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Situated on the far edge of Nassau Street in downtown Princeton, you’ll find a new store–Arlee’s Raw Blends. It’s a vegan cold-pressed organic raw juice company that also offers other health-conscious snacks (dehydrated raw mango and pineapple, raw kale salads, etc). It’s a pricy treat, but the quality is superb and the business was founded by co-owner Brian Moore, a Trentonian. And they offer free delivery to Trenton.
The store looks a bit like an Apple Store. A beautiful counter-top, with a minimalist assortment of snacks on one side and a fridge that stocks Brian’s latest juice blends on the other. The blends rotate regularly, but on our last visit we enjoyed a creamy cacao blend, a bright kale blend, and a tangy beet blend. The bottles currently run for $7 for a small (8 oz) bottle, which is a few bucks more than you’d pay at Whole Foods or a deli that offers juices. But at Arlee’s you get the benefit of everything being cold-pressed (which preserves more enzymes) and organic (which is hard to find at a juice place in the area). Nothing pasteurized or with artificial stabilizers or preservatives here. The biggest benefit, however, is that all of Arlee’s juices are freshly made and bottled. You can be sure that they haven’t been sitting on the shelf for days, and Brian and his employees are frequently re-stocking the shelves. You can also sample any juice before you buy, which helps navigate the many options. The juices are bottled in glass and if you return the bottle to the store for recycling you get $1 off your next juice.
Arlee’s claims to use 100% local organic produce, though with ingredients like agave, cinnamon, almonds, and pineapple, it’s a bit hard to believe that they’re local. Similarly, I’m not sure where they find local cucumbers, celery, or parsley in the dead of winter. But even if all their claims don’t hold up, there’s no denying that this is healthy fare–as witnessed by the plethora of Princeton yoga moms who seemed to stream in and out of the store during my midweek afternoon visit.
You can often find Arlee’s Raw Blends at various Farmer’s Markets around the area. We’ve spotted them at the Pennington Farmer’s Market and at Trenton’s own “Wednesdays on Warren.” They say that they are opening up a store in Trenton as well. But the best thing about Arlee’s Raw Blends? They deliver (for free) throughout the region, including to Trenton. Just place your order on their website or over the phone, and they’ll deliver the next morning between 6AM-9AM. The minimum for a delivery is $50, but if you’re trying one of the popular raw-juice cleanses (where you drink six 16-oz raw juices a day), you’ll be looking at spending about $60/day. This is a pretty convenient way to get your fresh organic juice delivered whenever you want it. The juices keep for up to 3 days in the fridge, so you can also order fora few days–and because they’re bottled at the shop, they travel well.
Try out Arlee’s, and support a Trenton business–even if their storefront happens to be in Princeton.
ps. If you catch Brian slinging his juices at one of the Trenton-area farmer’s markets, the prices are significantly cheaper–$5 for a bottle. So don’t pass up on the discount! Over the summer I have often found him at Wednesdays on Warren and Thursday’s Capital City Market in Mill Hill Park.
