Today we’d like to introduce you to Elan Gye Doeman and Louis Alexis.
So, before we jump into specific questions about your business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Elan Gye Doeman – I was born and raised in Jamaica in the Hanover Parish. After graduating culinary school. I applied for a scholarship to be able to work and study abroad in the US. I was placed at the W hotel in Miami Beach and picked up a lot of skills and knowledge about the locals. I ended up relocating to the US completely and landed a job at a Mediterranean restaurant and fell in love with the cuisine and the healthy aspect of it. I eventually ventured off to start my own restaurant with my business partner Louis and the rest is still in the process.
Louis Alexis – I was born and raised in Miami Dade. I come from a haitian descent. At a young, I was always very bossy and very opinionated and unfortunately, I still am. I knew from a young age that I was destined to be an entrepreneur and began to work my way around various jobs picking up skills and traits to be able to one day run my own businesses. I met Elan five years ago and I immediately saw his passion and work ethic. I constantly pressured him into joining me to create our own business and it works and here we are today a little short of one year running The Squeeze.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road hasn’t been smooth at all! I really wish we could have linked with other experienced business owners who were willing to just assist us. A lot of people we ran across wanted to charge us just for simple answers or just didn’t want to help us at all. In this experience, we have learned how we, as a community, especially the black community, truly need mentorship. Mentorship is something we are lacking here and I would have really appreciated to have someone just be there to help us not avoidable mistakes. We made a lot of mistakes, A LOT but thankfully, nothing severe. We are still learning and googling everything. Adding to our mistakes, we also got hit by COVID and that brought business all the way down. We were making $20 to $40 a day and it got so bad that we were depleting our emergency funds to run the business. Thankfully a couple months into Covid 19, there was a surge of people wanting to support black and minority-owned businesses and this surge is what saved us! Someone posted us on an Instagram post which spread like wildfire and we were featured in a short video by a local food blogger “The Hungry Black Man” in combination with those two things, business picked up and has continued to keep growing. We are so thankful for that.
The Squeeze Juice Bar – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We are Juice Bar & Restaurant. We are mostly sticking to the Mediterranean cuisine but we offer a little bit of everything. From fresh green juices to hamburgers, we have it all. We pride ourselves on having something FOR EVERYONE, especially our vegan/vegetarian friends who would be typically forced to just have a side salad when going out with non vegan/vegetarian friends at ” The Squeeze” we offer tantalizing dishes for EVERYONE.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
The proudest moment in our career is has been taking this RISK to accomplish our goal of being entrepreneurs. It’s really easy to say you are going to do something but to actually do it something else. So much doubt so many things can wrong but we both took the chance as two black men under 3o to just try. We tried and we have accomplished and we are only at the beginning. With the assistance of GOD family and friends, we will continue to flourish despite of all obstacles and we are ready to face them.
Contact Info:
- Address: 16171 Biscayne Blvd North Miami Beach FL 33160
- Website: www.squeeze305.com
- Phone: 305 627 3433
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesqueeze305/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesqueeze305/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-squeeze-juice-bar-north-miami
Suggest a story: VoyageMIA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
