Kate Coleman at work (Credit: Katalinas Communications)
Pennsburg-based Raw Replenish began in a home garage and has expanded to five locations
Kate Coleman’s love of juicing began a decade ago in her Pennsburg home.
Soon after, her husband converted a 50-square-foot portion of their garage into a licensed space where she could experiment with various fruits and vegetables as she developed her juicing recipes.
“My husband was the not-so-lucky recipient of so many different failed recipes,” she recalled. “It really was quite a process.”
Yet, it was a practice that Coleman “fell in love with” and worked to perfect, gradually, over time.
Students in her circa 2016 YMCA fitness classes were first to sample what would become some of the menu items of Raw Replenish, a café featuring cold-pressed juices.
Coleman launched the business soon after in her first commercial kitchen space in Red Hill. By 2018, customers of her juicing cleanses began requesting smoothies and fruit bowls. Soon after she expanded her menu to include smoothies, bowls and avocado toast, which “took off” immediately.
Coleman relocated her operation to Pennsburg, where she opened a full-service restaurant. Then came a second location in Souderton in 2021. Six months later, she started franchising, opening six franchise locations, three of which remain open in Montgomery County, in addition to the flagship location in Pennsburg.
“It was a very, very rapid progression,” she said. “There have been so many failures in that time as well and lots of learning experiences.”
Kate Coleman (Credit: Katalinas Communications)She credits her SCORE TriCounty mentor Stefan Laessig with helping her turn those early failures into successes.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today without his mentorship,” she said. “I am forever indebted to SCORE.”
When she first got started, similar businesses were few and far between. But in more recent years, Coleman said she has seen “places like mine open and close within a year or two.”
Unlike the competition, Raw Replenish makes its own smoothie bowl bases instead of using sorbet.
“They’re made fresh, on demand. Everything is made fresh to order,” Coleman said. “They’re not scoopable. We blend and pour into a bowl.”
In addition, smoothies do not contain any ice or water and are “more scratch made.”
“Our thickener is bananas or other frozen fruit,” she said.
At the outset, Laessig, who had previously owned businesses in the automotive industry, helped her set pricing and introduced her to a profit and loss statement.
“I was going off sheer passion and emotion and just creating recipes,” Coleman said of their early mentoring sessions five years ago. “He really has been like having a teacher in my back pocket at all times. I call him for most everything.”
Laessig has supported Coleman through the ups, downs, and evolution of her business from the first then-struggling location to a successful franchise model.
“The first key is you have to make the first location profitable,” he said. “We achieved that.”
As Raw Replenish has evolved, so too, Laessig’s work with Coleman. In the beginning, it was more “hands on,” as compared to now where he serves as “more of a sounding board.”
“As an entrepreneur, it’s very easy to get sucked up in the day to day,” he said. “I remind her of the bigger pictures that’s she’s got to solve.”
Looking ahead, Coleman plans to open more corporate locations in 2026.
“I’m still very much involved in the day to day,” Coleman said. “If I do open other locations I would have to kind of step away from what I’m doing at Pennsburg a little bit.”
About SCORE
Since 1964, SCORE has helped more than 17 million aspiring entrepreneurs. Each year, SCORE provides small business mentoring and workshops to more than 375,000 new and growing small businesses. SCORE TriCounty serves business owners and entrepreneurs in western Montgomery, northern Chester, and eastern Berks counties. For more information, visit https://www.score.org/tricounty.
