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Ja’Corii Smith usually sits in her car for a few minutes each morning to collect her thoughts and catch her breath before work. On Saturday, July 25, she arrived at her downtown juicery, Beautifully Nourished, at 145 State St., and something on the ground caught her eye.
“I looked and saw glass on the ground and I was like, maybe it is just a reflection,” Smith says.
The glass was from one of her business’ front windows, not the door. Inside, she found the rock that had been used to break in. The mail carrier, seeing that Smith was in shock, told her to call the police, and officers arrived quickly. The burglar had emptied the cash register and taken two cellphones, a laptop and the tip jar, which held money meant for the students working with her through the city’s Summer of Opportunity mentoring program.
“He unlocked the front door and let himself out,” Smith says.
The business was barely two months old.
‘I was so hurt’
Smith runs the cold-pressed juicery with her husband, Sherod, and she shut down for about a week after the burglary. Every juice had to be tossed, and the produce went bad.
“I was so hurt,” she says. “I actually went into a depression after that. I was like, I’m not getting any answers. Nobody cares.”
Smith thought about walking away. For a while she was too embarrassed to tell people how much she was struggling.
“I walked into here and it didn’t feel warm to me, it didn’t feel like my place,” she says. “I felt violated. I just didn’t want to be here.”
Beautifully Nourished was among about 10 downtown locations, mostly cafés and restaurants, that Rochester police say have been burglarized in a series of similar break-ins in recent months. Smith points out that at least four other Black-owned businesses on her stretch of State Street were affected, including the ones on either side of hers.
“It was disappointing,” she says. “You have to take care of these businesses when we’re trying to take care of the community.”
Rochester police arrested a 58-year-old man on Oct. 13. According to an Oct. 14 Rochester Police Department media release, officers went to the Protein Pit Stop at 1 W. Main St. around 1 a.m. after a motorist reported a broken window. They reviewed blue light camera and nearby surveillance footage and found him around 6:15 a.m. in the 500 block of State Street. Police say they recovered property stolen from the Protein Pit Stop.
William Arroyo is charged with third-degree burglary, third-degree criminal mischief and petit larceny in that break-in. He also faces a third-degree grand larceny charge for a car stolen Oct. 6 on the 100 block of East Avenue. He was arraigned in CAP Court and is being held without bail.
Police say he is on parole for burglary stemming from a 2019 arrest in connection with multiple downtown burglaries. Detectives are looking into whether he is connected to other incidents in the area.
Asking for help
Smith says things began to turn once she admitted what had happened and posted about it on social media. Customers came in to check on her, as did other business owners, especially those along the State Street corridor. Donations from the public paid for a new window. She says the support overwhelmed and heartened her, and that it gave her the strength to reopen.
Erik Frisch, Rochester’s commissioner of neighborhoods and business development, says the city will do whatever it can to support the affected businesses, which are just around the corner from City Hall.
“These businesses are part of the fabric of the community,” he says.
Frisch describes the problem as the work of one “knucklehead” and says the larger job is changing the perception that downtown isn’t safe or vibrant.
Why downtown
Smith chose the location for her business deliberately. Healthy options in Rochester, she says, tend to be out on the edges, in places like Brighton and Henrietta, and she wanted her community to have something closer.
“We chose this location because it’s the heart of the city. You can get to us from any part of the city in less than 10 minutes,” she says. “You can catch the bus here. You can ride your bike, an e-scooter. You can get here.”
The shop opened May 18 and sells cold-pressed juices, smoothies, wellness shots and soups. Smith is particular about her ingredients and vendors and won’t use anything with additives or preservatives.
“Natural beauty starts from within,” she says.
The business grew out of her own struggle to make time for her health. Smith was a youth facilitator, raising three kids who are now 13, 11 and 6, and she felt she was “attempting to be everything to everybody and forgetting I was the most important person in my life.”
She felt depleted, and she wasn’t eating or hydrating well. Talking with other busy adults, she learned she wasn’t alone.
“We get up in the morning and we jump right into our priorities. We don’t ease our way into them,” Smith says.
She wanted the shop to remind people to take care of themselves.
“You only get one body, so you want to treat your body good,” she says. “So you can be that active mom, you can be that active dad, and keep showing up.”
I tried the Vital Flush, a cold-pressed blend of beets, apple, carrots, orange, cucumber, ginger and lime. The earthy sweetness of the beets and carrots balanced the citrus, while ginger gave it a little kick. It was delicious and delivered on the promise of its name. The label reads “Rest. Reset. Radiate.”
The burglary left Smith wondering whether she could keep the business going. The customers and neighbors who rallied around her helped convince her to stay, turning a painful start into a reminder of why she opened Beautifully Nourished in the first place.
Will Cleveland is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer. A former Democrat and Chronicle reporter, he writes about beer in the Finger Lakes region and Western New York on Substack.
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