Ra Chand Products is a US-based company best known in the cocktail and bar industries for its lever-action countertop citrus juicers (also known as “press” juicers). The company was founded in the mid-1970s by American Keith Siegalkoff (1950–) after extended travels in Mexico. While on that journey, Siegalkoff identified a need for an efficient and durable press juicer for fast production of orange juice and created a design based on a cast-iron version from the 1930s that he had seen. Siegalkoff found a factory in Mexico to produce his designs and began the manufacture of cast-aluminum juicers and tortilla presses, later expanding his product line to other cast-aluminum kitchen wares. The factories used have changed over the years but continue to be in Mexico. The company was incorporated in the United States, first in California and later in Arizona, and was given the name Ra Chand after the mystical universal force described in Seamus Cullen’s 1976 erotic science-fantasy novel Astra and Flondrix.
Ra Chand juicers found their way into many post-revival cocktail bars and are prized for their durability and speed (unlike most press juicers they use no gears to retard the action) and their simplicity of design, with no internal parts. The Ra Chand juicer’s graceful curves give it a sculptural quality, and as such they are often prominently displayed in bars. Noted bartender and cocktail writer Toby Cecchini kept a Ra Chand juicer front and center at his New York bar Passerby. He recalls that it “both knocked out a ton of fresh citrus juice, signaling to the customers the quality of drinks they’d receive, but also stood as a kind of Art Deco piece in the middle of my bar.”
See also juicer.
Cecchini, Toby. Conversation, October 5, 2018.
Siegalkoff, Keith. Telephone conversation, September 10, 2018.
By: David Moo