Bootstrapped:
Zoe Sakoutis

In 2007 Zoe Sakoutis founded BluePrintCleanse, cementing her legacy as a pioneer in the now multi-billion-dollar cold pressed juice industry. After five years of boot-strapping unprecedented growth and disrupting the juice category, BluePrint was acquired in December of 2012, marking one of the few times she’s left before the party was over. Now she’s back, and on a mission to bring the power of functional mushrooms to the masses.

Zoe’s first foray into the world of entrepreneurship came at 12, in canine form, when she set up a dog grooming shop in the basement of her town’s optometry center in Milford, Pennsylvania. The youngest of four kids raised by a single mother, Zoe saw a connection between health and wealth early on, realizing that fresh food is fundamental to a longer life. This realization was underscored by the death of Al, her almost-step dad, who died of cancer all too young. The seed of democratizing health and bringing it to the masses was planted... and then (in true teenager fashion) flung into a pile of clothes and ignored for years to come.

Arriving in New York City at 18 with a fake ID and a heart full of hustle, Zoe spent the next five years working in hospitality in some of the most high-profile hotels and bars of the early aughts while half-heartedly earning a “sensible” degree in communications. Around the age of 20, inspired by a hippie ex-boyfriend who had illustrated the benefits of replacing hair of the dog with juice of the kale, Zoe bought a juicer and went from carnivore to 100% raw foodist overnight. She juiced. She cleansed. She self-educated, reading everything she could find on the subject of “let food be thy medicine,” even Hippocrates himself. Amazed at how AMAZING she felt Zoe immediately started torturing everyone she knew with endless sermons on the AMAZING benefits of raw food and intermittent fasting (a.k.a. a juice cleanse). But out-numbering the eye-rollers were the genuinely curious so, in order to better answer their questions (and make some money getting people healthy as opposed to drunk) Zoe solidified her street cred by becoming a certified nutritional consultant, raw food scholar and wellness authority.

Zoe had her "A-ha" moment while attending the Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute in Puerto Rico where she witnessed first- hand how a diet of raw food and wheat grass therapy drastically improved the heath of patients with terminal conditions. That meant she had to find a way to bring raw juice cleansing to “normal people”. With a focus on prevention, education and convenience, the early blueprints of BluePrint did away with the dogma and extreme language prevalent in the fringe raw food community. When it came time to bottle her elixir, Zoe channeled her aesthetic sensibilities from her dog groomer days and wrapped it all up in packaging so pretty you’d think Steve Jobs himself was behind the wheel.

In early 2006, just as the The Real Housewives franchise was getting underway, Zoe teamed up with some housewives of her own. A group of women in Darien, Connecticut became early BluePrint adoptees, providing feedback on the juice cleanse program she was whipping up in her test kitchen in Dumbo, Brooklyn (way before influencers were taking selfies under the bridge). Word of mouth spread quickly, and customers kept repeating.

When Time Out New York asked Zoe for a press release, it was officially game on and in 2007 she blew the patchouli dust off the hippie raw food ways of the past. Flash forward eleven years and even your MeeMaw knows what a juice cleanse is. You can thank (or blame) Zoe for that. Now this serial entrepreneur is on a mission to do the same with functional mushrooms and unlock the powers of the Fungi Kingdom.