When Melanie Luckes decided to take the plunge, and try to provide food for thought to the good people of Chichester, she was reasonably confident her new venture would take off. In time.
But perhaps even Melanie couldn’t have predicted quite how well received her “health-hub” business would be – with folk queueing out the door of her North Street premises (formerly the home to jewellers All That Glitters) at lunchtime, barely two weeks after opening for business (it’s all to do with the salads, apparently; think “roasted pepper and rocket salad, quinoa etc.”).
Meg Anderson is Luckes’ events coordinator. She has a degree in sports science and is keen on promoting a healthy and nutritious lifestyle. Meg explains that one of the key reasons the store opened was to bring wellness to the high street.
“The response has been fabulous and it’s very exciting. We are very much a one stop well-being store where you will find everything you need to get healthy and stay healthy,” she said.
“Our founder Melanie is a trained nutritionist and can support your health and well-being with a bespoke programme of advice and we sell top quality, additive-free supplements.
“We want to engage people in the healthy way of life. We want to offer workshops and yoga sessions, and upstairs we already have therapists with the options of sessions including hypnosis, massage and counselling along with acupuncture, and Ayurvedic medicine.
“Of course, we are delighted that it is all proving popular and it’s heartening at lunchtimes to see people actually queueing out the door for our salads. M&S and Pret are fine but they’re packaged while our salads are made fresh every morning by our chefs.”
Also on the menu are raw juices – take your pick from “vitality green”, consisting of spirulina and celery (with apple ginger spinach and cucumber); “cleansing green” – lemon and parsley (with apple ginger spinach and cucumber); “fatigue-buster buster”, with apple, beetroot, orange, celery and ginger or “immunity boost” – full of apple, carrots, orange and ginger.
Other healthy menu options include items such as organic lemon and smoked garlic chicken legs, as well as a host of gluten-free sweet treats to name but a few but to give you a flavour of mouth-watering choices available.
And fans of Luckes’ offerings have even taken to social media platform Twitter to rave about the organic coffee as well as the turmeric latte, said to “wonderfully good for you with its anti-inflammatory properties”.
