Lunch With The Kanes, Who Won Me

By Dan Rattiner

A few weeks ago I had lunch with Riki Kane and Bob Larimer at their home in Water Mill. I didn't know them, had never met them, but I got to have lunch with them because they won me.

Lunch with me was a prize in the silent auction at the Bay Street Gala on Long Wharf last month. I would have lunch at the home of whomever was the highest bidder. The day after the gala I was told that after a fierce bidding war involving 11 different people, Riki Kane and Bob Larimer had won me.

The couple lives on Mill Pond Road in Water Mill, right on the pond.

Riki Kane was born and raised in Great Neck and has been coming out to the Hamptons for 25 years. She started the wildly successful Metrokane company, which makes accessories for wine enthusiasts, most notably the must-have Rabbit Corkscrew. Before she went into business for herself, she met her current husband, Bob Larimer, who had a long and successful career in the advertising business, as partner in the firm Nadler and Larimer.

"I worked for him," she said. "Then I married him."

Larimer, originally from Pittsburgh, has retired from advertising but is still active in writing Broadway and off-Broadway shows. He's been doing this all his adult life, writing the book and either collaborating or writing the music and lyrics. He is best known for an off-Broadway show called Jack and Jill. And his show But Never Jam Today ran on Broadway in 1979. At the present time, he's working on a country musical called Blue Roads, which will premiere in Westchester this fall.

The first thing we talked about were these objects in Mill Pond - there are five of them - that look like large inflatables. It's a large pond. They float around, here and there. They are called "solar bees," and what they do is keep the pond clear of algae.

"They are solar-powered," Kane said, "and they move slowly around the pond, always facing the sun. The sun drives a small motor, which jiggles the water in the pond. Algae can't grow in the pond when the water is moving.

"We leased them for $85,000 two years ago because we had an algae problem here. We took up a collection from the people living around the pond. They didn't work the first year they were here. But the company that sells them offered to reconfigure them in the pond so they would work for a second year, at no charge."

This is the second year and they are making a difference. The group has the option to buy them for a total of $135,000 after the second year, with the original $85,000 going toward the purchase price.

Kane talked about their business, Metrokane. Down in Mexico in 1982, she became fascinated with a manually operated orange juice squeezer she found in a store. It was only being sold in Mexico, and it was an exact replica of a squeezer originally made in the 1930s in America.

"The original one was terrific," Larimer said. "But in the 1950s, manufacturers persuaded homemakers that they needed electric orange juice squeezers. Sometimes there are things that shouldn't be electrified. The electric ones were hard to clean and sometimes put in the bitter rind if you pressed them too hard."

Kane contacted the manufacturer in Mexico and soon she was marketing them in America, from her apartment. The Museum of Modern Art wanted one for its appliance collection. It was a big hit and is still being sold as the "Mighty OJ." For the next 15 years, the firm acted as wholesaler for a wide variety of kitchen products.

In the late 1990s, however, the firm "took off," in Kane's words. An oil man in Texas named Herb Allen had invented a lever corkscrew. They refined it and made it into the glorious and very cute "Rabbit" we know today, which opens wine bottles better than anything else and which looks at you with one bunny eye as you work.

Today, the firm has expanded its niche in the wine accessory field by also marketing, under the Rabbit name and also the Houdini name, wine funnels, pour stoppers, vacuum pumps and even decanters with pressure gauges, so when you pour the wine at the end of a meal back into this special decanter, you can see the actual pressure you save it under with the gauge.

Metrokane products with the Rabbit name are sold at Macy's, Bloomingdales, Crate and Barrel and other retail locations. And the Houdini line, which is less expensive, can be found at Target and Kohl's, among other retailers.

Back to Contents