Burnin’ By Ray in the Seaport Is Getting a Juice Bar

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From fully stocked locker rooms to lounge areas more comfortable than your own living room—when it comes to all-inclusive, gyms in the Boston-area have you covered. Places like Barry’s Bootcamp and Fit Row at Assembly Row even have your post-workout nutrition in mind, offering juices and smoothies to you right after your workout. Now, Ray Peleckas, owner and founder of Burnin’ By Ray, is jumping on the all-inclusive gym trend and opening a full-service juice bar at his new location in the Seaport.

The juice bar will be called Body Tonic, and it’ll be located inside the Burnin’ By Ray Seaport location. It’s all part of a new partnership Peleckas has with journalist, author, and WBUR guest host Jane Clayson Johnson.

The duo’s bond goes back a few years, when Johnson started working out at the Belmont location of Burnin’ By Ray about three years ago. “I’d trained at some of the best gyms in New York City and Los Angeles, but I’d never done a workout like Ray’s,” she says. “It was obvious he was carving out a new space in the fitness industry and we became good friends.”

One day, she brought him one of her signature blended almond milk juices, called mylks, which she developed to heal from a chronic health issue. Peleckas loved it. “He couldn’t believe there was no sugar in it and wanted to share it with his clients… and Body Tonic was born.”

Body Tonic will serve the mylks, all made with Johnson’s hand-pressed almond milk, in three different flavors: green mylk made with cucumber, spinach, ginger, celery, and turmeric; orange mylk, made with orange bell peppers, oranges, ginger, and turmeric; and red mylk, made with beets, carrots, and turmeric. What makes them unique, Peleckas explains, is their use of almond milk in place of a ton of fruit.

“There’s nothing wrong with fruit,” Peleckas says. “But many juices will mask the really earthy flavor of green juice with almost 80 grams of sugar. By adding the hand-pressed almond milk, you’re still getting a really nutritious drink without all that sugar.”

He says the process for making the almond milk includes soaking raw almonds overnight in reverse osmosis water, a purification process that removes ions, molecules, and larger particles from drinking water. Then, the almonds are blended in a Vitamix to make a slurry. The slurry is then strained through a nut bag by hand to extract the liquid to use as the base of the mylks.

Eventually, he says the Burnin’ By Ray Seaport location will also offer smoothies, protein shakes, overnight oats, avocado toast, and other healthy fare through the Body Tonic juice bar.

“It can be a challenge to get enough good greens in your diet,” Johnson says. “The green mylk is packed with micronutrients and antioxidants from the green vegetables and the hand-pressed almond milk adds a creamy, milky, flavor different from the store-bought stuff. Most everyone who tastes it for the first time has the same reaction—they can’t believe something so healthy tastes so good.”

Currently all that is available is the green mylk, and only at certain times. You can snag one every morning of the week, and look forward to the juice bar rolling out new flavors and more healthy fare soon.