By Maggie Miles / Correspondent
March 5, 2021
Amy Landes has always paid attention to the things she’s naturally drawn to, letting her curiosity lead the way. That’s how she found her purpose in life, she says: helping people heal their bodies with healthy, vibrant, living foods.
“I have always been curious about what gives a person good health, what makes a person healthy, because there’s got to be something to it,” she says.
When curiosity met inspiration, she started Shine On Juicery, offering cold-pressed juice and plant-based food to a growing list of clients. And next month, she expects to be offering her creations to a wider audience when she opens her new store in the old Pit Surf Shop & Boardriders Grill in Kill Devil Hills.
But her journey starts in a less obvious place. Growing up in Northern Virginia, and attending college at James Madison University, it hadn’t yet occurred to Landes that a career pursuing healthy foods could be her path. She majored in theater, but after graduating, she didn’t know what she wanted to do. She considered moving to California, but her family had vacationed often on the Outer Banks, so she decided to move here until she figured out her next steps. That was in 2007.
We all have that moment, that catalyst for change, that experience that leads us on a new trajectory. For Landes, it was having her daughter, Isla.
“(That’s’) when I started my yoga practice and started saying, OK, I’ve always been really curious about health, but now I don’t just want to do this for me, I want to do this for her, I wanna know more about it,” Landes says. She was also a foodie and had always been inclined toward vegetables.
So, she started researching, and discovered the concept of plant-based, living foods and signed up for a two-week course at Living Light Culinary Institute in Fort Bragg, California. She wasn’t observing a plant-based diet at the time; she was just curious.
“It was a culinary school, but the intent of the food was to give people their most vibrant health,” Landes says. She adopted the plant-based diet for the two weeks she was there, and at the end she realized that she felt amazing. Turns out a lot of foods she was eating regularly didn’t really suit her. Dairy, for example, which she shocked her.
“And that was the one thing I always said, ‘Well, I could never be vegan because I love cheese.’ I would eat a lot of (vegetables) but I would put a bunch of cheese on it and I thought I could never do without,” says Landes. “But the things I learned when I was there was how to make nut cheese and still create some of those umami flavors and things that taste really yummy but without things that weren’t really good for me.”
She returned to the Outer Banks and started selling plant-based, raw, nutrient dense food at pop-ups, markets, anywhere that sounded fun. When she learned about the juice cleanse trend, her curiosity was sparked again. She decided to start offering juice floods – what Landes calls her cleanses because the juice floods the body with nutrients over the course of a few days. She experimented by making them for a group of friends, and it went so well, they started telling their friends about Landes’ juice floods.
Word got around quickly. Each time Landes tweaked the recipes to make the juices more delicious and more satisfying for a day’s worth of nutrients. Before she knew it, she had all sorts of people requesting her juice floods.
Buddy Falzon, 34, owner of Food Dudes Kitchen in Kill Devil Hills, was one of her early clients.
“I was in a bad place eating wise,” says Falzon. “Most of these cleanses you do, they’re good for you but they do not taste that good; like, every single one of hers tastes amazing. That’s what blows my mind about it. That’s why I’m always going to continue to do it.”
Landes says the natural next step for Shine On Juicery was to open a brick-and-mortar store and she has her sights set on debuting the new shop on Earth Day, which falls on April 22 this year. Located in the old The Pit Surf Shop & Boardriders Grill in Kill Devil Hills, she’ll offer juices, smoothies and paninis. But that’s not all.
“I’m offering this food, but I also offer yoga,” Landes says. “(Because) it’s more than just the food. What it’s about is increasing the light, the light that starts from inside of you. …That’s what Shine On is, the things that I have found that increased the light within me (that) I want to share that with others … that’s my purpose.”
Her current juice flood clients can’t wait.
“I’m super happy to hear that Amy is opening a brick-and-mortar juicer,” says Jessica Thai, 22, of Kill Devil Hills. “We definitely need more accessibility to healthier options on the Outer Banks, and Shine On will be providing that.”
“I’ve probably messaged her four or five times to see if its open yet,” Falzon says.
More info
Shine On juice floods range from $67 for a one-day to $200 for a three-day, according to its website. All juice floods are made to order and must be ordered in advance for pick up Tuesday through Thursday on the second floor at 1209 S. Croatan Hwy. Kill Devil Hills.
Call 252-489-7864 and look for Shine On Juicery on Facebook. Visit shineonobx.com.