For a young couple whose story together began just before college, this might not have been what they had in mind.
“I went to law school at DePaul in Chicago and then I moved back to Dallas,” Jamillah DeGroat said to The Dallas Express. “When I moved back, we decided we wanted to open up a business. We knew it was going to kind of be behind the scenes, at least starting out. I don’t think we had even decided on a franchise.”
Jamillah, 33, is married to Kyle DeGroat, 36. She is a Dallas native, and he is from New York. They married in 2019, and have a 5-month-old daughter.
“Kyle grew up here in Dallas,” she said. “And my family lives here. We had an initial conversation about opening a business because we wanted to add one to our daytime careers.”
Jamillah is house counsel for a Dallas company.
“And I do credit-risk portfolio management,” Kyle said. “I worked here immediately coming out of college, and that got the ball rolling on us staying here. We just wanted to start a business that aligned with our lifestyles and gave us a little bit of freedom. We knew a franchise would kind of give us the flexibility to tailor to our careers.”
That’s when they made their decision.
“Smoothie King became one of those things that, when we looked at it, made sense,” Kyle said.
For a year, the couple substituted their lunches with smoothies.
“We worked for the same company then, and it replaced lunch,” Jamillah said. “It was a game-changer for me to reduce so many calories in a day. That was when they were rolling out green smoothies and getting more greens into my diet helped.”
Kyle agreed.
“I have times when I’m in the gym a little bit more,” he said. “I get high-calorie smoothies to kind of sustain and increase protein. That kept me a little full until I could get a meal. When I was on a good workout regimen, the smoothies were more of a meal replacement for me.”
Kyle has been in Dallas for 25 years, having attended school in Dallas’ Oak Cliff neighborhood.
“I graduated from high school in 2006 and ended up getting a scholarship to play football at SMU,” he said. “I went to SMU in the fall of 2006, but I broke my leg and ended up going on medical leave.”
The couple will celebrate their new Smoothie King location at 7718 Forest Ln. with a grand opening on Saturday. The first 50 guests at that event will receive free enhancers, and they and others will have the opportunity to win a year of free smoothies. A percentage of proceeds made that day will be donated to the American Cancer Society.
Based in Coppell, Smoothie King operates more than 1,300 restaurants across the world, including 12 in Dallas. Last year, it celebrated its 50th anniversary.