nicholas camachoJust imagine, you just got out of your 9 a.m. class, you’re hungry and the sun is shining. You head to Lucy’s Juice Too and order your favorite smoothie, The Travis, and relax on Dexter Lawn before your next class.
As you’re sitting there reading over your notes, you start to wonder who all those smoothies are named after? How did this delicious mix of fruits and juices called The Travis come to be?
The answer: It was an experiment.
Back in the spring of 2004, Travis Thompson, a general engineering junior at the time, was drinking Lucy’s Juice smoothies three to four times a week.
“I love smoothies because they are a really good snack, or even a meal if it’s big enough,” said Thompson, now a senior.
At the time, Thompson’s favorite smoothie was The Joey.
“It was good, but it didn’t have any ‘tanginess.’ I started to wonder if it could be improved,” Thompson said.
So he made a deal with the employees at Lucy’s Juice Too to try to create his own smoothie.
“The first thing they made me do was try an ‘everything’ smoothie,” Thompson said. “It wasn’t very good. It didn’t really taste like anything.”
Thompson’s usual smoothie, The Joey, was a combination of guava juice, peaches, bananas and vanilla frozen yogurt.
“I knew I liked the guava juice and was pretty sure I liked peaches,” he said. “So I just tried everything else with it.”
Thompson would tell the Lucy’s Juice Too employees what to try each time and they would then experiment with each new combination.
“He came in to try to perfect it,” said Erica Francis, a recreation senior and Lucy’s Juice Too employee.
It was not an easy process. Thompson tried over seven combinations before he found the perfect one.
“It continued to get better and better,” Thompson said.
The employees at Lucy’s would give him advice as well.
“He’d try different fruits and juices,” Francis said. “He was the genius behind it.”
Finally, the day came when the ideal smoothie was created. The final ingredients were guava juice, peaches, strawberries, raspberry sherbet and vanilla frozen yogurt.
“When I tasted The Travis as it is now I knew I was done,” Thompson said.
He thought the raspberry sherbet made it too tangy, but the vanilla frozen yogurt made it too sweet. “It was the mix of the sherbet and the yogurt that really made it,” Thompson said.
Two years later, The Travis is still one of the most popular smoothies at Lucy’s Juice Too, according to employees.
“Nobody’s ever told me that they didn’t like it,” Thompson said.
Lucy’s Juice Too is located next to Dexter Lawn and is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.