These start-ups from around the country deliver 100 per cent natural, cold-pressed juices right to your doorstep.
Fresh Pressery
City: Bangalore
Must try: Almond milk that also contains sea salt, honey, vanilla, cinnamon and filtered H2O
While Hollywood actor Gwyneth Paltrow has a section dedicated to these juices on her lifestyle website Goop.com, Salma Hayek has been collaborating with professional juicer Eric Holmes, to start a detox delivery programme, Cool Cleanse. Closer home, Alia Bhatt and Jacqueline Fernandez have been spotted posing with natural cold-pressed juices. Made of fruit, vegetable and nut milks, they are just a year old in the Indian market but already trending. Cold-pressed juices are now common fixtures at fashion weeks with models taking swigs between ramp walks or even at mega cultural events such as the recently-concluded India Art Fair in Delhi. Cold-pressed juices are an expensive proposition because they are extracted by applying high pressure on large quantities of fruits and vegetables. A cold-pressed hydraulic juicer doesn’t apply so much heat vis-a-vis a traditional juicer that separates juice from the pulp using a fast spinning metal blade that generates heat. This means the nutrients of the fresh ingredients remain intact. As independent juicing start-ups crop up all over the four metros, we present the pioneers of cold-pressed juice in the country. Meanwhile, in the West, bone broth, a pillar of the Paleo diet and lifestyle, is being hailed as the new health trend of 2015!
Raw Pressery
City: Mumbai
Must try: Trim, a combination of kale, doodhi, spinach, amla, celery, green apple, ginger and tulsi or holy basil, raw turmeric and chia seeds
The first one in the country to offer cold-pressed juices, Raw Pressery from Mumbai has come a long way in just one year of operations (from
January 2014). Founder Anuj Raykan, formerly an investment banker and brand consultant, tells us that the need to start Raw Pressery was a personal one. “The usual beverages available in the market were unhealthy, processed and stuffed with sugar and preservatives. Your commercially available juices are just a drink,” he says. Raykan conducted a research where a sample group of 10,000 were asked if they could name one drink they thought was healthy, and for most people the answer was nariyal pani. From there was born the idea to offer 100 per cent natural cold-pressed juices made with recommendations that are as old as mommy’s wisdom. “Growing up our mothers used to market healthy ingredients to us. For instance, carrots are good for eyes and pomegranate is good for the heart,” Raykan tells us. He brought on board nutritionists, fitness experts and dieticians to figure out an antidote to the rich Indian diet that made people acidic — a green juice made with veggies, that was also delicious. “We were the first organised fresh juice company. One that started selling vegetable juice in its pure form,” claims Raykan. Under Raw Pressery, the juices offered have action packed verbs as names such as Trim, Run, Flush, Shield, Glow, Build, Love and Lean. “We work with farmers in Maharashtra on a contract basis with Agricutural Produce Market Committee, a marketing board established by the state governments of India. Only our chia seeds are imported from South America. But we do find a good substitute here in the form of sabja or basil seeds,” Raykan tells us.
Raw Pressery juices are currently available in Mumbai and Pune. Plans are afoot to launch in Delhi and Bangalore in a couple of months, and to tap South Asia in the next three years. An app is also in the making through which you can not only order your juices but also get additional tips and other health information.
Visit rawpressery.com to order juices online. Prices start from Rs 900 for a starter kit of six juices, with two juices delivered each day, for three days. Also available at Foodhall and Nature’s Basket.
