Meet Kaspar Basse: Joe & The Juice’s hot founder who’s charging us all £7 for fruit pulp

When in the depths of hungover despair there’s basically only one thing that will pull me out: A Joe & The Juice tunacado sandwhich and Pick Me Up juice. Writing about it now, there’s slightly more saliva than there was in my mouth before. It feels like they’re lacing this stuff with crack: “Why is Joe & The Juice so good?” is one of the top searches about the company on Google. Olivia Neill has one in her hand in almost every TikTok.

But after the eleventythousandth time of tap-tapping Apple Pay to hand over £7 for a drink I should feasibly be able to make in a blender at home myself— I started to wonder who was doing this to me. Who was the Willy Wonka-esque juice king subjecting me to spending my life savings on delicious pulp?

Well, spoiler alert, he’s hot and his name is Kaspar Basse. So, in case you’re curious too, here’s everything you need to know about the Joe & The Juice founder robbing the girlies blind:

He’s from Copenhagen, Denmark and his parents are hustlers too

Kaspar went to Copenhagen Business School to become an entrepreneur and his parents are Jørgen Basse (former director of Danish department store Magasin) and Anne-Lise Basse (top saleswoman at IBM). He briefly started a web bureau called Magnetix but then sacked it off to start Joe & The Juice in Copenhagen in 2002. 

Away from business, Kaspar is pretty private and has posted exactly zero photos to Instagram. So, it’s unknown whether he’s married or has started a family of his own – but he seems pretty busy hustling to date.

His family thought Joe & The Juice was a bad idea but he did it anyway

When Kaspar got the idea for Joe & The Juice, inspired heavily by Starbucks, him and his cousin Morty put a presentation together for his parents (sort of like the adult version of when we all used to make up dance routines at Christmas).

Morty’s parents didn’t like the idea because they wanted the cousins to finish studying. So, Morty went to Nice to work as a chef but Kaspar opened the first Joe & The Juice store on Rue Verté anyway. And, within three months, Morty was back to work as the store’s second employee.

He is a karate champion and used to run Joe & The Juice “ShowOffs”

Alongside building a juice empire, Kaspar also somehow found time to be part of the Danish Karate team and took his athletes mind set into the culture of working at Joe & The Juice. Juicers are reportedly given a Social Calander, which includes: boxing, crossfit clubs, and running.

“There is no reason to ever f–king feel entitled,” Kaspar told employees at a company summit. “There’s no reason to blame the f–king weather because you can’t do anything about it. Be f–king different. It’s OK to want to look good. Most of us don’t. But it’s OK to want to look good. It’s OK to be vain. Vain is only a bad thing if you’re goddamn lazy.”

Joe & The Juice have also been known to host slightly bizarre company “Show Offs” where juicers take on a sort of frat boy/Abercrombie & Fitch persona and start making juice with their tops off: flipping pitchers in the air, pouring juice into cups they’ve balanced on their muscles, etc.

He sold Joe & The Juice for $48 million and used to live in the same building as Zayn Malik

Back in 2013, Kaspar sold Joe & The Juice to Valedo Partners for $48 million and kept a ten per cent stake. So, it’s fair to say he’s doing alright from an empire of apples and bananas. Five years ago, he also sold his humungous New York, Soho, penthouse for just under $7million, which was in the same building where Zayn Malik had his $10.7 million penthouse. Not a bad neighbourhood to be in.

For all the latest social media and entertainment news, gossip and memes, like Pop Culture Shrine on Facebook.

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• This is what your choice of coffee shop says about you 

• Swap some plasma and enjoy these memes about the millionaire trying to live forever 

• If you do 19/24 of these things after graduating you’re officially a posh girl 

Featured image credit via Joe & The Juice