Member Profile – Thania’s Juice Bar

Walking into Thania’s Juice Bar on one of the warmer Incline Village afternoons, Thania Medina and her mom Julia are surrounded by fresh fruits and veggies that are just waiting to be blended up into smoothies, juices, or made into healthy meals. 

Thania’s Juice Bar has been around for several years, opening before the COVID pandemic in July 2019. Although the pandemic did hinder business, it was a time when people were looking for healthy sustenance to boost their immunity. With delicious drinks like the Detox (made up of carrot/beet/apple/celery) and Stamina Booster (pineapple/carrot/turmeric/orange), you can’t go wrong with anything on the menu if you need something to help get through the rest of the day. 

Thania was originally born in Mexico and later emigrated to Carson City when she was a teenager to be with her mother. She attended Carson High School and Western Nevada College, then worked at Lupita’s for 10 years. Thania always wanted to work for herself, though, while staying in the service industry, so Julia encouraged Thania to open a Mexican-style juice bar. 

It took Thania two years to remodel the space and get it open but then she ran into kind of an odd problem- she didn’t know how to explain to people what an authentic Mexican juice bar was. 

“I wanted to serve traditional Mexican fruit snacks and aguas frescas with an emphasis on made-to-order, good-for-you, healthy food. I wanted to show off my culture because I’m proud to be Mexican,” Thania says. Customers that were coming in started suggesting items that were doable but not on the menu, so Thania paid attention, researched, and adjusted the menu to meet their requests. 

“I listened to people coming in and saw that they loved the smoothies and the juices. They suggested acai bowls, avocado toast, and matcha drinks,” she says. 

Gesturing towards the chalkboard on the wall, Thania says, “Everything on the menu, it’s like the customers said they wanted it, and I figured out how to make it my own.” 

It’s obvious that she’s passionate about the food as she talks about how she came up with a protein bowl full of a green mix, cucumbers, shredded carrots, apples, and celery topped with her own homemade vegan organic dressing. Thania added food items that are gluten and dairy-free, vegan, and vegetarian, crafting a menu that appeals to the locals. 

Sipping on a creamy Chocolate Monkey smoothie, Thania explains that when she was growing up, her grandmother had papaya and lime trees, cactus, herbs, chickens, and the eggs that they laid. Her offerings at the juice bar are heavily influenced by her grandmother and time in Mexico and she hopes that the atmosphere will carry over, too. 

“My grandmother believed in natural medicine. She had homemade remedies for everything. She would say, ‘You want to lose weight?’ And hand me pineapple, nopales, orange and celery blended together. And she had aloe vera to cure almost everything. 

“I want people to feel when they come here like I felt at my grandmother’s house, and to be able to cook and have a conversation at the same time. I want this to be their living room with their family, their second home away from home, and for them to remember our juice, and come back to Tahoe just for that.”

Thania’s Juice Bar is on 868 Tahoe Blvd. Ste 7 in Incline Village and is open Monday-Saturday from 8am-3:30pm.