{"399971":{"#nid":"399971","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Zinn Brings Business Zen to Arden\u0027s Garden Operations","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EFor Leslie Zinn (MGT 91), top banana of Atlanta-based juice company Arden\u2019s Garden, smoothies were virtually her birthright.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBusiness savvy, however, was something her mom and company founder, Arden, didn\u2019t pass down to her. While Arden\u2019s idea to make and sell super-healthy, organic juice was genius back in 1994, she didn\u2019t have a viable plan to take advantage of it. Backed by her top-notch management education at Tech, Leslie stepped in to help run the business side, and she\u2019s served as CEO of the company since 1999. Under her green thumb, things are looking pretty peachy for Arden\u2019s Garden.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen we were growing up, we never would come into the kitchen and find breakfast,\u201d says Zinn, whose mother Arden Zinn founded the company in 1994. \u201cThere would be a plate with a glass and something we called \u2018The Concoction.\u2019 And it would be whatever mom was into at the time, a blend of fresh juices, or almond milk, or who knows.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt first, Leslie\u2019s mother merely gave away her juices in tiny batches, as a way to take advantage of the expensive juicer she had finally purchased after years of fruitless fixation. Then, Arden Zinn was hit with a bolt of inspiration: Deliver the juices to salons, where stylists are stuck at their stations with cash from tips, an eye for anything trendy and plenty of new customers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMore than two decades later, Arden\u2019s Garden operates 11 retail stores\u2014with others soon opening on Auburn Avenue and in Vinings\u2014and sells products in small shops and grocery chains across five Southeastern states. The \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/gtalumnimag.com\u0022\u003E\u003Cem\u003EGeorgia Tech Alumni Magazine\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E recently caught up with Leslie at the company\u2019s East Point plant to learn more about the boutique juice business.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch5\u003EYou come from such a business-savvy family. When you went to Georgia Tech, coming from that background, what did you learn about?\u003C\/h5\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMy family\u2019s not business savvy. My mother\u2019s not business savvy. She\u2019s got incredible ideas. She\u2019s a real forward thinker. But she\u2019d give it away. She\u2019s not motivated by money, so you kind of have to have one person that understands how can we do this, and make it profitable so it\u2019s sustainable. And then another person that feels the passion and the ideas. She had exercise studios prior to Arden\u2019s Garden, and she had a similar trajectory. She brought in a guy that was a businessperson and then [the studios] exploded, but she didn\u2019t like the direction that they were going in and so she ended up leaving for no money. So it was her life\u2019s work, and when she started Arden\u2019s Garden she started from nothing.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch5\u003EAnd she would give it away?\u003C\/h5\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhen I would do her delivery route, this would be back in 1994, the juices sold for $3 a bottle, tax included. By the time I finished her route, I would be going crazy. Because every third person would say, \u201cListen, Arden gives it to me for $2.\u201d And later I would tell her, \u201cMom, you can\u2019t do that.\u201d She\u2019d respond: \u201cThey can\u2019t afford it, otherwise.\u201d And then I\u2019d tell her: \u201cBut we can\u2019t afford it!\u201d I had to be the voice of reason. From my time at Tech, I learned to be a good student of business, and I learned quickly on the job.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch5\u003EHow do you come up with new ingredients and new blends?\u003C\/h5\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhat has happened with our retail stores is they allow us to have direct contact with our customer. So if we want to try a new juice, we make it, we send it out to our stores. Within two weeks, we\u2019ll know if this is a hot potato, or if this is a dud. We don\u2019t have to do a whole bunch of R\u0026amp;D, we don\u2019t have to do labels, we don\u2019t have to get approval from a million Whole Foods or whomever. We can just try it in our stores, so they have become a great lab for us.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch5\u003EWhat are your most popular juices?\u003C\/h5\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn a yoga studio or a health food store, Green Vegetable Juices perform much better. In more suburban areas, our fruit smoothies fruit\/veggie blends are more popular. Green juices overall have become our most popular choices and this is very indicative of how our society overall is changing its diet.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch5\u003EHow do changes in produce costs and availability affect what you offer?\u003C\/h5\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere were several seasons where you just couldn\u2019t get apples. So people who had huge contracts, the apples would be going to them. All of the sudden, you\u2019re used to paying $90 a bin, and now bins [of apples] cost $150. It\u2019s part of the business, you know? Since we\u2019ve been in business, we started off at $3 per bottle, then we had this crazy pricing structure where it was 1 for $3, 2 for $5, 4 for $8. The most expensive juice we make now is $3.99, and the least expensive is $2.19. One of our missions was not only to make a great product, but to make it healthy, convenient and affordable. \u2026 So a lot of times when our produce costs go up, we just eat them.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch5\u003EYou just opened a new retail store in Athens, your first outside of metro Atlanta. Why now and why Athens?\u003C\/h5\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWe have been interested in Athens for a while and the right location became available at the right time. We want to branch outside of Atlanta, but not too far that we can\u2019t get there quickly [from East Point] should they need juice or anything else. It is our first step outside of our comfort zone of Atlanta. Athens is also a very dynamic, progressive community and we think that our store will be very popular there.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/gtalumnimag.com\/2015\/02\/dollars-and-sense-leslie-zinn\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cem\u003EThis interview originally appeared in Vol. 91, No. 1 of the \u003C\/em\u003EGeorgia Tech Alumni Magazine\u003Cem\u003E.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe Georgia Tech alumna serves as CEO for the company her mother started in 1994.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"The Georgia Tech alumna serves as CEO for the company her mother started in 1994."}],"uid":"27469","created_gmt":"2015-04-28 09:06:34","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:18:08","author":"Kristen Bailey","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-04-28T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-04-28T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"399951":{"id":"399951","type":"image","title":"Leslie Zinn","body":null,"created":"1449246388","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:26:28","changed":"1475895117","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:57","alt":"Leslie Zinn","file":{"fid":"75786","name":"leslie-zinn.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/leslie-zinn.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/leslie-zinn.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":25050,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/leslie-zinn.jpg?itok=Meqsat_C"}}},"media_ids":["399951"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/gtalumni.org\/","title":"Georgia Tech Alumni Association"},{"url":"http:\/\/gtalumnimag.com\/","title":"Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine"}],"groups":[{"id":"1214","name":"News Room"}],"categories":[{"id":"129","name":"Institute and Campus"}],"keywords":[{"id":"506","name":"alumni"},{"id":"8271","name":"alumni magazine"},{"id":"489","name":"atlanta"},{"id":"124841","name":"juice"},{"id":"3918","name":"profile"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71871","name":"Campus and Community"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:editor@alumni.gatech.edu\u0022\u003ERebecca Bowen\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003EGeorgia Tech Alumni Magazine\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}