New location and new name for smoothie purveyor born in the mall
The name is different, but the smoothies are still excellent, said Jonathan Allard.
“We’re called That Smoothie Spot,” he said. “We are a 100 percent natural smoothie spot. We used to be Nature’s Nectar in the Mall of New Hampshire. We were there for 16 years, but we felt it was finally time to change and move on. Nobody really associated the name with smoothies, so that’s when my wife and I came up with That Smoothie Spot. It just made sense. My wife managed the other spot, Nature’s Nectar, for over 12 years for the previous owner. She sold it to us in November of 2024. And now we’re here. We’ve been able to expand our menu, add some food items — some gluten-free, some dairy-free.”
“Here” is on March Avenue in Manchester, just off South Willow Street, in the plaza where Panera Bread and Broadway Shoes are located.
Allard said the new smoothie shop offers “refreshers, coffees, lattes, sandwiches, toasties and things like that. But our bread and butter is the smoothies for sure.”
“I believe what makes a good smoothie,” Allard said, “is just good natural fruit, making sure it’s blended properly, and in the proper combinations. We make all our bases fresh in-house. Our piña colada has been one of the biggest hits for 16 years. You can’t get anything like our piña colada base that we make here. We use cream of coconut and fresh pineapple. It’s our most popular base. A lot of smoothie places will use either milk or yogurt or oat milk or almond milk, something like that. We emulsify our natural fruit into our base and that’s what makes the liquid for the base. It helps make it creamier. It just tastes better. We don’t add any additional sugar, so we’re diabetic-friendly, and we’re able to keep it that way by making everything ourselves.”
“One of our biggest sellers on the menu right now has dragonfruit in it,” Allard said. “We love using it. Something else that a lot of people only use for bowls mostly is acai, but we use those in our smoothies as well. It just blends really well. Acai has immense benefits for your body and your immune system. We try to add as many good things as we can. Some fruits that I’d love to start kind of playing around with, and I don’t think many places use it, is like jackfruit. We use kiwi, but I think we can add kiwi a little bit more to some of our blends. We have some ideas for the summer, maybe sipping out of a coconut with a fresh smoothie.”
Selling smoothies from a stand-alone location has been an adjustment, Allard said, but customers have found it.
“It’s definitely a more intentional customer,” he said. “In the mall we were able to maybe stand out in the hallway, hand out some samples, maybe get a customer here or there. It feels more intentional here. We’ve become more of a destination spot. Our regulars that we had for 15 years in the mall have come to us now, knowing that we’re in a new spot. We’re definitely getting more regulars here.”
“Because we’re known for our dairy-free and gluten-free smoothies,” he said, “we really want to take that into our food aspect and offer just a really good place to go that has gluten-free, dairy-free options. We’re very allergy-friendly. If you have a peanut allergy, any type of allergy, we definitely accommodate anything like that. So our main goal is to just be that spot where you can go get a sandwich one day, get a smoothie the next, maybe get a coffee, and be confident in what you’re getting.”
That Smoothie Spot
102 March Ave., Manchester, 408-1390, facebook.com/ThatSmoothieSpotNH
Hours: open Tuesday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and weekends, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.