Tacoma juice shop that abruptly closed last year is set to reopen

Gather Juice will press on after all.

Tacoma’s cold-pressed juice shop, also known for raw smoothies, hearty avocado toasts and grain bowls, will return to Sixth Avenue this spring after abruptly closing in December. Owners Sean and Gretchen Doyel are working with a new business partner, Clayton Bray, to reopen the business at 2612 6th Ave.

The Doyels also shuttered their brand-new shop in downtown Puyallup. That space already moved on. Rainier Valley Coffee Co., a local drive-thru chain, will soon open its first brick-and-mortar cafe at 108 N. Meridian, The News Tribune reported last month. Sean Doyel confirmed that they were able to transfer their lease and sell some equipment to the coffee shop.

In Tacoma, as news spread of the closure, Doyel said a few parties expressed interest in potentially purchasing the business or finding a way to resurrect it. Bray, a Gather regular who moved to the area from Los Angeles almost a decade ago, was disappointed to lose it. He works in tech sales, usually from home, and would frequently visit with friends and family, often instead of a coffee shop.

“What I miss is access. So for this to go away…” he said, trailing off. “It’s not just the food. There’s an element of humanity here. It’s not called Kale Co. It’s called Gather.”

Cold-pressed juice is indeed a rarity here, as many cafes or grocery stores that sell fresh juice at the same or even higher prices aren’t using a cold-press machine, or it’s shelf-stable and thus pasteurized. Instead of pulverizing the fruit or vegetable, cold-pressing retains more of the inherent vitamins and minerals.

Gather, which opened in 2019, was built like a coffee shop, where you could just as easily grab a smoothie to go as you could sit and stay a while at a communal table and take advantage of the WiFi.

In the first few months, noted Doyel, the menu consisted of six juices and six smoothies also made with raw ingredients and no add-ins. Over the years they added smoothie bowls, superfood lattes, avocado toasts and grain bowls — a base of brown rice with plant proteins like black beans or chickpeas, avocado and vegan aioli.

Although the Tacoma shop opened just a few months before the 2020 pandemic, it “was always profitable,” Doyel shared in an interview this week. They were able to develop a reliable core customer despite that year’s hardships, especially through local delivery. He and Gretchen would drive throughout the county with bigger orders than some might get at the shop — a few days’ worth of juice at a time, or a cleanse — and those habits stuck. Juice still accounted for almost half of their sales, he said.

Expansion plans hampered Gather Juice

So what went wrong?

About four years ago, Doyel explained, the couple (and new parents) decided to pursue a space that could accommodate higher volume. They wanted to produce more juice in hopes of adding a smaller, service-only cafe in another nearby city like Gig Harbor. They leased the Puyallup storefront to do just that, but permitting, construction and costly delays amassed into a situation that eventually became untenable.

Much of the profit from the Tacoma shop fed into paying for the Puyallup development. It finally opened in September, but initial sales fell far short of expectations, said Doyel. They ran a gift-card promotion around Thanksgiving, but by December, it became clear that they couldn’t keep “borrowing money” to support it, and they needed to shut the doors all together. (After some customers complained about the last-minute gift-card campaign, they said they refunded those purchases.)

“We had just exhausted all of our runway,” said Doyel this week.

Bray had been asking his friend for updates on the Puyallup shop. “It seemed like a broken record,” recalled Bray. (If his last name sounds familiar, it’s because his cousin, Derek Bray, was the chef and co-owner of Gather’s old neighbor, The Table, now home to Grann. Derek joined the Tacoma Rescue Mission as a culinary education director in 2024.)

“We were so caught up in trying to make it work for us,” said Doyel, who had managed dozens of Sprint stores before opening their own business, that they hadn’t carefully considered how it might work for — or with — someone else.

Bray had the means to help, he said, “so I asked.”

They talked it out, and Doyel shared the numbers. Bray saw “proof in the data.”

They made it official Feb. 24 in an email newsletter, summarizing what led to the presumed demise and the unexpected rebirth, signed by both Doyels and Bray.

They have been busy moving equipment back into the shop, installing new flooring and updating some plumbing. (Yes, more permits and a new grease trap.) Pending city and health department approval, the refreshed Gather Juice Co. hopes to reopen the doors in a few weeks’ time.

The menu will be the same as it was for now, although Bray had them “reflecting on prices.” They had hovered around $8 for a 16-ounce juice for several years despite rising costs. Expect a slight increase to about $9.50 for the likes of Night Vision (carrot, fuji apple, lemon, ginger) and Roots (plus beets) and $10 for Sweet Greens (kale, spinach, fuji apple, parsley, ginger) and the OG Greens (kale, spinach, cucumber, celery, lime, cilantro).

There are also 13 smoothies and four smoothie bowls with customizable add-ons, a few salads and grain bowls, as well as “functional” lattes with oat milk and various teas. If winter’s got you down, forget about it with a wellness shot of ginger, lemon, turmeric and cayenne.

Gather Juice Co.

• 2612 6th Ave., Tacoma, gatherjuice.co
• Details: cold-pressed juice shop, plus smoothies, toasts and other health-focused foods, reopening Spring 2026; follow instagram.com/gatherjuiceco for updates