The drink of the season

While we’re all wondering how to beat the scorching heat this summer, Cane 4 U offers a wide range of natural sugarcane juice with some interesting flavours. It’s not just the sugarcane juice that gets our attention, but also how reassuringly hygienic the space is.

Appropriately enough, the idea began in a gym when Coimbatore, -based founders Sujith Ramasamy, Gowtham Samiappan and Chandrasekhar Shanmugasundaram met. “We were at the gym when we had a casual conversation about venturing into building a machine that could make sugarcane juice ourselves and eventually it all turned out right,” says Shanmugasundaram.

Initially, the three young men addressed two issues that were prevalent in the roadside kiosks; the lack of hygiene with regard to the machines used in these small shops and the ‘purity’ factor of sugarcane juices.

Taking these two issues into consideration, they brought out Cane 4 U. They are also planning to transition to organic sugarcane soon. “We are farmers ourselves. Our vision is to make children and youngsters switch to pure organic juices rather than aerated drinks,” says Shanmugasundaram. “At first, while franchising to different cities, we had problems making the machines, but we were able to pull through,” he adds.

Cane 4 U has a well-equipped electric-run machine which is made out of steel, and therefore gives no possibility for rusting. It has three different layers — one that takes in the cane, a second that crushes, and a third which filters and segregates the waste into a bin. This system is completely automatic and needs no intervention of human hands, other than for pushing the cane into an opening which is positioned on one side of the machine. “At our shop, we do not add water or ice cubes to keep the drinks cold. Instead, we store the canes in a freezer,” says Sangeetha Seshadri, who runs their franchise at West Mambalam, Chennai.

“We also have a refrigerator to which the canes are transferred, in order to maintain temperature,” she adds. The high-grade stainless steel machine used does not produce any reverberant noise and therefore makes it environment-friendly. The sugarcane is obtained every two days from places like Viluppuram and Erode. The machine can be disassembled, making it easy to clean. Hot water is used in order to remove the stickiness of the sugarcane. This process takes place every hour to keep the machines from wearing out. The primary aim of Cane 4 U is to serve fresh, hygienic cane juice by crushing the cane only after an order is placed. The freshness of the cane can be seen from the retention of its natural colour.

“We do not add any preservatives or processed sugar to cover up for poor canes,” she says. The cane juice contains essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals which help in treating kidney disorders, constipation and acidity, as displayed on a wide board at the store.

Besides the natural cane juice, they also have a variety of sugarcane-based mocktails. “The natural cane juice is priced at ₹15 for 150ml and the mocktails start at ₹55 for 350ml. They even encourage their customers to be eco-friendly. “It would be appreciated if customers bring their own bottles or paper cups to our store, as it would help in the recycling process and subsequently reduce the usage of plastic,” she adds.