Heavenly Fresh
GABRIEL DAVIS | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 2 years, 10 months AGO
Emily Cordero, co-owner of Heavenly Fresh in Othello, prepares juices for a large delivery order.
Gabriel Davis/Columbia Basin Herald
Salvador De Jesus Solano prepares drinks at Heavenly Fresh, a juice bar in Othello that Solano co-owns with his wife, Emily Cordero.
The drink menu shows the health juices and drinks offered at Othello’s Heavenly Fresh. Drinks are grouped by what aspect of health they support, such as the digestive system or the immune system.
Emily Cordero and her husband, Salvador De Jesus Solano, make drinks at their juice bar, Heavenly Fresh on Hemlock Street in Othello.
Heavenly Fresh’s front door had to be repaired before it could open after burglars broke through the door and stole thousands of dollars worth of equipment in June.
Gabriel Davis is a resident of Othello who enjoys the connections with his sources. Davis is a graduate of Northwest Nazarene University where he studied English and creative writing. During his free time, he enjoys reading, TV, movies and games – anything with a good story, though he has a preference for science fiction and crime. He covers the communities on the south end of Grant County and in Adams County. | October 23, 2023 1:00 AM
OTHELLO — Heavenly Fresh, a juice bar in Othello focused on health drinks and nutrition, officially opened for business in mid-July after a burglary delayed the opening. Now, business is slowly picking up, said the business’s owners Emily Cordero and her husband Salvador De Jesus Solano.
“This month mainly has been picking up,” Cordero said. “Last month was pretty slow, the month before that was okay. But yeah, we would prefer to have more people.”
Cordero and Solano initially had planned to provide a gaming space to attract younger clientele, but after multiple TVs, consoles and devices were stolen during the burglary on June 14, they had to push that goal down the road.
Heavenly Fresh persevered through the setback and opened its brick-and-mortar location on Hemlock Street. Prior to opening the shop, Cordero and Solano delivered drinks to clients, working out of their homes. Heavenly Fresh still offers delivery in addition to the juice bar.
Police have yet to catch the parties responsible for the burglary, Cordero said, and none of the items stolen from the juice bar have been recovered. Heavenly Fresh was uninsured at the time of the burglary.
“Right now we're just in the unknown,” Cordero said. “We're protecting ourselves by putting cameras everywhere. We have quite a few and we changed the locks everywhere and we're doing everything that we can to stay safe.”
Since opening, sales have not usually been enough to fully cover expenses, but Cordero said they have had overwhelming support from their friends and family. As far as the GoFundMe Cordero set up to help cover the cost of the stolen items, Heavenly Fresh had only raised $745 of its $5,000 goal as of Oct. 19.
“We're trying to create new drinks so people can come and make orders,” Cordero said. “I think my main goal is just word of mouth, telling as many people as I can about the business, and if they want to donate, we still have our GoFundMe open.”
Heavenly Fresh also relies on a few regular clients, Cordero said.
“They really like the drinks that we make and how healthy they make them feel. So we're very grateful for our regulars,” she said.
Solano said they have had a few younger clients, but not many.
“I don't think they're really interested in the healthy,” Cordero said. “They want mainly coffee and energy, and at the moment we still haven't found a way to incorporate that in a healthy manner … Most of our clients are mainly, you know, gymnasts or people with health conditions, like diabetes, high blood pressure, anemia, in the range of 30 (years old) and above.”
Cordero said she would like to be able to serve a wider range of people in Othello and hopes more people will visit the shop.
Before opening Heavenly Fresh, Cordero said she worked at Columbia Basin Health Association at Women, Infants and Children services, which, according to CBHA’s website, is a state-funded nutrition program that provides free health education, food and other services to underserved families.
“We would talk about ways to lose weight, about ways to be healthier, ways to prevent pre-diabetics from becoming diabetics, so I have quite a bit of training and knowledge in that,” Cordero said.
Heavenly Fresh’s juices are aimed at helping individuals with their digestive system, immune system, energy levels, nutrition and other health goals, said Cordero. The juices use all-natural ingredients in unique combinations.
Solano said once they get more gaming systems for the juice bar, they can start attracting more young people, with the goal of helping educate them on nutrition and providing healthier options, as well as a space for them to spend time in.
“Our first plan was for the kids,” Solano said. “To help the kids and also to have entertainment (for them), because some kids, they just want to hang out on the streets. And we want to help with that. I mean this is a healthy environment.”
Solano said most of their sales are in-person orders, but that they intend to keep the delivery aspect of their business going as the juice bar grows. Cordero said they will soon begin using the drive-through window in the shop as well.
Heavenly Fresh’s plans for the future if everything goes well and the business grows include offering more events for the community, offering pre-made juices from the shop and bottled beverages and potentially another location in Tri-Cities.
“My main motivation right now is just to help the community be healthier,” Cordero said. “That's our main goal, to offer healthy options to the community.”
Gabriel Davis may be reached at [email protected]. Download the Columbia Basin Herald app on iOS and Android.
Want to help?
To support Heavenly Fresh’s GoFundMe, visit gofund.me/2bf1bc25.
Heavenly Fresh
126 E. Hemlock St.
Othello, WA 99344
Hours of operation:
Monday-Saturday
8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
ARTICLES BY GABRIEL DAVIS
Work-based learning lets students build their own futures
MOSES LAKE — Work-based learning provides education opportunities for the workforce to receive hands-on training and technical education and prepare themselves to enter various industries. Educators and workforce development professionals from Eastern Washington discussed some the training they offer and the benefits of their programs. Next Generation Zone, an affiliate of WorkSource based in Spokane, provides job training opportunities for youth and young adults ages 16 to 24. Program Coordinator Kate Martin said there are multiple benefits to the program. “One of them is a paid work experience, and that’s where we reach out to area employers who are willing to take a young person and train them,” she said. “This is a short-term learning experience, so it’s typically about 240 hours; sometimes it could be longer or shorter. We’re the actual employer; we cover all of their wages, taxes, the L&I, and the employer just agrees to give them the experience and train them in whatever field it is that they’re wanting to go into.”
Serving schools: ESD superintendents reflect on operations, priorities
MOSES LAKE — Educational service districts are government-mandated agencies put in place to provide services to school districts across the state. ESD Superintendents discussed what they do and their priorities in operating their districts. ESD 105, led by Superintendent Kevin Chase, serves four counties, including Kittitas, Yakima and portions of Klickitat and Grant counties and provides support for 25 school districts – including Royal School District and Wahluke School District – and more than 66,000 students. “We help them collaborate with each other as well or collaborate with other partners,” Chase said. “(It’s) a lot of advocacy work, either regionally or across the state, or even federally, working on different issues that impact our education. And we provide very specialized services in certain situations in order to meet the needs of our students in our region and of our school districts.”
Columbia Basin Project making headway through Odessa Groundwater program
CASHMERE — The Columbia Basin Project is making gradual progress toward completion with particularly significant accomplishments for the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Program in the last six months or so, according to Columbia Basin Development League Executive Director Sara Higgins. “When we’re dealing with a project of this size, advancement is kind of like watching paint dry, but yes, there have been (developments),” she said. “There are a lot of exciting things happening right now.” There are more than 300 miles of main canals, about 2,000 miles of lateral canals and 3,500 miles of drains and wasteways in the irrigation project, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation website. The CBDL advocates for the operation of those waterways and for the project to continue “build-out.”