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Deseret News: 10 years after it opened, Utah’s Blue Lemon is more of a family restaurant than ever
ALPINE, UT — Math tests, football practices, dance competitions, family time — with six children between the ages of 5 and 14, Aaron and Lychelle Day have their fair share of tasks to complete, places to be and obstacles to overcome.
But one challenge they don’t endure — despite each of those six kids having different personalities, likes and dislikes — is picky eating.
“It’s not like most parents who deal with the pickiness of kids. My kids are not,” Aaron Day said. “They’ll try anything. I have one daughter that will try anything from sashimi to oysters to you name it, she’ll try it.”
What’s their secret?
“We’re really foodies at heart,” Aaron Day said. “… We really just enjoy food and enjoy the experience of trying new foods, and so we’ve always ventured out of our comfort zone and try new things.”
That love of food is not only something the Days have instilled in their children, it’s also something they hope permeates into every facet of their business. The Days are the founders of Blue Lemon, the Utah-based restaurant chain known for its “fast-casual gourmet” offerings and cerulean citrus logo.
On Feb. 25, Blue Lemon reaches its 10-year anniversary, a celebration the Days view as a milestone for both their business and their family. When the couple began the process to open their first Blue Lemon location in Highland in 2009, they had three daughters. Now the family has grown to include six children as Aaron and Lychelle Day have adopted their three sons in the years since opening Blue Lemon.
“Having our kids and our family grow with the concept and with Blue Lemon, it’s been really neat to see and sharing some of the experiences that we had with our kids and and having our kids involved is awesome,” Aaron Day said.
The concept for Blue Lemon developed out of a need the Days perceived in their own lives.
“There just really wasn’t anything in our local area down here in Highland that … we would want to go eat, for instance, to go on a date night but was also place we could also take the kids to and feel comfortable doing so,” Aaron Day said.
The Days, who live in Alpine, had also been experimenting in their own home with different types of eating — from vegan to vegetarian to an all-raw food diet — and wanted to provide a restaurant that had a “healthful eating aspect” to it as well.
“Really that’s what Blue Lemon’s menu was envisioned and born from,” Aaron Day said.
We decided on Pepsi because it has more options with fewer calories, and because Diet Pepsi will now no longer be made with aspartame. This is a recent change, as Pepsi is starting to realize that people are demanding something more from their soft drinks.
