Tucked into the historic streets of Olde Towne Daphne, a few blocks from the bluffs overlooking Mobile Bay, Press & Co. has built a reputation as one of the Eastern Shore’s most devoted champions of clean, healthy eating. The cafe, the vision of owner Kimberly Cox, serves breakfast and lunch seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and in just a few years it has grown from a modest juice bar into a full-fledged restaurant that draws customers from across Baldwin County and beyond.
From a Personal Health Journey to a Community Cafe
Cox calls Press & Co. her “Pain to Purpose” project. The idea took root after the births of her three children, when she found herself drained of the energy and spirit she wanted for her family. Rather than accept that fatigue as the price of a busy life, she began researching what food actually does to the body — how it is grown, how it is processed, and how those choices ripple through a person’s health.
She taught herself along the way, reading widely about nutrition and clean food, and testing what she learned in her own kitchen. The more she changed how she ate, the better she felt, and the pattern became impossible to ignore. One discovery in particular stuck with her: in her travels abroad she could eat gluten without the reaction she experienced at home, because flour is processed differently in Europe and in other countries. That realization about processing — not just ingredients, but how ingredients are handled — became a cornerstone of everything Press & Co. would later serve.
Inspired by the healthy cafes she had encountered over years of travel, Cox set out to bring the same idea to her own community. What began as a juice bar with coffee and a short menu has since expanded into a restaurant with a kitchen team, an expansive menu, and a gathering place that Cox says has surprised even her.
“We wanted to create a cafe with not only healthy food options, but with a menu that has something for everyone, and also offered a welcoming, uplifting atmosphere,” Cox has said. “What started as a juice bar with coffee and limited food items has grown into a full-fledged restaurant and quite the gathering place. The City of Daphne and the Olde Towne community have been so supportive, but it has also really been fun to meet customers from all over, as the word has gotten out.”
Building a Kitchen Around Clean Ingredients
Five months before the doors opened in August 2023, Cox brought in Hunter Harris, a trained culinary chef, to develop the menu, supervise the kitchen layout, source products and ingredients, and build the team. In April 2024, Harris’s wife Amber, also a chef, joined the operation. The two work alongside Cox upstairs, where an office space includes a test kitchen used to develop and refine new menu items. Plans for wine dinners and catering services have been part of the roadmap as the business grows.
The kitchen’s rules are straightforward. There is no deep frying anywhere in the building — the team air-fries instead, and cooks with avocado oil rather than the highly processed seed oils common in restaurant kitchens. Grass-fed beef, free-range chicken raised without antibiotics, and organic produce form the backbone of the menu. Even the coffee is curated: it comes from Amavida Coffee, roasted organically along Highway 30-A in the Florida Panhandle.
“We have to be careful about what ingredients we purchase and then be careful not to cross-contaminate those ingredients,” the team explains. “Basically, we strive to offer a delicious cleaner version of what you love to eat.”
That philosophy extends to the details. Instead of hash browns, Press & Co. serves a spiced sweet potato hash prepared Brabant-style. Four types of gluten-free bread — sourdough, wraps, buns, and pita — can be substituted on nearly any menu item, and the cafe accommodates a range of food allergies and dietary restrictions, with gluten-free and dairy-free options woven throughout the menu rather than relegated to a side list.
Juice Days: The Heart of the Operation
For all the growth, pressed juice remains the heart of the business — the catalyst that started it all. Every Tuesday and Saturday, the team shuts down the building, rearranges the kitchen, brings out the large juicing machine, and presses fresh juice from 2:30 in the afternoon until 9 at night. The result is seven signature juices, bottled in recycled glass, twenty bottles of each per press.
“We only use fresh, organic produce,” Hunter Harris has said. “No water or sugars added, just pure pressed juice.” Each rotation includes one seasonal “Wild Card” juice; a recent summer version blended watermelon, strawberries, and red beets.
The cafe’s drink menu reaches well past juice. There are organic smoothies, wellness lattes, organic acai bowls, and organic leaf teas. On weekends, brunch specials have included gluten-free Belgian waffles and a house take on the mimosa — Press and Champagne — made with fresh-pressed juice and organic champagne. The bar pours cocktails built on organic vodka, tequila, and gin, including a Healthy Mary, a house margarita, and a cold brew martini.
A Menu With Something for Everyone
The food menu runs from breakfast plates served all day to sandwiches, wraps, and a lineup of bowls that have become some of the most popular items in the case. The Harissa Chicken Bowl pairs an African pepper sauce with free-range chicken breast, organic rice, and sauteed onions and bell peppers. The Mediterranean Bowl stacks wild-caught salmon over a quinoa base with goat cheese, sauteed peppers, onions, and tomatoes, finished with house-made vinaigrette. Other bowls include a Baja Bowl and a Berry Salad Bowl.
Regulars have their favorites. The Tomato Grilled Cheese on sourdough with a side of organic blue corn chips and house-made salsa is a lunch staple, as is the Buffalo Chicken Wrap built on free-range chicken. The grass-fed burger with air-fried sweet potato fries gets repeated shout-outs from the kitchen — it takes about ten minutes longer to prepare than a standard burger, but the team considers the wait part of the deal.
Dessert follows the same playbook. The cafe makes a plant-based soft-serve that children love, and adults can have it turned into a local favorite, a Bushwacker. Muffins and other better-for-you sweets are always on hand, and regulars who avoid dairy are among the most grateful customers for those options.
“Yes, we want to be healthy, but also want to satisfy your cravings for those things you love, like the grass-fed burgers, chicken and steak sandwiches, and wraps from the Bites on Bread section of the menu,” Cox has said.
Growing in Olde Towne
Press & Co. sits in Olde Towne Daphne, the walkable historic core of a city that markets itself as the Jubilee City — a reference to the rare natural phenomenon on Mobile Bay in which fish and blue crabs swarm the shoreline and residents rush to the water with buckets. Daphne is now one of Baldwin County’s largest cities, and its older neighborhoods have become a natural home for small, independent food businesses of the kind Press & Co. represents.
The restaurant celebrated its first anniversary in August 2024 with an evening block party on its block of Olde Towne, complete with live music, entrees, appetizers, and specialty cocktails — a milestone that doubled as a thank-you to the neighborhood that embraced it. By then the operation had already expanded well past its original footprint, with the Harrises testing new menu items upstairs and special events taking shape.
Asked what has surprised her most about running the cafe, Cox pointed to the appetite for what she is serving. The biggest discovery so far, she has said, is simply how big the demand for healthy eating turned out to be. Her motto for the business — and the personal philosophy behind it — is short: Health Is Life.
Press & Co. is at 711 Belrose Avenue in Olde Towne Daphne, serving breakfast and lunch seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., with fresh-pressed juice pressed on Tuesdays and Saturdays.