Ashley Dunbar | Juice Pharm
Owner of Juice Pharm
Ashley, the owner of Juice Pharm, shares her journey from a simple passion for health and wellness to running a successful organic café in Midtown, Nashville. She discusses the importance of resilience in entrepreneurship, the value of community support, and her strategies for growth.
Discovering the Passion
Ashley’s journey began with a deep passion for health, wellness, and serving others through food. She started small—making juices and sharing samples with her family. Despite humble beginnings, her dream grew from those intimate moments to a full brick-and-mortar organic cafe in Midtown, selling everything from cheeses to smoothies and olive oils. The initial challenge was breaking into the food industry with limited experience and resources, fueled by the desire to build something meaningful in a competitive space.
Pushing Through the Struggle
Ashley candidly shares the realities many entrepreneurs face: fatigue, financial hurdles, and moments of doubt. At times, she worked multiple jobs, feeling worn out but supported by a strong community that helped her endure the hard seasons. Her mindset—to keep pushing despite fear or uncertainty—is what set her apart. She embraced doing whatever was necessary, within her morals, to fund her dream, proving resilience is a cornerstone of entrepreneurship.
Research, Numbers, and Growth
The key to Ashley’s ongoing success lies in preparation and continuous learning. She emphasizes the importance of thorough research—leveraging free resources like YouTube and libraries to build knowledge before investing money. Additionally, she stresses the value of understanding finances, even if it’s not the most enjoyable task, as it’s essential to turn creativity into a sustainable business. Using simple tools like Excel for now, Ashley knows mastering these fundamentals is crucial for scaling her cafe.
“ Knowing your numbers as well as doing a lot of research and development is definitely gonna be what’s necessary to continue on with your entrepreneurship goal.”
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Hello, my name is Ashley. I am the owner of Juice Pharm. We are an organic cafe and we sell cheese, smoothies, and olive oils in Midtown. I would say what inspired me is I've always loved health and wellness. I've always loved serving people with food. I just started learning more about the food space, specifically juices, and I started off selling to my family, like giving them samples.
Now I have a brick and mortar. I think some entrepreneurs fail because they have a dream, but they don't ever go forth with that dream because of fear or even because of finances. And I think some entrepreneurs are successful because, regardless of if they fail, they keep going. And regardless of where that money's going to come from, they are just gonna do whatever job is necessary within their morals to go ahead and fund their dream and their aspirations.
There are times I remember working multiple jobs and being so worn out. Hence the reason why it's really important to have a really good community around you because you will get worn out. But just being able to push past that suck for just a season, so you just keep on going.
I think that's the difference between an entrepreneur who succeeds and one who fails. Advice that I would give to future entrepreneurs is to do a lot of research. The internet is free—go ahead and watch a bunch of YouTube videos. That's the way I started off. Go to any source possible.
Even go to the library because you'd be surprised how much resources the library has and start diving into what it is that you want to do. Sometimes you don't realize what you want to do until you actually start doing research about it. So you might as well do the research upfront before you spend a lot of money doing something that you're kind of like, "Ah, it wasn't something I was really too fond of."
So definitely research and development is gonna be really important. I think also knowing your numbers—that's something that I'm not too fond of because I just like to be super creative. But that's what makes a hobby into a business, and knowing your numbers is gonna be really important. Right now I don't use anything fancy.
I just use Excel. It's a little bit monotonous, but it works for me until I go ahead and upgrade to QuickBooks. Knowing your numbers as well as doing a lot of research and development is definitely what's necessary to continue on with your entrepreneurship goal.
Why We Share These Stories
We believe that celebrating Tennessee’s entrepreneurs will inspire the next generation of bold thinkers, risk-takers, and community builders. Entrepreneurs don’t forget where they come from—and they carry the power to transform not just their businesses, but entire neighborhoods, towns, and local economies. See more entrepreneur stories from the Patton Foundation.
