Blending Friendship, Fruit, & Success

Words by Libby Allen photos by Shelby Bella

From scrappy beginnings to a slew of successful locations and in-store packaged products, Austinites Erin Thompson and Kara Jordan have been serving up their passion for nearly a decade, and they’re only just getting started.

They say never turn your best friend into your business partner, but Blenders & Bowls co-founders Erin and Kara have been the exception to the rule for nearly a decade. Friends since middle school, the pair had been living in Hawaii together after college and knew they wanted a change. “We were both trying to figure out what was next, and we thought, ‘why not move to Austin?’ So we just kind of jumped ship and did it,” Kara says. 

After landing in Austin, the duo began craving a staple of their Hawaiian lifestyle that was nowhere to be found in Texas: açaí. Though they’d played around with a few other business concepts, the açaí bowl was the best fit. “We had our work cut out for us.” Kara remembers “calling around all the places we ate açaí bowls in Hawaii and asking them to share their recipes with us, and sometimes people hung up,” she chuckles. 

They bought a food truck and began charting routes through UT’s campus and in the downtown area to catch people on their lunch breaks. As with most things in Kara and Erin’s lives, there was very little middle ground; Blenders & Bowls went from concept to reality very quickly.

“In March 2011, we quit our jobs, then in June, we had a food truck, and by July, we did our first event,” Erin remembers. After eight months of running the food truck successfully, the women were approached by the owners of Wanderlust Yoga Studio where they opened their first cafe. 

“Once we had a couple years of really solid sales under our belts, we signed the lease for our Eastside location three years before we even opened it,” Erin recalls. The Arnold Oil Company was still operating out of the space at the time. So they forged ahead opening their Westlake and downtown locations first. And finally the Eastside location opened; it’s cozy with a clean, minimalist feel and an uber-friendly staff. 

The pair contributes much of their success to being able to figure things out on the fly. They learned to manage their business and scale it simultaneously. Since 2012, five Blenders & Bowls locations have opened, though two closed during COVID.

These women are doers, which is why they’ve found success where many have failed. “People ask us what advice we’d give [others] trying to start a business,” Kara grins. “We always tell them if you have an idea and want to do it, just pull the trigger.”

Did You Know?
In January 2020, the pair applied for Skew, a packaged goods incubator and were accepted. Now açaí lovers can find four pint-sized scoopable blended smoothies in-store. They’re currently in about 300 stores across the Northeast and Midwest and can now be found in H-E-Bs and Whole Foods. Blenders & Bowls also just launched a direct-to-consumer site in mid-April where pints can be ordered and shipped directly to doorsteps.

Favorites!
Erin loves The Sesher, a blend of açaí, peanut butter, and cocoa, while Kara bounces around from item to item, but inevitably always returns to The Sesher, too. 

Contact:
blendersandbowlscafe.com
@blendersandbowls
1625 E 6th St.
4200 N Lamar Blvd.
3736 RM-2244, Unit 8