Recently, we wrote about Healeo, “your neighborhood nutrition bar,” as the Web site touts — a new business planned for the Pearl condo building at 15th and Madison. The accompanying comment thread was skeptical about Healeo’s offer of “organic ingredients in delicious drinks, foods, vitamins, and supplements” until founder Justin Brotman left a comment about his new venture: “We will make fresh hemp milk, coconut milk, and nut milk daily to use in our drinks. We will also have a vegan hemp soft serve ice cream with organic fruit and superfood topping bar.” Hard to read that and not think, yum, delicious hippie chow.
But now the story gets even better. Today, this comment was added to the story.
Son of yuppie uses yuppie Dad’s money to open yuppie buisness in the building yuppie dad owns…. not very Capitol Hill to me by Katie
Kind hard to go out of business when your daddy owns the building. Yes, that’s right folks, Jeff Brotman of Costco owns the building and it looks like Justin Brotman (his son) is using his daddy’s money to start a business. Tough life kid. I can safely say I am not giving those yuppies or their yuppie business any of my business….I’d rather pop some vitamins.
Whoever left the comment seems to have a bone to pick with the young Brotman — but they also tipped me off to a great story right under my nose. It’s true — the guy behind Healeo is, indeed, the son of the Costco co-founder. He’s also pretty cool.
How do I know? He responded to an e-mail I sent asking about the comment by giving me a call tonight from a stop on his California road trip. He’s taking one last week of freedom to travel down to LA to talk to a friend about teas and explore the Golden State before coming back to Seattle to get to work on preparing for Healeo’s spring opening.
I asked him if he’s a trustafarian hippie kid surfing the world on his daddy’s dime. “I’ve been called worse,” he said. “When your dad is somebody like my dad, people say that kind of stuff. It’s not true.” Brotman says he doesn’t have a trust fund and, yes, he will pay market rate for the Healeo location even though 1500 Madison LLC, a company his father manages, owns the building. “My dad just isn’t like most business people.”
Hard to argue that. The elder Brotman is the rare captain of industry who gives money to democrats, for one thing. You can also read this pretty interesting bio of the Tacoma native and check out the NYT article calling Costco the ‘anti-Wal Mart.’
Brotman says he’s been raising money and learning the ropes of the small business world by helping run his uncle’s shops in downtown Seattle. The Costco family, it turns out, is also behind tourist and t-shirt shop fixture, Simply Seattle.
As for the hippie part, I didn’t ask the 26-year-old directly but he was calling me from Eureka, NorCal USA, dragged a dude and whoa into several sentences and was in the middle of a roadtrip spent “taking cool pictures and seeing stuff.”
Brotman says he has an admiration for businesses started in Washington State — even big ones like Boeing and Microsoft — because they chose to do business here. He hopes Capitol Hill will see the business he is trying to build with Healeo in a similar light. But success, he says, won’t come because his dad handed it to him. “The best I ever got out of it,” he said of his Costco connections, “was a stack of hot dog and soda coupons.”
Nice detective work. Personally, I will always scowl at the Pearl because I used to play piano at Thumpers, which was demolished to build the Pearl.
will be interesting to see how this goes.
What, Thumpers demolished? Bummer.
Let’s face it, this whole blog is pretty much a yuppie blog. Even reading the results from the CHS census shows that not too many people are concerned about culture and environment which is becoming condos and stores like this that will likely charge 5$ plus for a smoothie. I miss the old Capitol Hill.
Really, jseattle? This rich yuppie millionaire is cool just because he called you? I agree, Valley. We are on Yupitol Hill.
He’s cool because I said he’s cool. Just like I say you’re not for using some kind of fucked up threat.
I liked talking to him. Lots of people call me who are not cool.
ok, maybe you are cool
I created an account just to post on this story.
These critical haters should be ashamed of themselves. I personally apologize to Justin on behalf of the decent residents of Capitol Hill. To hate someone for literally being born in preposterous and most of us know that. Keep on truckin my friend.
People of the hill should really be upset about a small business owner being criticized before even opening. It reflects so poorly on all of us and does nothing but discourage people from opening their doors in our neighborhood.
I am so tired of our self righteous residents who only criticize and never contribute. Looking at his background, I bet this Justin guy will give back more to the neighborhood than most of us combined.
Any neighbor of mine who scares away good people like this guy should be expelled from the hill.
ok….rant over…
Is it okay to stereotype on Capitol Hill? Should we assume every “yuppie” doesn’t deserve credit for anything? He could do much worse and just sit on his ass or be on a reality TV show on MTV or something. Give him a break.
If you got a problem with it being a smoothie shop, that’s a different topic.
In regards to Valley’s comment, this is what was said on the census: “Their biggest fears are related to the economy, crime and housing while their greastest hopes in the new year lie in public transit and culture.” Worrying about livelihood, in this tanking economy, over neighborhood culture is not surprising because thousands of people are losing their jobs and homes. Funny enough, our greatest hope is for… culture?! Maybe we do care after all.
So you live in Capitol Hill and hate yuppies, that’s fine, you’re entitled to your opinion. But try this on for size: gentrification is easy to scowl at when you’re still in your 20’s and your main concern is how much street cred an inanimate object, like, oh say, an apartment complex has. On the other hand, the influx of people with money brings financially sound businesses, those bring more jobs to the area and right now that’s one hell of an important contribution.
Call me a yuppie and wish me dead too if you want, but I am glad to see Healeo and A+O go in this block. They’re small shops–granted with some big backing, but it beats the hell out of another Walgreens, Subway or the like. As for the building itself, from what I’ve been told, the owner’s of Thumpers closed up and sold the land to fund their retirement. Mike’s Appliance relocated just a couple of blocks away in a much better space. The building that has gone up is a market-rate apartment building, replacing the few units that formerly occupied the area with a lot more. Unfortunately, they are probably no where near as affordable… At least the retail spaces are small enough to allow small, local businesses to set up shop. Now that the corners are taken, I look forward to seeing what else goes in.
It’s entertaining for me to read all the comments “i miss old capitol hill” It’s progress people! things change! you can get hateful of new things and nostalgic of old all you want but it won’t stop change. if you’re not happy with that, get back under your rock and stay there!
Have you tasted the smoothies? What matters is that Healeo is providing product that is healthy, tasty and people want to purchase. The smoothies are good – really good.
Healeo is where its at. All you haters have to get over your us vs. them bullsh*t, From what i know of justin he is an unselfish person who wants to give back to the community and contribute through his passion, he designed all the smoothies and loves interacting with the customers, he’s always there and always friendly. Anyone hating on his family really needs to do their research, they have done so many good things for seattle, arts, everything, they are as ethical and progressive as big business gets
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