Puree By the Pedal

The process of making a smoothie is usually as crunch-free as the final product is meant to be, since you just press a button on the blender and wait... right? With a whirr and a zip, your icy fruit treat is ready.

Not so fast, says Natan Lawson.

Lawson is the owner/operator of Wheely Good Smoothies, a mobile Baltimore business. The 22 year-old is no vagabond, but he has taken to a transient endeavor with his bicycle-powered blenders. As a matter of fact, bicycle and blender are two parts of a man-machine where you are the most important component.

Natan sets up his Wheely Good Smoothies bicycles at the Waverly Farmer's Market at 32nd and Barclay every Saturday, drawing thirsty patrons who by their very presence at the outdoor community grocery have shown an interest in healthy living and support for local food culture.

$5.50 is the price for an 18-ounce glass of goodness in any of the blended flavors Natan has on hand, like Lemon Stick (peaches, lemonade, and mint) and Strawberry Spice (strawberry, orange juice, and basil), but he'll cut you a deal. For a half-dollar discount, you can pedal your own chosen mixture to frozen fruition.

Natan says he doesn't promote his business as being "green," per se, because after all he shuttles kid and adult-size bicycles to and fro with a minivan. Maybe he's no greener than the average Maryland lacrosse mom, but the Baltimore School for the Arts grad and bike enthusiast has found a way to get people's mental gears turning as they pedal for a tasty treat.

"It's empowering to know how much it actually takes in human terms to flick a switch," he says. Drawing some link between the wattage in Wheely Good Smoothies and the normally passive act of having electricity do the same work for you is, Natan says appropriately, "illuminating."

Whether it's illumination or inspiration that drives Natan's mobile beverage venture, he knows he's not the only one thinking about pedal-powered production. Natan found out about turning bikes into direct generators while interning on a farm in 2007. There he saw a pedal-powered grain grinder at work and took part in the creation of a pedal-powered washing machine. Then, in 2009, he biked down the east coast from Vermont to Maryland and saw a bike-blender operation for the first time. From there he got the inspiration for Wheely Good Smoothies.

There's an international aspect to the concept of "pedal power" as well. In 1997, several Canadians launched a non-governmental organization called Maya Pedal that uses bicim�quinas (bike-machines) to thresh corn, sharpen tools, remove pulp from coffee, and do other energy-intensive tasks for small businesses in Guatemala. Donated bikes are converted by Maya Pedal into core entrepreneurial elements for underprivileged Central Americans.

Those bicim�quinas aren't very glamorous -- they're utilitarian. Wheely Good Smoothies, on the other hand, has a mini-fleet of more eye-catching two-wheelers. There's the toy horse bike, meant for kids or Peter Pan-ish grownups of reasonable size, and two "mosaic'd" bikes, covered with shiny fragments of mirror and bits of colored material that on first glance could make you think the bike has been splattered with months or years worth of blended produce that escaped the blender mounted on the back.

Putting the looks and function of these bicycle-blenders aside, what do we know about the market for smoothies? Well, Baltimore has somehow missed out on major blended juice franchises like Jamba Juice and Juice Stop. Jamba Juice has 736 locations nationwide, but the nearest one to Charm City is in suburban DC down in Silver Spring. Jamba Juice is so big you can even buy shares on NASDAQ, where it trades as JMBA.

Natan is mum on whether an IPO of Wheely Good Smoothies is pending, but he's got no shortage of customers in line for healthy drinks at his weekly stall on 32nd Street, just 100 yards or so from Pete's Grille's sizzling scrapple.

If you want a way to tap into the spirit of Wheely Good Smoothies aside from enjoying the product you helped create with wattage from your own limbs, try heading over to the Velocipede Bike Project in Baltimore's Mount Vernon cultural district, just north of Penn Station on Lanvale Street. That's where Natan tweaked bicycle frames to make them move a blender as he removed the front wheels, and where he learned how to fix parts and minimize potential problems.

If you're not quite ready to trick out a bike for your own pedal power, you can catch Natan at the Saturday farmer's market in Waverly or under I-83 downtown while the seasonal Sunday market runs.

Sam Hopkins is a freelance writer in Baltimore, MD

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Photos by Arianne Teeple

1. The Wheely Good Smoothies booth at the 32nd street market in Baltimore
2. You can have your smoothie made or watch them pedal your smoothie
3. A customer pedals her own smoothie
4. An item on the menu
5. Owner Natan Lawson pedals a smoothie for a customer
6. A Wheely Good Smoothie
7. Wheely Good Smoothie owner Natan Lawson