How Pura Vida Miami Triumphed in New York

I am not a particularly relaxed person. No one in my life would say I go with the flow. Several people have proactively told me I would not like Berlin. So I was nervous about my first visit to Pura Vida Miami — a fast-casual chain from the Sunshine State that has utterly exploded across New York City in recent years with the verve of an overshaken AminoLean — after its fans variously described it to me as “a vibe” and “like the beach.”

“Someone who is very miserable would have a miserable time in Pura Vida,” said one. Yet on a rainy Monday afternoon in July, I crossed the threshold of the newly opened Fifth Avenue location. At a Pokeworks down the block, a bowl of spicy ahi tuna and vegetables costs about $14. At Pura Vida, a similar Spicy Tuna Bowl costs $25, but, its fans assured me, there is much more on offer. Pura Vida is not just a smoothie bar, or a slop-bowl assembly line, or a Sweetgreen, or a café, but a healthy-ish chimera of all four in ambiguously tropical packaging.

Inside, diners lifted slices of avocado toast to their mouths as they typed into spreadsheets. One woman in a Dôen blouse sipped a creamy baby-blue drink as if she was in no hurry to finish it. A song so vague that even Shazam couldn’t detect it emanated from speakers hidden somewhere in the lofty space decorated in white and neutral woods. It felt like stepping into a well-maintained tooth. It felt like getting just a little bit of a lobotomy. Even the “Wet Floor” sign was made of gold.

“What is that smell?” I asked a smiling employee nestled inside the entrance. The air was balmy and floral. “It’s custom,” said a passing server whose identification tag spelled her name in Scrabble tiles. I ordered a Welcome to Miami smoothie for $10.95, which came out in less than five minutes, and settled into a bouncy, plush booth. I was there to try to understand how this contentious chain restaurant from Miami had begun to dominate New York City with eight locations cropping up in just two years — and to find out why they always seem to be packed. There are more locations nationwide (55 and counting) than there are presidential libraries. Last November, the private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners purchased a stake in Pura Vida at an undisclosed valuation; last month, the company announced three new C-suite hires. Pura Vida is, in modern parlance, positioned to go “up and to the right.” But as I settled into my booth, lulled by the whir of blenders, that didn’t seem so urgent. I took a sip of the smoothie from a cup that read “Another day in paradise where health is happiness,” and I leaned back, content just to stare into space for the first time all day.

Last fall, Topher Griffin found himself especially stressed out. It was Fashion Week in New York City, and the 24-year-old was working in PR for a clothing brand, which left him with maybe ten harried minutes to grab lunch every day. When he saw a Pura Vida Miami had opened near his office, he says, “it was an emotional feeling.” Griffin knew the chain well while a student at the University of Miami. “It was the first spot you hit on Saturday or Sunday morning; a day in my life after going out was Uber Eats–ing two Chicken Caesar Kale Wraps to my apartment and chowing those down,” he recalls. In fact, he’d loved Pura Vida so much, he considered staying in Miami instead of moving north.

“As soon as I walked inside, I truly was transported back,” he says now. He got his usual, the Chopped Chicken Caesar Wrap, and enjoyed it so much he returned the remaining four days that week.

Pura Vida’s interiors favor white surfaces and blonde wood.
Photo: Courtesy of Pura Vida

It isn’t just Florida transplants who make up what Rebecca Schneider called Pura Vida’s “cult following.” Schneider, who is 29 and lives in Union Square, attended the opening of the first New York location in summer 2024 after clocking the buzz online. She has returned a number of times since, for that Chopped Chicken Caesar Wrap, the Miami Mocha smoothie, and a coffee offering called Banana Brew. Recently, Schneider, who works in advertising, made it over to the Fifth Avenue location to post a review when a new fro-yo offering dropped. “The lifestyle image it promotes — people organically integrate it into their Instagram, them sipping a smoothie,” she says. “Girls who go to a workout class every day or are at the Alo gym, this is a seamless thing that correlates with their brand image. It’s the feeling that a place gives you. You want a place to make you feel like a main character.”

Again and again, that was how fans talked about Pura Vida: not as though they were describing what a hater might call a yassified Le Pain Quotidien but as though they were reliving a tender memory. An acquaintance who works in food is a secret maniac for the place (so secretive that she asked me not to get any more specific about her job than that); she finds the chicken breast “weirdly juicy in a way that doesn’t freak me out” and then confessed, once I offered her anonymity, “I really try not to do the delivery thing because it feels bad in my soul, but maybe once a month and I need a thing, and by ‘a thing,’ I mean a Jen’s Herb Salad with chicken breast and a soft-boiled egg. I wish I was inside a Pura Vida right now.”

Griffin concurs: “When you’re in a Pura Vida, it really is like a spa experience. When I think of Pura Vida, I think of beautiful — although fake — plants.”

New York is a city that is not easy to crack,” says Omer Horev, the 41-year-old co-founder and CEO of Pura Vida Miami. As we talk, he is standing in front of a computer, Zooming into our interview from company headquarters in Miami. His wife, Jennifer (“Jen”), the chief brand officer and co-founder, sits behind him at a table. Omer says, “People told us, ‘It’s never going to work in New York.’”

