From high school teacher to juice boss, Ammy Lowney is building an empire
Northeastern graduate Ammy Lowney, who did not speak English when she came to the U.S. at 15, opens her eighth Juicygreens location on the Boston campus.
Ammy Lowney was 15 years old when she and her father arrived in the U.S. from Colombia. She didn’t speak a word of English.
The language barrier left her struggling to make friends at school, join sports teams and show her academic abilities to teachers who underestimated her.
But those early setbacks shaped her resilience. After graduating from Northeastern in 2005 with a degree in political science and public administration, Lowney became a high school civics teacher and, later, a successful business owner of Juicygreens juice bars and plant-based cafés.
Lowney celebrated the opening of the eighth Juicygreens at Northeastern’s International Village in Boston on Sept. 4. The shop is operated by Northeastern Dining under a franchise agreement, marking Lowney’s first venture into franchising.
“The reason why I said ‘yes’ to Northeastern is because I want to learn how to do this franchise in the right way,” she says. “It’s not all about the money. It’s also about the knowledge that I’m going to get, making mistakes, learning how to onboard a new campus and how to replicate a juice bar experience.”
Lowney came up with the idea for Juicygreens while teaching high school students about social issues in U.S. communities. Her students were doing research on food deserts and the limited access to healthy food in Boston neighborhoods.
Looking at her students’ findings made Lowney think about her own community and why healthy food options were so scarce.
“I travel a lot outside of Massachusetts, and I used to see juice bars everywhere, in [Washington], D.C., Philadelphia, Aruba, Colombia and different [other] parts of the world,” she says. “You find a lot of healthy food closer to someone’s work or someone’s home, and, literally, I didn’t have access to healthy food.”
Being a natural problem-solver, Lowney began exploring the possibility of opening a juice bar herself. She researched resources and recipes, despite having no prior experience in food service and restaurant business.
Together with her husband, Michael Lowney, a Boston family medicine doctor, they put aside some money, created a business plan and ran funding campaigns to bring their vision to life.
The first Juicygreens opened in Jamaica Plain in 2017. The company now has three other locations in Boston (in addition to Northeastern), as well as shops in Cambridge, Somerville, Mansfield and Westwood.
The menu features cold-pressed unpasteurized juices, superfood smoothies, warm and cold bowls, salads, soups, arepas, baked goods, snacks and responsibly sourced single-origin coffee.
Lowney reconnected with Northeastern when she had a couple of Juicygreens locations operating. She wanted to mentor younger entrepreneurs, she says, but ended up getting the support herself.
She was introduced to a student-led group, the Women’s Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship.
“There was a before and after, when I met the women of WISE,” she says.
Having a network of other entrepreneurs of different ages and backgrounds and being able to bounce ideas off each other, changed her mindset.
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Lowney decided to strengthen her business education and enrolled in a business-scaling program at Stanford University. That allowed her to meet people launching and growing businesses across the U.S. and the world, significantly expanding her network.
“So, being part of Northeastern has taught me how to be a global learner, how to connect outside of just Massachusetts. Get out there,” she says.
Lowney often creates new recipes inspired by flavors and spices she and her husband encounter while traveling.
She is always mindful of affordability, however.
“Sometimes, if a spice is too expensive, you try to use a different spice that’s similar,” she says.
She is equally committed to minimizing waste.
“I’m all about food waste, and making sure we don’t waste food,” she says. “My job is to come up with recipes with things I already have in the shop, and then maybe bring one or two things. But if I bring one item, like a fruit, I have to use it for something else to make sure that we don’t have any waste.”
Another priority for her is her company’s culture.
“I’m the chief culture officer, not just the CEO,” Lowney says.
Since she can’t be in all her shops daily, she relies on hiring quality staff who can deliver excellent service. As a former teacher, she manages her 30 employees with structure and intention, setting clear, high expectations.
There’s no tolerance for shortcuts, Lowney says, and health safety and high quality of products are non-negotiable. But she balances her strictness with compassion, recognizing that her employees are humans who might have bad days and may make mistakes.
“I always tell all the staff, you treat a customer how you want to be treated,” she says. “And that’s how I run my day-to-day operations.”
To become a successful entrepreneur, Lowney had to learn a lot about doing business. She started by going to the library, reading entry-level resources and watching videos on YouTube.
Looking ahead, Lowney hopes to continue growing Juicygreens and bringing healthy food to more communities. She is currently seeking partners with experience in scaling brands nationally and envisions expanding to airports and other campuses.
“I feel that I always travel in airports, and I never see healthy food,” she says.
