Riverdale Agent Ari Susswein Turns Lemons into a Spicy New Business Venture

By Grace Cassidy

When Ari Susswein was offered a job at Douglas Elliman in 2014, not only had he never worked in real estate—he hadn’t even applied for the job.

Fresh off graduating from Queens College, where he studied graphic design, the Yonkers native had found himself thrust into the real estate game when his parents put him in charge of selling their home. He began by meeting with four different agents, including then-Douglas Elliman agent Cindy Waxman, who recognized his business acumen and told him to get his real estate license then come work for her.

Over the past decade, Susswein has built his career as an agent specializing in the Riverdale and Westchester markets while continuing to work as a designer. Now, he is channeling his entrepreneurial spirit and creative talents into a new passion project: a just-launched spicy lemonade business called Lemonback.

Inspired by the refreshing concoctions he had developed while pursuing his master’s degree from the Savannah College of Art & Design, Lemonback draws on Susswein’s design background, as well as his training at Kosher Culinary School, where he enrolled between studying architecture at Pratt Institute and finishing his degree at Queens College.

“I poured hot sauce in my lemonade, mixed it, and made it for a lot of friends,” he recalled. “Sometimes I added tequila.”

After graduating in the spring of 2020 during the fraught early months of the pandemic, Susswein found himself back home in New York City and at a crossroads.

“I had no idea what to do,” he said. “I was still practicing real estate, but I wanted to do something from home and get started on laying the groundwork for something exciting.”

While meeting remotely with a food scientist to iterate on the product, Susswein began developing the Lemonback brand around a colorful cast of flavor-based characters led by Mr. Lemon and Mrs. Chili. Cans of the lemonade come in three flavors—Original, Blueberry and Pineapple—and are now available to purchase directly from the company’s website.

Asked if he detected a common thread among his various endeavors, Susswein notes that visual design and property sales both come down to communicating and connecting with people.

“Graphic design gave me a good foundation of interacting with people and taught me how to get a message across,” he said, adding that selling a home draws on the same skillset. “You have to tell a story for buyers. You’re not just selling a home with a bedroom and a living room—you’re selling a place where they’re going to live and raise their kids.”