a large part of the business, and the shop’s FAQ is practical: drink eight to sixteen ounces of water between juices and keep the bottles cold.
Parking is the hard part. Stetson has almost no street parking. The Waterfront garage across the canal and the public garage on the Fifth Avenue side are both a short walk, and the Old Town on foot note maps the routes. If you are staying downtown, walk.
Pair it. Juice Core opens long before the restaurant row does, so it fits a morning plan: juice by the canal, then the galleries on Marshall Way or the shops on Fifth Avenue. For a proper coffee instead, Cartel Roasting Co. is a few blocks south; the coffee guide has the rest.
A juice bar on a dinner street
7137 E Stetson Dr has a long food history. For years the building’s best-known tenant was Kazimierz World Wine Bar, Peter Kasperski’s candlelit, speakeasy-style wine bar, which opened in 2003 behind Cowboy Ciao and helped make Stetson Drive one of the most interesting dining blocks in Arizona. Kazimierz closed in 2018; in 2024 The Ends opened in its space. Juice Core, in a small suite in the same building, has been there through all of it since 2013.
The shop arrived as cold-pressed juice was spreading across the country in the early 2010s, and the Flanigans built it the slow way, at farmers markets, before taking a lease. That matters in Old Town, where concepts come and go with each wave of nightlife. A small owner-run shop with a loyal daily customer base has lasted longer than many of the bars on the surrounding blocks.
It also fills a gap. The Southbridge development and the restaurant row around it were designed for evenings: patios, wine, dinner by the water. A raw-juice counter that opens in the morning gives the block a reason to be busy before lunch, and gives the people who live above the shops something to walk down for.
Juice Core will never be famous, and that is part of its value. It is the kind of neighborhood business that a district built for visitors needs: small, specific and still run by the people who started it.