Relish Nutrition
City: Chennai
Must try: Dark Chocolate Almond Milk with salt, dates, cinnamon, filtered H2O and 74 per cent Barry Callebaut dark chocolate
When banker Ganesh Krishnan and his wife Sowmya Ganesh lived in Dubai, a search for smoothies would often lead to versions that were a
heavy-duty blend of fruit and ice cream. The couple not only wanted healthier options, but also to switch to a cleaner, organic lifestyle and started experimenting at home. When they moved back to Chennai two years ago, they realised that healthy beverages were even more limited and launched Relish Nutrition last February, offering cold-pressed juices, smoothies and nut milks. Brand consultant Vikram Chandrasekar joined the team 11 months ago. “We are a logistics-meets-nutrition company. Our production starts at 4.30 am and the first delivery happens by 6.15 am,” explains Chandrasekar. Relish offers smoothies with a banana base and full fat organic milk; they also do high protein, whey protein and drinks with peanut butter and paneer along with cold-pressed juices such as a blend of white pumpkin, cabbage, wheatgrass, gooseberry, cumin, pepper, ginger and Himalayan salt, among others. Relish’s three almond milk variants come in unsweetened, sweetened and dark chocolate flavours. No refined sugars are used, the only sweetener being dates. Chandrasekar tells us that though they don’t use only organic ingredients, they source everything from farms across Tamil Nadu. “You won’t find exotic stuff such as kale, acai berry and blueberry in our products, because we don’t use frozen ingredients,” he claims. The company has a consultant nutritionist on board and all their drinks are tested. Relish has tied up with Paperman, a company that collects used recyclable pet bottles from the juicery’s client homes and directs it into a recycle pool. Relish Nutrition plans to make its presence felt in Bangalore by April 2015. Plans are also afoot to build an app to make your juice delivery snappier.
Visit relishnutrition.com to order online or call 9840310312. Priced from `1,550. Also available at Amma Nana and Gormei Market.
JustPressed
City: New Delhi
Must try: Charge, a combination of pineapple, apple, lemon, ginger, tulsi, raw turmeric and chia seeds
Rahul Monga and his wife Anu Alagh were always into fitness and incorporating a healthy way of eating into their busy lifestyles. Living in New Zealand, the couple were introduced to cold-pressed juices. And when they moved back to India last January, they decided to launch JustPressed, offering similar juices in Delhi and Gurgaon. After a year’s worth of research, perfecting recipes, consulting nutritionists, importing machinery from the US and setting up a small factory for operations, JustPressed was launched in June 2014. They offer unprocessed juices with eight choices such as 100 per cent orange and 100 per cent pineapple, and blends of fruits and vegetables with names like Bounce, Soak, Jolt, Pump, Active and Charge. With one-day and three-day juice cleanse programmes, JustPressed sources their ingredients locally with some exceptions. “While we use Indian oranges and apples when they are in season, we import oranges from Spain and South Africa, pineapples from Thailand and apples from the US. We only use table fruit, while all over the world, most juice companies only use reject fruits,” Monga claims. The eight juices come packaged in attractive recyclable PET bottles. JustPressed also offers to buy back used bottles from clients so that they can be recycled. “Eighty per cent of our clients are repeat customers. Our clientele comprises 60 per cent men and the rest are women, with the largest age category being between 35 and 45,” says Monga.
Visit justpressed.in to order online. Also available at Foodhall. Prices start at Rs 175 for a 300 ml bottle and Rs 275 for 500 ml.
Good to know
Juicing companies tend to offer juices on the principle that one size fits all. But not everyone can do a cleanse, especially if someone has a weak constitution. The nature of these cleanses has to be determined by a health professional. Raw juices available in the West are touted as a healthier option to drinking your over-the-counter, sugar saturated options. A juice is always a filler; it is not a meal. Most of these juices are packaged as 250 ml bottles, which is not enough to make a meal and cannot take care of the calories required for your body. Plus, a proper well-balanced meal plays a role in how food is digested and broken down — sugar works on your spleen and pancreas, while something like methi works on your liver. A juice cannot take care of these aspects — Shonali Sabherwal, celebrity macrobiotic nutritionist. Details: soulfoodshonali.com
Grab a sip
Starwood Hotels has a mandatory juicing programme in which we keep super foods in mind while constructing juices. While our cold-pressed menu offers the regular orange and fresh fruit versions, we also do juices such as a combination of beetroot, berries, pomegranate, spinach and coconut water or a carrot, pineapple, spinach and flax seeds one. The concept of cold-pressed juices is a useful trend and it especially works for a vegetarian city like Chennai. They need to be marketed and talked about more for them to sell well.
— Joseph Rathinaraj, executive chef, The Westin Chennai VelacheryDetails: Cold pressed juices are available as part of the room service menu and at Seasonal Tastes, The Westin Chennai Velachery’s all-day diner.
Amrita Bose
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