Kirk Perron at Juice Club, a juice and smoothie chain he founded and expanded into Jamba Juice.
Photo: JambaKirk Perron was working at a Safeway supermarket when he came up with his business plan. In 1990, he opened the Juice Club shop in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
It was the start of a chain later called Jamba Juice and helped create a fad for smoothies promoted as healthful and featuring ingredients such as bee pollen and Ginkgo biloba. On the menu were Berry Lime Sublime, Peach Pleasure and Hawaiian Lust.
Some early outlets were so popular that investors hoped Mr. Perron could do for smoothies what Starbucks was doing for coffee. Howard Schultz, who ran Starbucks Corp. at the time, was an early investor and board member at Jamba.
Though Jamba became a leading brand in its category, smoothie bars didn’t achieve the ubiquity of coffee shops. Dogged by falling sales and red ink in recent years, Jamba was sold to Focus Brands Inc. for $200 million in 2018.
Mr. Perron, who had left the company more than a decade earlier, spent much of his time traveling and visited nearly 100 countries. He built a spectacular modernist home alongside a 25-meter lap pool in Palm Springs, Calif.
His husband, Humberto Rossini Perron, said Mr. Perron suffered from manic depression in recent years, recently broke a hip and died at home of cardiac arrest on June 20. He was 56.
In the chain’s early years, Mr. Perron pitched fruit smoothies as a meal in a 24-ounce cup. He told the Oregonian that his smoothies packed the punch of five to seven servings of fruit or vegetables. “Most people get 2 ½ servings,” he said. “And that’s usually french fries.”
“If you’re green inside, you’re clean inside!” Jamba assured customers.
While the health message resonated, sugar remained a worry, and smoothies turned out to be more of an occasional treat than a daily must like coffee. In the year ended June 30, U.S. restaurants sold 9 billion servings of coffee, compared with 747 million smoothies, according to research firm NPD Group Inc.
Jamba has more than 800 locations, mostly in the U.S. Starbucks has more than 32,000 stores world-wide.
Kirk Jay Perron was born March 21, 1964, in Huntington Park, Calif., and grew up partly in San Luis Obispo. His father worked at a General Motors factory, and his mother at Pacific Bell Telephone. He studied business at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo but didn’t complete a degree. Before founding Jamba, he worked at Safeway as an assistant manager and dabbled in real-estate development.
Mr. Perron borrowed about $30,000 from his mother, Lea Perron, to open his first shop. He later built her a $2.4 million Cape Cod-style house, flanked by cottages, in San Luis Obispo.
In his 20s, Mr. Perron competed in triathlons. After exercising, he craved a nutritious snack and often went to a shop called Blazing Blenders in San Luis Obispo. That inspired him to jump into the smoothie business.
Kevin Peters, who helped Mr. Perron open the first store, said his partner was a natural business leader with a flair for combining décor, fruit displays and uniforms to create a professional look.
“As soon as we opened the first store people started asking for us to expand” to other cities, Mr. Peters said. An early store in Palo Alto, Calif., attracted long lines and caught the attention of venture capitalists, who soon offered funding. “I think you’ve got the next Starbucks on your hands,” Mr. Peters recalls one of those venture capitalists saying. Jamba soon recruited a real estate acquisition expert who had worked with Starbucks.
“We don’t claim to have invented the smoothie,” Mr. Perron told The Wall Street Journal in 2000. “We were the first ones to unlock the code to creating demand.”
His survivors include his husband of six years, a brother and a sister.
“Nothing would make me happier than to see Jamba outlive me,” Mr. Perron said after leaving the company. “I’m rooting from the sidelines for them.”
Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com
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