By the time the Horevs were ready to open in Manhattan, they had a hit on their hands in South Florida with two dozen locations. Things were going well — Alix Earle was a fan — and the chain had grown from a single 1,000-square-foot location in South Beach with green tiles and neon paint that Jen “couldn’t stand,” according to Omer. He had owned the spot for a couple of years but not until he met and began to date Jen in 2015 — they both worked in real estate; he had a listing, and she had a buyer — did he decide to get serious about it. Jen launched a visual overhaul, and together the couple upgraded the coffee program and added juice and a breakfast menu.

“I remember being in Tulum and getting açai bowls and smoothies and all of these crazy superfoods,” says Jen. “We were sitting underneath a pergola made of ropes. We were really, truly on vacation and felt this feeling of escape, and I was like, ‘I want this feeling in Miami.’” The neutrals and whites followed, as did all the faux (and occasionally real) greenery. The couple took advantage of COVID-era real-estate pricing to go from five locations to nine in 2021 and soon began to think about expanding outside Florida.

Omer spent nearly two years exploring New York City neighborhoods (the couple has family in New Jersey), and in July 2024, they threw open the doors to their 25th Pura Vida Miami, at 1151 Broadway at 26th Street. “The windows were just blue and said ‘From Miami with love XO,’ and we didn’t do any branding,” says Jen. On the first day, Omer says, 1,800 people showed up.

Andrew McCaughan, who recently joined the team as chief development officer from Shake Shack, said New Yorkers can expect two more Pura Vida locations in the city before the end of this year. When I asked about the risks of oversaturation, he pointed out that New York City alone has dozens of Shake Shacks.

Critics, of course, abound. One point of contention: the name Pura Vida, which literally translates to “pure life” in Spanish but is a sort of unofficial mantra in Costa Rica invoked to acknowledge gratitude, positivity, and more. (The Horevs have yet to visit Costa Rica; they simply fell in love with the name.) Another: the brand’s political alignment. In 2023, Doha News reported that a Qatari location of Pura Vida had shuttered after boycotts arose in response to pro-Israel posts made on social media by Omer, who was born in Israel.

For Avery Knudson, a 25-year-old server who lives in Brooklyn, it was the prices, not the politics, that got her goat. She remembers her first visit and the breakfast wrap she ordered for $14.95: “It was just stupidly expensive. You would expect it to have some sort of flavor with the vegetables they put on it because you’re paying a hefty price, but it was the same level or worse than a bodega wrap.” It may be the perfect restaurant for an era of commodified wellness, and that, she adds, is a problem. “It shouldn’t just be good because you haven’t had real food in a while.” Knudson found the whitewashed interiors “soul sucking” too: “It felt like a bunch of people in a corporate room got together and decided what would be most appealing to the largest group of people while putting in the smallest amount of personality.”

Then there was the tuna debacle. In December 2025, the New York Post ran a story with the headline “NYC health food chain Pura Vida’s tuna sandwich has 4 times the fat of a Big Mac.” The tabloid reported that “the sodium and fat amounts in several staples are making a mockery of health recommendations” — in particular, a tuna sandwich with 145 grams of fat.

“My favorite topic,” says Omer sarcastically when I bring up the story. According to the Horevs, the Post actually reported an error on the menu. “It was a calculation mistake,” says Omer. Still, that sandwich is no longer on the menu, having been replaced by a tuna-avocado variation with 41 grams of fat.

It would take more than that to shift the allegiance of true believers. “People either ride for it or roll their eyes at it,” says my anonymous food friend. “Sweetgreen was never like that.” But detractors say it contributes to both the sameification — indeed, Pura Vida’s Nomad location sits between a Sweetgreen and a Fellow Barber and is across the street from the Smith — and Miamification of New York.

What sets Pura Vida Miami apart from Erewhon, Goop, or a slightly less deranged Joe & the Juice? Any number of fast-casual competitors offer similar basic fare. It may be the sheer quantity of people who work there. Despite a full house on a recent visit to the Nomad location, I counted only 26 seconds before a merry server noticed, wiped down, and turned over a just-evacuated table in the very back corner for me. Eleven employees were visible in the narrow space, blending smoothies and bussing tables. Next door at Sweetgreen, I counted only five. According to Omer, there are between 400 and 500 employees across Pura Vida’s New York locations, and hospitality is central to the Horevs’ vision. Eighty percent of their business, he estimates, is done in person; this alone sets the chain apart from takeout-oriented operations like Goop or Rooted.

“Come into our stores and look at the bases of our tables where people kick and scuff,” says Chad Brauze, the recently hired chief culinary officer, who has eaten at Pura Vida every day for 40 days since accepting his new position. “We go in and clean those every night. It raises the bar for what fast casual can be.”

On my first trip to the Fifth Avenue flagship, the fro-yo machine was out of service, so I returned a week later to try a new offering sweetened by allulose, which a sign at the counter declared “does not typically raise blood glucose or insulin levels.” Just as I had while sipping a smoothie during my first trip, I zoned out as soon as I sat with my Berry Bliss and came to a few minutes later with an empty cup, tapping my foot to the beat of … something. By the time I emerged back onto the street, I was surprised to remember it was raining. The stench of urban life hit me, foul against the custom scent pumped into every Pura Vida.