Come wind, rain, or shine, it’s always summer at Juice Junkiez. This canal-side stall is nestled in Camden Market Hawley Wharf and it’s one of the best places in the city to drink freshly squeezed juices and eat freshly-prepared plates of flavour-packed food. The USP? Nearly all of the drinks and dishes come served in their own skin.
If you’ve never eaten Korean BBQ-style chicken out of a pineapple or drank a ‘What-A-Melon Mojito’ out of an actual honest-to-God watermelon, you’ve never lived, my friend. Founder Jermaine Thompson started Juice Junkiez back in 2017 via a series of pop-ups at events and his business has only gone from strength to strength ever since. Today, you can find two Juice Junkiez outlets in Camden with even more expansions of the brand planned in the future.
Jermaine – who still makes all of the excellent syrups used to flavour the juices and cocktails from scratch – remains super hands-on with the day-to-day running of the business. It’s that personal touch he brings to everything which makes Juice Junkiez so special. “On a Saturday and Sunday, we’ll go through about 280 pineapples and 240 watermelons,” Jermaine tells Mob, explaining how queues at the weekend during summer can snake down the stairs of the market, “if the weather’s hot, we might sell even more watermelons than that.”
It’s not, however, all been smooth sailing. The cost of basically everything has gone up in the past year and that increase in the price of ingredients has been an added headache for Jermaine and his team. “It’s stressful,” he says, “things like dragon fruit and watermelon are so expensive now. We’re not sure what to do.” One of Jermaine’s biggest worries has been making sure he doesn’t offload that increased cost onto the consumers and he’s confident he can still turn a profit while keeping his prices affordable.
It’s hard not to see the enduring appeal of Juice Junkiez. Every juice they sell is vegan-friendly and even the waffle mix used for the waffle wraps (which you’ll see plastered all over Instagram and TikTok) is made in-house and is, consequently, both egg and dairy-free. “I wanted Juice Junkiez to be inclusive for all,” explains Jermaine, “it’s about making sure that everyone is catered for.” The vegan dishes are just as good as the meat options, too. The vegan shrimp might be made from potato starch but it looks and acts just like the real thing. Coated in the joint’s signature (and addictive) firecracker chilli sauce, it’s hard to tell the difference.
Whether you’re hitting up Juice Junkiez for a vitamin-packed pick-me-up during your lunch hour or sampling some of the Wray & Nephew-laden drinks during the night, there’s a little bit of something here for everyone.